Manga Thoughts: Maison Ikkoku 6
Feb. 21st, 2022 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerHaving managed to say something here about five (thick) volumes in a row of the new release of Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku seems something. As I took the sixth volume off my “to be read” pile at last, though, I did keep wondering whether it had all been nothing more than a “lucky streak.” There are cautions to be seen every so often about “the negative effects of having and expressing an opinion on everything.”
The fifth volume, in any case, had ended in a way that had got my attention, with not just another new character being added but a new character who’d moved into the Maison Ikkoku rooming house. With his introduction complete, though, the young student Nozomi Nikaido started being pranked by the older residents the main character Godai had lapsed into a sort of détente with. I recalled the long-formed yet vague impressions I’d started reading the manga with everyone else in Maison Ikkoku had been a “rowdier college student than Godai.” As Nikaido began pushing back and then started being called out for not quite getting what’s between Godai and the landlady Kyoko, however, I have to admit the very general question “and just how many ‘new characters’ in long-running stories have wound up in in the doghouse of ‘fandoms?’” swam into my mind. Along the way, though, I did also wonder about Nikaido somehow managing to wrap up the story of “the oblivious competitor for Godai’s attentions and complicator of Kyoko’s thoughts,” Kozue.
Another thought had occurred to me about contrasting the layabout residents of Maison Ikkoku with “period narratives over here of the hard-working citizens of Japan.” Before I could really work my way through that, the story got to Godai trying to interview for jobs, which got me remembering “envious period impressions of just how long Japanese companies would keep you employed for” even as Godai had to grapple with “not having got into the ‘right’ university.” With that, he was off to “student teaching exercises,” which had me wondering just what he was actually studying, and then things got more complicated yet.
It’s already been established Kyoko met her late husband Soichiro when she was in the very girls’ high school Godai is student-teaching at, and one of the students there takes a definite shine on him. Things go far enough with Ibuki Yagami’s scheming that I did start pondering “how different, how very different from the way things seem here and now,” but that did bring me to cautions about how easily that might become “bad-faith complaints” if not “performative offensiveness.” In any case, Ibuki stuck around until a cliffhanger volume ending of sorts even as there was a “you’re still here?” gag involving Nikaido, and the end-of-volume notes mentioned that both of those characters had names keying into a game of numbers established with the first major characters and then elaborated a bit on the employment practices implied in this volume, using the past tense.
While I didn’t say much here about the central romance of the story, I did manage to say a few things. With them said, of course, I am thinking “and maybe the seventh volume is where I’ll run dry.”
The fifth volume, in any case, had ended in a way that had got my attention, with not just another new character being added but a new character who’d moved into the Maison Ikkoku rooming house. With his introduction complete, though, the young student Nozomi Nikaido started being pranked by the older residents the main character Godai had lapsed into a sort of détente with. I recalled the long-formed yet vague impressions I’d started reading the manga with everyone else in Maison Ikkoku had been a “rowdier college student than Godai.” As Nikaido began pushing back and then started being called out for not quite getting what’s between Godai and the landlady Kyoko, however, I have to admit the very general question “and just how many ‘new characters’ in long-running stories have wound up in in the doghouse of ‘fandoms?’” swam into my mind. Along the way, though, I did also wonder about Nikaido somehow managing to wrap up the story of “the oblivious competitor for Godai’s attentions and complicator of Kyoko’s thoughts,” Kozue.
Another thought had occurred to me about contrasting the layabout residents of Maison Ikkoku with “period narratives over here of the hard-working citizens of Japan.” Before I could really work my way through that, the story got to Godai trying to interview for jobs, which got me remembering “envious period impressions of just how long Japanese companies would keep you employed for” even as Godai had to grapple with “not having got into the ‘right’ university.” With that, he was off to “student teaching exercises,” which had me wondering just what he was actually studying, and then things got more complicated yet.
It’s already been established Kyoko met her late husband Soichiro when she was in the very girls’ high school Godai is student-teaching at, and one of the students there takes a definite shine on him. Things go far enough with Ibuki Yagami’s scheming that I did start pondering “how different, how very different from the way things seem here and now,” but that did bring me to cautions about how easily that might become “bad-faith complaints” if not “performative offensiveness.” In any case, Ibuki stuck around until a cliffhanger volume ending of sorts even as there was a “you’re still here?” gag involving Nikaido, and the end-of-volume notes mentioned that both of those characters had names keying into a game of numbers established with the first major characters and then elaborated a bit on the employment practices implied in this volume, using the past tense.
While I didn’t say much here about the central romance of the story, I did manage to say a few things. With them said, of course, I am thinking “and maybe the seventh volume is where I’ll run dry.”