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krpalmerAs I started taking in the light novel-manga-anime franchise A Certain Magical Index a few years ago, I'd picked up from somewhere an impression it was "like superheroes, but without the costumes." While I was soon to wonder about how "fetishy" the outfits of certain of its female characters seemed, I can now also acknowledge the superpowers of various justifications jumbled together in a world that's seemed able to stretch without breaking to feature them. Since I started that story, I've noticed several other manga-anime series that seem "superheroes with the costumes" rise to prominence among English-speaking fans, although I have to admit I've left off reading the One-Punch Man manga where its anime adaptation came to an end with the impression a continued adaptation will show up one of these days and I just haven't found the time to get started on My Hero Academia. As I continued to plug through A Certain Magical Index, though, in just the last little while I got to wondering if I could identify another personal "superhero universe" resonance, in that I was half-concerned the story was beginning to escape my grasp...
It might not have been the only or even the first reason why I'm not as interested in the most "classical" superheroes as modern pop culture seems to insist everyone should be, but the great weight of "continuity" (at a time when it wasn't as easy to take in past instalments of their stories as it is now) they accrete does seem to have had a dampening effect on me. With A Certain Magical Index, I was able to begin at the beginning. Fifteen translated light novels later, though, I was dealing with several four-member superpowered teams battling with each other, and the strongest link to what had come before was the antagonist-turned-antihero Accelerator. Somehow, it started to feel a bit much. Thoughts of leaving the story behind had swum through my head before, and they might have started surfacing again.
Right around then, though, I did manage to pick up on how the thirteenth volume of the manga spinoff A Certain Scientific Railgun was going to be released soon. The anime adaptation of its first volumes had impressed me more than the anime adaptation of the light novels, and I'd kept reading the manga even if of late I could remember some small difficulties getting through a story arc that gave off a faint air of "you'd know just who these new characters were if only you were paying attention to everything." Willing to press on even so, I ordered a copy of the thirteenth volume from the nearest bookstore. It was around then, though, that I poked back to where I shelve the volumes of that series, and realised I didn't seem to have the twelfth...
Aware this manga has got to the point where the releases over here can only happen as fast as the releases in Japan, I supposed I must have just managed to miss the previous volume and ordered it as well from the bookstore, a little relieved it wasn't out of print yet. Getting started into it with its follow-up already ready to hand, however, I ran straight back into the sense the "new" characters would be more familiar had I been paying more attention to the entire franchise; in glancing back to the fifteenth light novel I realised one of them had appeared in it but not made it out of the book. (Later, looking up Sean Gaffney's commentaries on the series, I wondered if I'd picked up on his warning the manga intertwined with the light novels and "put things off for later" only to manage to forget them.) Before the volume was over, though, a new story arc had started with some "super-science" at play, and when it ended on a cliffhanger I had the continuation and, it turned out, the conclusion at hand. I'm not completely sure it revivified my interest in the franchise altogether, but I can admit to having ordered one more light novel volume.
It might not have been the only or even the first reason why I'm not as interested in the most "classical" superheroes as modern pop culture seems to insist everyone should be, but the great weight of "continuity" (at a time when it wasn't as easy to take in past instalments of their stories as it is now) they accrete does seem to have had a dampening effect on me. With A Certain Magical Index, I was able to begin at the beginning. Fifteen translated light novels later, though, I was dealing with several four-member superpowered teams battling with each other, and the strongest link to what had come before was the antagonist-turned-antihero Accelerator. Somehow, it started to feel a bit much. Thoughts of leaving the story behind had swum through my head before, and they might have started surfacing again.
Right around then, though, I did manage to pick up on how the thirteenth volume of the manga spinoff A Certain Scientific Railgun was going to be released soon. The anime adaptation of its first volumes had impressed me more than the anime adaptation of the light novels, and I'd kept reading the manga even if of late I could remember some small difficulties getting through a story arc that gave off a faint air of "you'd know just who these new characters were if only you were paying attention to everything." Willing to press on even so, I ordered a copy of the thirteenth volume from the nearest bookstore. It was around then, though, that I poked back to where I shelve the volumes of that series, and realised I didn't seem to have the twelfth...
Aware this manga has got to the point where the releases over here can only happen as fast as the releases in Japan, I supposed I must have just managed to miss the previous volume and ordered it as well from the bookstore, a little relieved it wasn't out of print yet. Getting started into it with its follow-up already ready to hand, however, I ran straight back into the sense the "new" characters would be more familiar had I been paying more attention to the entire franchise; in glancing back to the fifteenth light novel I realised one of them had appeared in it but not made it out of the book. (Later, looking up Sean Gaffney's commentaries on the series, I wondered if I'd picked up on his warning the manga intertwined with the light novels and "put things off for later" only to manage to forget them.) Before the volume was over, though, a new story arc had started with some "super-science" at play, and when it ended on a cliffhanger I had the continuation and, it turned out, the conclusion at hand. I'm not completely sure it revivified my interest in the franchise altogether, but I can admit to having ordered one more light novel volume.