![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Manga Thoughts: Maison Ikkoku 10
Having been struck by the sense when I at last read Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku that the manga was just a bit different than I’d long thought it would be got me posting about it, and I managed to keep eking out comments about each volume of Viz’s new release that followed. Then, I got to the tenth volume, with cover art that had me more or less hoping this would bring the story to a close, to go with the hope that I’d be able to say something about it as well.
It did take a moment or two to recall just what had happened at the end of the ninth volume, with Kyoko storming out of Maison Ikkoku and back to her parents over the latest misunderstanding about Godai’s real feelings. That did keep showing the prickly side of her that had got my attention in the first place, though. The only problem was that I did start wondering about smart-aleck jabs about “by this point, it’s clear the marriage won’t be happy,” but Godai did seem to acknowledge and address the issues at hand at one point. A still further misunderstanding did wrap up Godai’s own “he might end up with someone else” distraction, and in working out a resolution from that things actually got past the familiar chasteness of manga published in particular venues. Where a “love hotel” didn’t help there, homier surroundings did.
At that point, the question stretching things out did become “when will Godai manage to propose with all the distractions from everyone else at Maison Ikkoku?”, even as a comment or two crops up from minor female characters about how “marriage will get me out of the job force, and I’ll be just fine with that.” The proposal did turn up, though, and in unusual circumstances. From there, with some catching up to characters who’d appeared in previous volumes, things wrapped up at last in pleasant fashion.
The back of this volume contains a guide to when each chapter was published, which pointed out how long this manga ran for (or, from another perspective, how long things were played along). I also happened to come across a reminder of how much Takahashi’s art style had evolved over the years. It did make me conscious of how I just sort of trailed off reading through Ranma 1/2, although with Urusei Yatsura, for which I understand I now have the final volume of its new release, I consider myself constrained by wondering if I really should finish the anime adaptation before seeing what it was adapted from. There, I’m constrained by Discotek announcing it’s going to release the original TV series, which lifts the stickiness of being coy about just how I’m watching it but pushes off the remaining episodes in what I have the impression of being a long wind-down (still containing the single episode I recall having seen back in university).
It did take a moment or two to recall just what had happened at the end of the ninth volume, with Kyoko storming out of Maison Ikkoku and back to her parents over the latest misunderstanding about Godai’s real feelings. That did keep showing the prickly side of her that had got my attention in the first place, though. The only problem was that I did start wondering about smart-aleck jabs about “by this point, it’s clear the marriage won’t be happy,” but Godai did seem to acknowledge and address the issues at hand at one point. A still further misunderstanding did wrap up Godai’s own “he might end up with someone else” distraction, and in working out a resolution from that things actually got past the familiar chasteness of manga published in particular venues. Where a “love hotel” didn’t help there, homier surroundings did.
At that point, the question stretching things out did become “when will Godai manage to propose with all the distractions from everyone else at Maison Ikkoku?”, even as a comment or two crops up from minor female characters about how “marriage will get me out of the job force, and I’ll be just fine with that.” The proposal did turn up, though, and in unusual circumstances. From there, with some catching up to characters who’d appeared in previous volumes, things wrapped up at last in pleasant fashion.
The back of this volume contains a guide to when each chapter was published, which pointed out how long this manga ran for (or, from another perspective, how long things were played along). I also happened to come across a reminder of how much Takahashi’s art style had evolved over the years. It did make me conscious of how I just sort of trailed off reading through Ranma 1/2, although with Urusei Yatsura, for which I understand I now have the final volume of its new release, I consider myself constrained by wondering if I really should finish the anime adaptation before seeing what it was adapted from. There, I’m constrained by Discotek announcing it’s going to release the original TV series, which lifts the stickiness of being coy about just how I’m watching it but pushes off the remaining episodes in what I have the impression of being a long wind-down (still containing the single episode I recall having seen back in university).