joy and shadows

(what is it with this series and brothels anyway?)

You and the rest of the world want to know! They do seem to feature fairly heavily :-)

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notowned.livejournal.com

is it something simple like a pair of wandering ronin aren't exactly best marriage material so the only women who are going to sleep with them, are going to be whores or sluts or widows?

What tickled me was Fuu saying 'why are they going to a brothel when I'm right here?' I have to say, Mugen must have more brains than I give him credit for when Fuu comes out with stuff like that. She'd be easy pickings - and he never goes there. But it's so sweet the way Jin and Fuu are quietly building up a friendship based on mutual admiration, while skirting nicely around her little crush. Jin and women is just the cutest thing, really.

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Ah, that sounds like so much fun!
:))

Wandering ronin stories and brothels or widows go together like... I don't know but it's a genre thing. :) If a wandering ronin met a respectable woman and stayed with her, he'd have to settle down and there'd be no more wandering ronin. :) And ronin stories always feature the downtrodden and show the injustices in society (another part of the genre) and therefore, respectable and high and mighty are shown as either haughty, abusing, stupid, cowardly or cruel. And the brothel thing shows what a stray dog the wandering ronin is. :)

Isn't it fun with an anime where the characters have different sides to them? And where the producers haven't taken the series too serious but given it a satirical slant? One of the many things that's so great about Champloo. :))

As an aside, I really liked ep 13 and 14, especially the end of ep 14. I think it's one of the most tense but also one of the best endings of a story I've ever seen in anime.

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I loved 13 and 14. I was having serious trouble with Mugen prior to that for being such an unrepentant bastard. He's still an unrepentant bastard, but at least I know why!

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Jin and women is absolutely lovely. The way he handles Fuu shows so much sense and understanding, and he manages never to make her feel bad about that crush of hers. He has way more sensitivity than I have!

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Hee, SC pr0n. Who are you going to slash?

Bombed!Jin was another highlight of the series. It has been discussed whether Jin was wobbling around because he 1. was completely schnockered 2. couldn't see or 3. both. That whole episode was a howl.

I'd probably have trouble reading Jin/Mugen pr0ny things b/c they're both acting like such stereotypical heterosexuals at the moment (esp. Mugen, who's a total pig; you'll see when you reach ep 15) but that's another fun thing about the series. Whatever crackheads have been coming up with the storylines know that the fans are going to want to slash Jin and Mugen, and they're fucking with everyone's head.

Jin just gets hotter as you go, I swear.

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Me either! *whine*

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Ah, that makes a lot of sense - you definitely have seen more samurai movies than I have. Certainly the theme of ronin as champions of the little guy is immortalized in "The Seven Samurai," and I think Mugen owes a good portion of his pedigree to Toshiro Mifune's scalawag samurai role.

It is very much fun that these characters are fleshed out so well, and in a believeable way! It makes our heroes much more engaging when they act like real people do and not only in the cut-and-dried Anime Role that one might expect. The sly little tweak of knowing what the viewer is expecting to see and then playing off that assumption really makes this series stand out from the crowd.

13 and 14 were great for Mugen character-building and for proving that there is a plot, after all. Like

tiggymalvern said, it's one thing for Mugen to be an unrepentant bastard, but now you know why.

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Is Jin aware that Fuu is crushing on him? Probably - he seems more mature than either Mugen or Fuu (though in anime, no one's ever allowed to be out of their teens, practically.) I'm inclined to see Fuu's crush as more hero-worship than anything else, since that's how 15-year-olds behave, after all. Rarely is the high school crowd accused of having depth.

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:)) Ah, I can understand why. He is a bastard (the same way John Constantine is a bastard). But I really like unrepentant characters, including bastards.

Did you notice what Fuu said about Jin and Mugen in the flashback ep; that externally they're different with different outlooks and behaviors, but that she suspected that deep inside, they were the same. :) I thought that was a cool observation. Jin's not a bastard, but I see the same desire for personal freedom in him as with Mugen.

Anyway, just wanted to rant about the characters. :) I think they're both fantastic. Mugen got a great moment at the end of ep 14.

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I haven't thought about it before, but what you're saying about Mifune's role in Seven Samurai and Mugen is true. Mugen portrays the bad ass wandering ronin with poor impulse control. :)

Yeah, Samurai Champloo is a thinking woman's anime, that's for sure. :))

I really liked Mugen's bastardliness from the start. He was chaos to Jin's order, it just worked a lot. I loved Fuu's comments about them being "the same inside" in the flashback ep. I see the same desire for personal freedom in them, despite their differences in temperament and outlook. And wasn't Jin's voice a bit soft when he found Mugen limping on the beach and wondered whether he was dead? :)

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Oh, I think Jin knows. Fuu's just young, yeah. Mugen, OTOH, seems to have made a deliberate decision never to develop any sense of responsibility and to just go through life doing whatever the hell he wants. Just like a teenager, only way more dangerous.

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I'm usually pretty good with unrepentant bastards, but it's nice to see just one redeeming feature in them. Kind of hard to find in Mugen.

Agree with you on the Jin and Mugen thing. They'd both be quick to deny any similarities at all, but they're definitely there.

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What are your other fave anime?

(If you don't mind me asking :) )

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Besides the over-riding Trigun obsession? *g* Stuff like Bebop, X, Evangelion, Mirage of Blaze, Fruits Basket, Yami. The usual suspects, really. There's a secondary list of fun, which includes Saiyuki, DNAngel (though the manga's much better), Chrno Crusade, Gundam Wing. Naruto I'm just getting into, which is an intimidating prospect since I'm about 80 eps behind!

I'm currently watching Gilgamesh (somewhat behind the times there), which is really intriguing. At this point, it could either turn out great or degenerate into an incomprehensible mess. And I've just been *completely* bowled over by the Pet Shop of Horros manga, but I haven't seen the OVAs. I'm working on that.

I know I'll have forgotten some important ones, I always do....

Do you have any more obscure ones to recommend?

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I've heard a lot about Gilgamesh but not seen it yet (since I don't download as of yet) but it sounds very interesting. What I've heard of it I can understand the doubts you have about it. Sometimes complex anime get too over the top.

The Pet Shop Of Horrors is just one of the best written manga I've seen, great short stories with a twist. :) Just like the old Twilight Zone episodes. The OVAs really short, just 4 eps IIRC. I think all of the eps in it are covered by the two first books, cirka.

Obscure ones, oh wow... good old Bubblegum Crisis was fun, had some interesting female characters in some fun mecha suit action.

The much more recent Kino's Journey is in short story format and has a quiet and melancholy atmosphere, kind of like Haibane Renmei.

Talking about which, have you seen Niea Under Seven? It's a fun everyday anime about a regular girl who shares room with a hyperactive Ed (from Cowboy Bebop) like alien. :) Really cute and funny.

Champloo is my current favorite along with Gungrave, but that's b/c I got hooked on the Gungrave Overdose game.

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Gungrave is most definitely on my list. Gilgamesh takes a little while to get into, but as the plot spins out, it becomes all about motivations and manipulations. Only 3 more eps to go, and I'm wondering if it's going to be one of those animes that refuses to answer its own questions, Evangelion-style. Hope not.

Yeah, I gather the PSoH OVAs only cover early stuff, but they seem to say more about who/what D is than the manga gets into if I've heard right?

Niea Under Seven I haven't even heard of. I'll look it up.

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Niea Under 7 is cute and silly, and there's no plot to speak of. It's one of Yoshitoshi ABe's earlier works, timewise after Lain and before Haibane Renmei and Texhnolyze.

Gungrave seems to be to be a renter, or else a Hong Kong bootleg - it's almost impossible not to play "Spot the Trigun, though

fireceremony says it gets less Trigunny later in the series. Geneon gave out the first ep at Otakon this year. Nice animation, though.

I just read that the VA for Brandon Heat of Gungrave is going to be Jin in the dub of Champloo. Might be worth another listen...

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Ooh, you're so right, Jin and Mugen playing the opposite sides of the coin. And then once in a while one reflects the other one's personality, like friends giving in to the moment. Even the stoic samurai can behave like a stray dog despite his training, and the stray dog heels once in a while. It's that desire for personal freedom that makes then ronin.

Oh, Jin's possessive of his companion, if for no other reason that he wants to test his sword against Mugen and doesn't want to be deprived of the privilege.

...you know, that sounded incredibly slashy. :)

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Mugen VS Spike Spiegel: OMG WHO WOULD WIN

I wonder whether Mugen's decision to avoid responsibility stems from responsibility never panning out. He might as well do what he wants - I get the sense that, like Spike, he considers himself already dead, so it doesn't matter. Maybe that he's already been through hell, so who cares?

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Yeah. Neither Mugen nor Jin seem to overly-concerned about preserving their own lives. More not giving anyone else the satisfaction of killing them.

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I'm not having much luck finding Niea Under 7 downloadable. It seems to have got some pretty mixed reviews. I probably won't hand over my money on spec.

Yeah, some of the character designs for Naito's other work look a bit familiar, don't they? *g* But then that's true for practically every mangaka too.

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Niea_7 was not my style - too silly. It's sort of ABe's cult classic, either you love it or you don't. It's an older series and wasn't that popular, so it's not surprising that you can't find it.

Gungrave... what got me was that there was a miniskirted, short-haired supporting female character who looked like her destiny was going to be entwined with Grave's somehow. If you colored her hair in black, I swear it was Meryl. But, to be fair, the first pass isn't always the best representation of the series as a whole.

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I can't remember whether they reveal more about D's past in the OAV than they do in the manga. I don't think they do. They hint a lot that he's been around for generations and that he claims his grandfather owns the store and that this in reality is himself.

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