insaneneko

I just found out that there had been a live action theatre version of Konohara Narise's book Utsukushii Koto earlier this year...There's a DVD out now. I'm curious, but a bit afraid.

I came across an old, abandoned FST-in-progress for Iya na yatsu by Konohara Narise (my comments on the book here and here), listened to it, and rather enjoyed it. So here it is. All the music is kind of dark or wistful, all from Miura's POV. I think I couldn't find anything appropriate for Kazuya, because he's such a mix of annoying contemptible cowardliness. Miura's not much better, but the obsessive type is easier to pin down. XD;

( And you sure can't change me: A Miura FST )

The fourth and final volume of Sasra by Unit Vanilla and illustrated by Enjin Yamimaru was fun. The first story, set between the two world wars in Japan, has that lovely mix of traditional Japanese (gambling dens!) and new. The story itself is very conventional, but that's not new in this series. The characters are sweet. It's interesting how the uke is a "yakuza" but he reminds me more of some character out of one of those cliched old samurai shows than the modern "yakuza." The second story is one of my favorites in the entire series. The two lovers are hilarious! They snark at each other constantly even as they are drawn together.


( Late Taishou/Early Showa Japan )

( Modern Japan (Again) )

( the pics )

I still have the (frickin' expensive) booklet with some really good stories of what happens afterwards to several of their lives. I particularly love the one set in modern Japan. Ren and Goushou forever!

I wish they revealed which author wrote which story. I think that the really depressing one set in Tokugawa Japan is by Konohara-sensei because it's, well, depressing.

I was looking over my bookshelves and (foolishly) decided to flip through WELL by Konohara Narise. I hate this book. A lot. It is a post-apocolyptic survival story, which already is one big black mark in my book. I'm just not into the genre because they tend to depress (and scare) me if they are even remotely realistic and show how bleak things would be in the beginning for the survivors. I dismiss stories that portray life after apocalypse as some kind of paradise because I can only see it as wishful thinking. In any case, I held out hope that Konohara Narise might be able to create something good...And finished just totally disgusted.

As several of the Amazon Japan reviewers have said, this is not BL. That in itself is not a bad thing for me. But in a way it would've been better if it had been BL because then there'd be more focus on the characters and their relationship rather than their situation and how much it sucks. Bleak doesn't begin to describe the world. I don't remember things very clearly and don't want to check the book so I'm going to go off my memory--I may remember things incorrectly. In any case, Japan has suffered some disaster, leaving very few people left. I think only men are left...At least, the only survivors shown are men. The world is also turning into a desert, thus making it hard for the survivors to make their own food. They have to scavenge what's left from the cities. The first story is about two childhood friends, who I think are actually half-brothers. The wife's son is normal and strong-willed. The mistress's son is a bit slow in the head and very clingy. But in the disaster the wife's son is injured badly in the leg, preventing him from contributing to the band of survivors they end up joining. I don't remember everything that happened to them, but in the very end the mistress's son forces the wife's son into a sexual relationship. He tells the wife's son that he has no value in this world. The only thing left for him to do is to give comfort to the one person who does value him and will consequently protect and care for him. It is, I suppose, the "consummation" of the "relationship" as per the typical BL pattern...Though I can't accept that tenuous connection because their relationship wasn't sexual or romantic throughout the story! It simply felt like a reversal of the dominant/subordinate and the final (pathetic) destruction of the wife's son's hope and pride. The sad thing is that the mistress's son is slow in the head and very straightforward. He can only seek what he wants, he can't understand that he's crushing the wife's son with his desires. He simply lays out the truth, which is what devastates the wife's son.

The second story, which features one of the leaders of the group the two boys in the first story join, is...just plain disgusting. ( Cut for the ick )

The short version of my take on this book: This book is beyond gross and totally sucks. Don't read it.

The continuing adventures of our "doomed" lovers in the pretty reincarnation epic in the second volume of the Sasra series by Unit Vanilla and illustrated by Enjin Yamimaru. Check out the series review/book 1 summary here.

I had to do a lot of research for the historical context and to try to spell the names correctly instead of making something up from the katakana, but there was a lot I couldn't figure out. :P I did end up spending a lot of time reading up on the history online...I love the internet, seriously. There's just so much info out there.


( Ancient Rome )

( Medieval Germany )

( My comments )

Read Don't Worry Mama by Konohara Narise...Wow, what a silly story. Love the total ridiculousness of the premise and how pervy the seme is. The uke's personality was too much for me to accept, but I managed to let it slide because it was such a light, fluffy story divorced from all reality.

Tried reading the first volume of Nuganai otoko (The man who doesn't take off his clothes) and had to stop partway. Man, Kaitani pissed me off. I guess I couldn't accept what he would stoop to...I can take a lot of crazy stuff "in the name of love" in these novels, but his motivations at heart just seemed childish....bleah. I guess I'll try picking it up again at some later date.

I'm vaguely interested in seeing how Konohara-sensei has been translated into English, but considering the only novels of hers that have been translated so far are this series and the first of the Cold series...I suppose I can wait until a book of hers I actually really like (Kodomo no hitomi or Nemureru usagi maybe?) is translated...

Kodomo no hitomi by Konohara Narise is a wonderfully fun book, different in tone from others I’ve read so far by this author. I didn’t even connect it to Konohara-sensei (I have this terrible tendency to NOT pay attention to authors of the books I read in general) until I saw it on a complete list of her works, it has such a different feel to it. It is about Kashiwabara Misaki, who lives very poorly in a material sense but incredibly richly in an emotional sense with his six year old son Joutarou. He had married and had a child young, but lost his wife suddenly only several years later. Though she was gone and the lingering effects of having borrowed money for her care really make it tough for him to make ends meet, he is happy. Then one day he finds that his older brother Hitoshi, who had been adopted by their paternal grandfather after the death of their parents, had been in an accident and had regressed to a six year old in mentality and in memory. Misaki hates his brother for being cold and horrible to him when he had tried to borrow money for his wife’s treatment, but ends up with Hitoshi dumped on him. Initially he is very cold to his brother, but comes to realize that Hitoshi now was no longer the adult that he had come to hate, but a helpless little boy in a big body. Hitoshi and Joutarou get along famously, and Misaki warms up to him. It...is a romance, and thus sounds really improbable and silly. Objectively, it undeniably is, but..it is still delightful to read (and when did improbable and silly ever stop a BL story anyhow?). Konohara-sensei does a wonderful job of making things flow naturally (well, as naturally as such an unnatural situation can be ^^;). I reread this quite a bit, just for the sweet family moments and the simplicity a childlike mentality can bring to a relationship. Combined with nice art, it makes for wonderful rereading material.

( the story )

( the pics )

When I need to come up with the Japanese characters for a name or title, I sometimes get lazy (or am on a computer without Japanese input capability) so I google the romaji and look for a result that will provide the characters that I can then cut and paste. Well, I needed Konohara Narise's name in kanji so googled her and came across her official website suion. The most useful thing from that page is list of novels (which includes the illustrator).

An interesting link from her site is for the writing unit she is currently part of, Unit Vanilla. I don't recognize the other three writers, but it seems odd to have a four person writing unit, frankly. How does four people co-write anything in an efficient way? In any case, their first project Sasra is currently being published in Shousetsu BeBoy, to finish pretty soon. I assume a novel will be published some time afterwards. In any case, I was excited to see that the illustrator is ENJIN YAMIMARU, the illustrator of the Nijuu Rasen novels and artits of Voice or Noise, among other things. The introduction makes the story sound amusingly tragic: A couple had committed some sin/crime in the distant past and were punished with the horrible fate of being reborn to meet and fall in love with each other, but their love each time is forbidden. It sounds so bad, but with Konohara-sensei in the mix I can't quite dismiss it. I look forward to the novel to find out if it's any good (and to see the pretty pictures!).

Also came up with an interesting (but ultimately confusing) blog post regarding some discussion on AMLA that turned to how well BL novels will fare in the West. I do wonder why one of the first BL authors chosen was Konohara Narise, since as someone named Emi is mentioned to note that "Most Japanese BL readers find her works offensive and unenjoyable, and only a minority of core fans love them. Even her fans say that they have to be in the right mindset before reading one of her novels, and they often leave them with a ‘bad after taste’. (’Don’t Worry Mama’ is the lightest thing she’s ever written, but still…let’s just say her novels are not at all representative of the BL novel genre.)" Oh man, you can say that again.

On a side note, I found a basic attitude of some of the discussion mentioned based on a fallacy. They make it sound like Western works are all well-written...Um...Have they picked up and read some of the crap that are bestsellers? The writing can be atrocious! -_- Perhaps they have standards, but we are talking about the general public. As long as it's not illegible I don't think a lot of people will necessarily be turned off by not so good writing, sadly. (And come on, some of the crap manga that are insanely popular with the fangirls is pretty damn indicative...)

And speaking of BL in English, an interesting article titled "Drawn Together: The surging popularity of yaoi—graphic boy-on-boy comics—might be the genre's downfall", the type of article that can't help but make me chuckle as I see one generalization and/or simplification after another.

First off, I was leafing through one of those colored pamphlets they stick in novels and manga when I came across one of the tackiest book titles ever: スキンクリームで濡らして. Read "Sukin kuriimu de nurashite," it translates to "Soak me with/dip me in skin cream." Yes, really. This is a real title. SO BAD.

I saw that Dangerous Pleasure released something new, so I went to their site to see if they had any info on it. I didn't find any info on the new release, but I did see the announcement that In the Walnut by Kawai Toko had been licensed and that they had dropped the project. My reactions were a) Yay! They licensed one of my favorite BL mangas! and b) Couldn't they have told me, the translator, that my services were no longer needed? I think it would've been...oh...nice? -_-

But in any case, I'm ecstatic that "In the Walnut" has been licensed. It's one of those mangas with PLOT and CHARACTERS, very heartwarming and sweet but not cloying at all. And the last two chapters (which have not been scanlated) are soooo good. I hope people can get over the lack of sex (which for me is kind of a plus nowadays ^^;) and see how good it is. XD

Oh yes, anyone who happens to own the Japanese manga but can't read Japanese? I can post text translations of the rest of the chapters. I actually have the next chapter done (it should have been in the process of being edited when the group dropped the project), and I love this manga so much I can certainly do the last chapter as well.

The manga was acquired by Juné Manga, so I checked out their page to see if they had any tentative release dates. I found nothing regarding "In the Walnut" but I was excited to see that a novel by my current new favorite author, Konohara Narise, had been translated. Konohara Narise is the author of "Iya na yatsu," which I've babbled about quite a bit already and am holding back from babbling some more on. I've read two other novels by her, and all three are very different types of stories but all are very good. Her novels have vividly drawn characters, excellent portrayal of relationships and interactions, and the avoidance of the BL cliche to move the story forward.

The translated novel is Cold Sleep. It's actually the first book of three (which, judging from the reviews on amazon, is not common knowledge among its readers?). I've heard some rave reviews for this series and would dearly love to read it...if only they weren't out of print. ;_; The only thing that worries me is that Juné did "Only the Ring Finger Knows," which was atrocious to the extreme (at least book 1 was, and I heard book 2 was worse).