labingi

As a Trigun fan, I feel I ought to say something about the 2023 anime, but I haven’t felt inspired to because it didn’t leave me with a strong feeling. I didn’t hate it, didn’t love it. I thought it was all right. But I’ll do a little “good, bad, other” list, of course, from own POV. Others’ vary. Spoilers for the 2023 Trigun anime and the manga.( Read more... )

As I continue to deepen my Buddhist practice, I find myself engaging with old favorite texts through a more Buddhist-informed lens, and this had led me to think about some old favs in terms of the characters' attachments. I wanted to explore some contrasts through possibly my three favorite love stories in the world:

Naoe and Kagetora in Mirage of Blaze
Vash and Wolfwood in Trigun
Ash and Eiji in Banana Fish [1]

(Spoilers follow for all three, not detailed but significant. This post assumes you know the basic stories—no summary.)( Read more... )

Jumping into Day 11 with apologies for not doing the whole thing in order. I just don't have time to do the whole thing properly.

Day 11
In your own space, talk about a creator. Show us why you think they are amazing. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I think this means fan creator? I want to extol several.

The amazing astrogirl2 is the one who introduced me to LJ-style fandom in 2004. I came across her site somehow in searching for Blake's 7 fandom and was captivated by the wonderful community (doing B7 and Farscape RPGs at the time). Astrogirl herself--still posting regularly on LJ and still with quite a following--has always been such an intelligent, balanced, caring, engaged fandom presence, as well as a dashed good fan fic writer. (Alas, we are no longer in the same fandoms, but my admiration remains.)

Apart from Astrogirl, I want to use this space to praise some of the amazing people who have brought Mirage of Blaze fandom into English because I have been revisiting Mirage with much enthusiasm lately.

One of the first Mirage fans I ever encountered was petronia, first on her website, later through LJ. I long considered her--and pretty much still consider her--a celebrity I am rather shy about talking to. As far as Mirage goes, it does not get better than her humorous summaries. Across the years, I find I would usually rather read her account of Kotarou being mistaken for [Spoiler] than read the original. She captures very much the tone of Mirage itself when it self-satirizes with just a nance more meta and comedy. Utterly delightful.

The most professional-like of the many wonderful people who have taken a stab at translating the 40 volume epic of Mirage is Asphodel. Check out her amazing site of Mirage and other translations, complete with giant glossary and numerous hyperlinked footnotes. She is still at it! She has been at it for ten years or more now. The going is slow. (This is not her day job.) But the product she posts is always exceptional.

Also an excellent and voluminous translator is quaint_twilight. She is no longer active on LJ or DW, which I totally understand but makes me sad. I miss her wonderful translations and her enthusiastic fan presence, and I applaud her for keeping her account active so that we can continue to access the fruits of all her hard work on Mirage.

Other folks who have put in many long hours of translating work include 99me, tasha_poisonous, and demitas, as well as many others who have translated some wonderful bits in English and other languages--and round about 10 years ago, a whole host of people doing amazing multi-page meta. I can't name everyone, but I appreciate it all.

As for traditionally published creators, hands down the most influential in my life over the past eight-ish years or so is Yasuhiro Nightow. I must admit, I don't really relate to his latest work, Kekkai Sensen (3B), but both of his two major earlier works, Trigun and Gungrave, have been not only big fandoms of mine but have transformed my life. Each has been a means of profound revelation about myself, my patterns, and how I can better address my life. I am extremely grateful for that. It's a rare and precious gift.

I have blogged about Rem as an awesome female character at my official blog (because it's what I do).

I need to offload some Trigun thoughts and have no time to formulate a real essay, so here goes. I'm doing a reread of much of the manga, and as with great works in general, it improves the second time around.

( Trigun Thoughts with Manga Spoilers )

It's been a while since I've written fic, and this one's been simmering for a while...

Fandom: Trigun (manga)
Title: “Fear”
Characters: Knives, Legato, OC
Rating/Warnings: R, violence, dark themes
Words: About 800
Summary: Knives and Legato find a baby Plant.
Spoilers: through volume 7, and this story won’t make sense without vol. 7.

( Fear )

Title: "J. A. N."
Fandom: Trigun
Characters: Vash
Rating: PG for themes
Spoilers: Plant powers
Summary: Vash has women living in his arm.
Words: ~200

( J. A. N. )

One of these days, I'll write about something other than Trigun--promise! But for now, I'm still plowing through the end of the manga, and it's still foremost in my mind. Here follow brief thoughts on volume 11.



Volume 11 had its moments but, on the whole, was a bit of a letdown. ( Spoilers follow )

Disclaimer: I've only read a bit in the Trigun manga (plus Wikipedia), so my Plant knowledge is far from complete, and I'm very open to having my musings corrected.

From what I can make out, the Plants in Trigun are a fascinating study in the nature of selfhood and (un-)differentiation of self, other, and environment. ( Spoilers Follow )

Am having trouble getting through Soseki's Sorekara, despite the fact it's quite a good novel, because I keep getting distracted by Trigun manga. Had I world enough and time, there might be a quite a lot of Trigun fan fic in me; there are certainly many avenues. And happily the fandom is big and old enough that a lot of good stuff has been written. As it is, there's no way I'll time/energy to sit down and do any such thing in the future. I can't even find the time to load my old fic onto AO3. I probably will post more meta, though, when I've read more.