september's coming soon

I went in looking for the last RG Veda omnibus, I came out with "Strangers in Paradisce XXV" and "Revolultionary Girl Utena: After the Revolution". I read the latter, and it was surprisingly good, standing next to the original manga. How much of that is because it clearly ties to the anime can likely be debated, preferably by someone who knows the conception history of the manga vs. the anime and that person is not me.

I really liked seeing what became of the duellists in the future - I thoroughly enjoyed it, for all of them. Kind of weird to have Saionji depicted as someone heroic but from how I remember the anime, he was honestly one of the more sympathetic characters left in the end. I might've said Juri's part was the weakest, possibly because it was pretty much a frank re-telling of the Ruka episode of the anime, only framed somewhat differently. Still, even that one I really liked for the Juri backstory about how she became the fencing champion who is also a model.

The part that touched me the most, though, was absolutely Miki's - or Miki and Shiori's, because she was absolutely no little part of it. Part of that was probably the context - I spent the last two days reading all of "Lady Georgie" which does colour one's view on not-quite-platonic brother-sister relationships. With spoilers unsaid, it is Miki's story that gets to bring some little completion to Utena's story in this volume, and it does so through a visual depiction of music which by coincidence I read while someone else in the room was listenint go something very suitable on youtube.

All in all, it was a quick read coloured by floating castles and rose petals and girls with swords, and it was utterly satisfactory even though it probably isn't that deep.

I've been talking a lot of Ikuhara on tumblr the past couple of weeks, because Sarazanmai finally got to me.

I mean, the plot is definitely suffering from its brevity and whatever fandom exists is definitely not there for the reasons that I am there, but being an Ikuhara anime means that there are definitely enough things to talk about, and for once I'm not getting into something five years after the rest of the world.

The long and the short of it is that this is a good anime and I want an Enta icon somewhere.

It's definitely more likeable and accessible than I recall Yurikuma Arashi being, but it sure isn't a new Utena or Penguindrum. Like, the only reason I know the names of the Otter Cops is because they keep cropping up in the tag (fandom clearly knows which are the most important characters and it's not the cutesy middle school protags), and I'm not terribly involved in the juvenile drama of the cutesy middle school protags.

Apparently episode eight is going to be even worse of a betrayal than seven was, so... that's interesting, I guess, given that the drama this far in has been pretty been-there-done-that.

Run With the Wind, on the other hand, was pretty dull for the first half, to the point where I get that people pretty much weren't watching it. But it was up on more than one of the "best of" lists over at ANN, and with the first episode of the second season, I'm suddenly seeing a turn towards the direction where a friend of mine would describe it as "arguably way more gay than YoI".

I mean, there's definitely no "hug that might or might not be a kiss IDK you decide" or grown men using engagement rings as good luck charms, but there was a moment. A pretty dwelling one. So let's see how that one pans out. The drama was luckily kicked up a notch too, so here's to hoping that it gets a lot more exciting from here on on.

Wonky, please bear over with me.

( On Kanba's failure and Shouma's success, and Ringo and the apple symbolism. Spoilers for everything )