Falling Stars

So several weeks ago, Event Cinemas screened the stage musical of Sailor Moon, which was also a Takarazuka Revue production! Thus combining two of my favourite things.

It was pretty much everything I could have wished for.

( Spoilers )

Great performances and great singing, with humour, drama, and heart. I really hope it gets a local DVD release.

Links for future reference:

Sailor Moon: Le Mouvement Final

Promo video on YouTube
Wandering Stars - Sailor Stars song
Legend of the Dictator - Shadow Galaxia song
The Guardian Who Lost Hope - Tuxedo Mask song
Moonlight Densetsu - Ending song

Fan page with summary and cast list
Original Japanese performance
Australian screening
American screening

This is what I picked up yesterday:

( Cover image cut for size )

The classic shounen ai manga by the legendary Moto Hagio. Officially translated into English for the first time by Matt Thorn.

I never expected to get to read this story. I was thrilled when I learned about this translation.

An absolutely gorgeous edition. A hardcover volume, with a lovely matt cover, and hefty at over 500 pages. Fantagraphics has outdone themselves on this.

I know what I'm doing this long weekend.

To Juli, one last time.
This is my love.
This is the sound of
my heart. Surely
You must understand.

I have been following this manga for over six years. Today I finished reading the final chapter. The story is now complete at 27 volumes.

I'm not even sure what I want to say about it. I just feel like I should stop and acknowledge the moment. It's a story that has awed me with its intricate and farsighted plotting, its magnificent ensemble of characters, its unflinching willingness to go into the dark places, and its powerful emphasis on love and friendship and loyalty and sacrifice.

One of my favourite series of all time, no doubt.

The conclusion has been a long time coming. And it was the perfect ending in every way.

Normally I never buy manga I already own in another edition.

But the new CLOVER omnibus published by Dark Horse was just too pretty to resist.

( Feast your eyes on this! )

Years ago, Tokyopop published CLOVER in English. I already had the whole series in Chinese, so I only picked up the first Tokyopop volume out of curiosity.

It was a disappointing experience. Although Tokyopop did reproduce the translucent dustjacket and colour illustrations, the translation was sometimes awkward, the text was in an unattractive serif font, and the artwork was flipped so the pages read left to right - remember those days? - which had odd results since one character had an artificial hand.

I wish I still had it for comparison, but I ended up donating it to the library. I didn't even know that edition had gone out of print.

Anyway, Dark Horse has done a fine job with this omnibus. The paper is good quality stock, the images are crisp, the font is standard, and the artwork has been kept in its original orientation. And I've only browsed it so far, but the translation seems for the most part to be smooth and accurate. (I have nitpicks about a few names, but I suppose romanisation is a judgment call.)

But the real lure is in the colour illustrations: not only the cover art and splash pages are included, but also a bonus gallery of seventeen gorgeous images, most likely sourced from CLAMP's various artbooks.

If you've never read CLOVER before, this is a beautiful way to start.

( More pics )

( Spoilerish nitpicking )

X was the first CLAMP manga I ever read. When I started reading it, 1999 was in the future.

I'd never even heard of CLAMP back then. But it was the cover that caught my attention. You know the one. Glossy black, with that picture of Kamui standing under Tokyo Tower in the moonlight, huge eyes and wavy hair and blood red sakura wafting past. Totally Clampesque, and completely different from all the shounen and seinen manga on the shelves in those days.

I remember being intrigued and picking it up and putting it down again, because back then I was a poor uni student and $30 AUD was a lot to go drop on a graphic novel. (Yes, they cost that much then. Insert obligatory "Kids these days!" comment.)

But in the end, I circled back for it, and although I didn't warm to the story straight away - remember back when Kamui was a cold little bastard instead of the fragile ball of angst we know so well? - it intrigued me enough to keep going. After all, there really was nothing else like it then. Viz's collection Four Shojo Stories had only come out a few months earlier, and that had been a revelation in itself. ("Japanese comics from a uniquely female perspective!" the cover said. "It's Not Just Girls' Stuff Anymore.")

So yeah, Dragons of Heaven and Dragons of Earth and mystic swords and duelling prophecies and starcrossed lovers and bucketloads of angst, and a movie and a TV series and a billion volumes of other CLAMP manga later, and wow, cats in the cradle, we're just around the corner from 2009. Which is a good time for the x2009 fanfiction challenge, 'Ten Years Later'. Sign ups are open now, for anyone else feeling the nostalgia.

X was the first CLAMP manga I ever read. Which makes it kind of funny that I still haven't finished reading it. Here's hoping they pick it up again before 1999 falls even further into the past.

(Though I suppose they're still doing better than Minami Ozaki, whose Bronze: Zetsuai Since 1989 is still crawling along. By all rights, Koji and Izumi should be pushing forty by now.)

I remember that day, ten years ago, in that packed out classroom in the Quadrangle Building, when these three guys stood up in front of us and proposed to start an anime club. In years to come, they would be known as the Founders, and the club as AnimeUNSW.

( Memories )

One month from today, it will be the 10th anniversary of the founding of AnimeUNSW.

Its official name is the Anime and Manga Society of the University of New South Wales, but nobody calls it that. To me personally, it will always be 'the club'. It was a big part of my life for a long time - through it, I made some wonderful friends, and had some amazing experiences, and of course watched lots of anime, which I was hugely passionate about.

Back then, the only other anime clubs in Sydney were JAUWS and SAS - the one based out west, and the other a small group of friends. The next closest club was down in Wollongong. SUAnime, Anime@UTS, AnimeMQ - none of these clubs yet existed. So AnimeUNSW became the main social hub for anime fans in metropolitan Sydney, its Friday night screenings regularly drawing not only uni students but high schoolers and fulltime workers - all come together to share their love of Japanese animation.

( Kids these days! aka Uphill! Both ways! In the snow! )

I was going to post this on Hikago Day - the 5th of May, a significant day in the Hikaru no Go universe - but I lost that post. So here we go again: my Hikaru no Go fic recs, five categories of five faves each.

Many of these stories are set after the series ends and contain spoilers. Some also feature *cough* extrapolation of canonical relationships. A few may not be worksafe. Please note the warnings within each individual story.

( Let's go! )

I've been trying for days to work out how to post about this without sounding completely insane. But maybe that's impossible. So I'll just have to tell it straight. If you're wondering where I've been for the past month and a half, I've been immersed in another world. The world of Hikaru no Go.

What is Hikaru no Go? It is 23 volumes of manga. It is also 75 episodes of anime. But most of all, it is one brilliant, absorbing, wonderful story.

Half of you are probably thinking, "Um, yeah, where were you three years ago? Under a rock?" And the other half of you are probably thinking, "What's so fascinating about Go? Isn't it, like, a board game?"

For those who aren't already familiar with the story, this review at the Anime News Network provides an excellent summary. I'm going to quote from it:

I will not try to hide my unabashed love for Hikaru no Go, the story of a young boy, Hikaru Shindo, whose mind becomes the home for a Go-playing ghost named Sai. Set free when Hikaru stumbles upon the Go board in which he had been inhabiting, Sai is a master Go player whose love for the game, and desire to play the "divine move" has kept him in the world for over 1000 years. Sai’s enthusiasm for the game slowly draws the hitherto uninterested Hikaru into the exciting world of Go.

Volume One quickly establishes what will become the central conflict of the series, the rivalry between Hikaru and the young prodigy Akira Toya. Akira is the son of the best Go player in the world, and even though he is only a sixth grader, he can compete with many professionals. Hikaru stumbles into a Go salon in order to indulge Sai, and picks out Akira for a match since he is the only kid around. Although Hikaru says he never has played before, aided by Sai he defeats Akira. Akira is shocked, not believing he could be beat by the likes of Hikaru who cannot even hold the pieces correctly. Akira demands a rematch which Sai wins, but seeing Akira's passion for the game sparks a similar feeling in Hikaru's heart...

To quote supacat, apparently also one of Those Who Came In Late, "I really feel like the last one to arrive at the party with this fandom, sort of like if I just read Harry Potter for the first time yesterday and wanted to run around telling everyone how great it was, and everyone was like, look we told you to read it like two years ago, come on."

***

Touya, how can you be so intense...?

Is Go more than just a game...?

Are you trying to play 'the Divine Move' just like Sai...?

- Hikaru, Chapter 6