Manga Thoughts: Maison Ikkoku 1
Dec. 16th, 2020 06:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerI’ve mentioned here before how, in trying to keep up with the manga I buy, I only go back and “read things again” in exceptional circumstances. (This is at least different from having piled up so much anime “to watch... some day” that I can shrug and return to series every so often.) However, I’m not quite “stranded in the present moment”; older series do keep getting released, whether in new editions or even for the first time. I picked up one series getting a new edition with some interest. Rumiko Takahashi’s “Maison Ikkoku” had been present in the general fan consciousness when I first joined in, and I’d formed the impression that in being more “realistic” than Urusei Yatsura or Ranma 1/2 (and having an actual conclusion, or at least one that hadn’t resulted in vast quantities of fanfiction) it had wound up a vital part of her work. With volumes of Urusei Yatsura beginning to pile up again as my “anime adaptation before original manga” habits bumped into news more of its movies will be legitimately re-released over here and having to admit to just sort of letting Ranma 1/2 trail off, having the chance to read Maison Ikkoku seemed a pleasant example of “better late than never.”
Viz’s latest release of Maison Ikkoku seemed a more prestigious package than its recent releases of Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2. The cover illustration of the story’s lead female character Kyoko was a pleasant one, but as I began reading I realised it must have been drawn some time after the manga had started. Looking at the art style in the first chapters had me thinking “of course; this followed Urusei Yatsura,” although a reference later on helped me realise their production had in fact overlapped. A first sense of “choppy punchiness” to the dialogue might also have reminded me of reading Urusei Yatsura in translation, but in checking the back page of a volume from that series I did see it was translated by a different person.
More than that, I got to thinking the cover illustration had tied into impressions Kyoko was that particular kind of anime character who might be summed up with the somewhat loaded term “good wife material” (which might have something to do with a fact about her revealed a little ways into the first volume of manga, one I’d already more or less known), but in the story itself she did seem to have a bit more edge. I did wonder if my impressions came in part from having been reading the Oh My Goddess manga in recent months, and a certain reference in one of the first “anime MSTings” I read quite a while ago. The reality certainly seems more connected to Takashi’s other work and perhaps more interesting, too. In any case, aware this story is a “romantic comedy” I noted more than one “competitor character” being set up before the end of the first volume, which has me looking forward to the next.
Viz’s latest release of Maison Ikkoku seemed a more prestigious package than its recent releases of Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2. The cover illustration of the story’s lead female character Kyoko was a pleasant one, but as I began reading I realised it must have been drawn some time after the manga had started. Looking at the art style in the first chapters had me thinking “of course; this followed Urusei Yatsura,” although a reference later on helped me realise their production had in fact overlapped. A first sense of “choppy punchiness” to the dialogue might also have reminded me of reading Urusei Yatsura in translation, but in checking the back page of a volume from that series I did see it was translated by a different person.
More than that, I got to thinking the cover illustration had tied into impressions Kyoko was that particular kind of anime character who might be summed up with the somewhat loaded term “good wife material” (which might have something to do with a fact about her revealed a little ways into the first volume of manga, one I’d already more or less known), but in the story itself she did seem to have a bit more edge. I did wonder if my impressions came in part from having been reading the Oh My Goddess manga in recent months, and a certain reference in one of the first “anime MSTings” I read quite a while ago. The reality certainly seems more connected to Takashi’s other work and perhaps more interesting, too. In any case, aware this story is a “romantic comedy” I noted more than one “competitor character” being set up before the end of the first volume, which has me looking forward to the next.