Manga Notes: Maison Ikkoku 7
May. 20th, 2022 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerMy perpetual pondering about what to post to this journal next drifted to manga read. Not that long after watching my way through the girls’ theatrical academy anime Kageki Shojo!, I picked up the original manga I’d chased down in the midst of the adaptation. It was nice to revisit the story. However, after an extra-thick lead-in volume (having wondered just what that meant in advance of a volume with number one on its spine, a note at its back explained the story had moved from one manga magazine to another) and five regular instalments I haven’t quite reached where the anime left off even if I’ve happened on subplots and flashbacks that weren’t adapted. The next volume of manga I thought I might be able to say something about was the seventh instalment of Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku, which I’d managed to keep up some sort of commentary on.
It didn’t take long to recall where the sixth volume had left off, with Godai having done the right thing for someone in need and wrecked his chances of getting a solid job right out of university. Some assorted complications later, he does seem to have a chance at something “in software.” (That did remind me of a book I found in a book sale not that long ago called The Fifth Generation Fallacy, a period piece that started off looking at concerns over here about projects in Japan to create “fifth generation” computers only to suppose the real point of the grand plans for “artificial intelligence” was to handle the complicated Japanese writing system. The book kept insisting artificial intelligence wouldn’t be that easy, and indeed the “fifth generation” didn’t seem to come to anything. It also kept insisting it would be much more economical of computing power to use “romanizations” of the Japanese language, although so far as I can tell computing power has increased to the point where typing in Japanese words syllabically and converting to the more respectable kanji characters has become accepted.)
For all of those digressive thoughts, though, Godai’s plans fall through again, and I started to grapple with the feeling everyone was stuck in “I can’t say anything now” moods. After having passed by some criticisms of earlier volumes with the feeling “if that was what really annoyed people, the sailing will be smooth from here,” the sense a real resolution to the romantic tangles was being held off for the sake of keeping the story spinning was troubling. I might even have been a little conscious of how I’d been reading Ranma 1/2 at last until all of a sudden I stopped. There was, at least, a “maybe he could wind up with her” character being introduced alongside the “but she might wind up with him” character Coach Mitaka. The fear of dogs that’s helped keep him from following through is cropping up that much worse now, however, and that might have offered the most solid comedy for me.
After all the dodging of potential resolutions, there was at least one encounter between Godai and Kyoko at the very end of this volume. It didn’t amount to much, but by that point I was ready to take what I could get. What’ll happen in the next volume I don’t know; I might not be quite at the “sunk cost fallacy” point yet.
It didn’t take long to recall where the sixth volume had left off, with Godai having done the right thing for someone in need and wrecked his chances of getting a solid job right out of university. Some assorted complications later, he does seem to have a chance at something “in software.” (That did remind me of a book I found in a book sale not that long ago called The Fifth Generation Fallacy, a period piece that started off looking at concerns over here about projects in Japan to create “fifth generation” computers only to suppose the real point of the grand plans for “artificial intelligence” was to handle the complicated Japanese writing system. The book kept insisting artificial intelligence wouldn’t be that easy, and indeed the “fifth generation” didn’t seem to come to anything. It also kept insisting it would be much more economical of computing power to use “romanizations” of the Japanese language, although so far as I can tell computing power has increased to the point where typing in Japanese words syllabically and converting to the more respectable kanji characters has become accepted.)
For all of those digressive thoughts, though, Godai’s plans fall through again, and I started to grapple with the feeling everyone was stuck in “I can’t say anything now” moods. After having passed by some criticisms of earlier volumes with the feeling “if that was what really annoyed people, the sailing will be smooth from here,” the sense a real resolution to the romantic tangles was being held off for the sake of keeping the story spinning was troubling. I might even have been a little conscious of how I’d been reading Ranma 1/2 at last until all of a sudden I stopped. There was, at least, a “maybe he could wind up with her” character being introduced alongside the “but she might wind up with him” character Coach Mitaka. The fear of dogs that’s helped keep him from following through is cropping up that much worse now, however, and that might have offered the most solid comedy for me.
After all the dodging of potential resolutions, there was at least one encounter between Godai and Kyoko at the very end of this volume. It didn’t amount to much, but by that point I was ready to take what I could get. What’ll happen in the next volume I don’t know; I might not be quite at the “sunk cost fallacy” point yet.