Saying that this epilogue is "better" than last week's ending is like saying that Star Wars Episode II is "better" than Episode I. Trufax, yes, but an utterly meaningless comparison as well. Shit is still shit, even though it may seem preferable when compared to runny storytelling diarrhea. At the end of the day, it's still shit.

Right, so let's recap.

( Baby, you look hawt in that silly, silly hat. )

So like, I just heard that CLAMP got nominated for a Lulu award. I think they definitely deserve a spot in Lulu's Hall of Fame, if not for Cardcaptor Sakura alone, then at least for their phenomenal commercial success. However, I reeeaaaaally wish that the timing were different, as it's hard for me to root for CLAMP getting such an award at a time when they're basically at a creative nadir. It's kind of like Martin Scorsese getting his Best Director win for The Aviator. That movie didn't deserve the recognition, but Scorsese certainly did. The same could be said for CLAMP and the Lulus right now. Tsubasa is a pile of shit, xxxHolic is far from their best work, and Kobato is just silly fanpandering layered on top of silly fanpandering. At least Kobato is fun to read, though. Not like Tsubasa, which in its final hundred chapters wasn't fun to read at all. It was downright painful to read, actually. The final hundred chapters of Tsubasa are practically a literary colonoscopy.

Oh well. Here's hoping that CLAMP's next work will be better.

Edited to add: Once again, the master list of plot holes and critiques is here. Like, only one minor plot hole was actually resolved in this epilogue. Wow. That's pretty bad. I mean, wow.

Edited again: This is the most reasonable and intelligent defense of the series that I've seen yet. And of course, I waded in and disagreed. (*slaps self on wrist*)

Edit the third: Best. Summary. Ever. Seriously.

All right.

Okay.

I have never, ever read an ending to anything - ever - that more clearly screamed of the writers just throwing up their hands and giving up. It's clear that CLAMP doesn't give a flying fuck about this series any more, and they just wanted to end it already, so end it they did. It's really their own damn fault for writing themselves into a corner the moment that they started the whole Oedipal time travel plot twist, though. There was never going to be any way to resolve that without completely fucking over the storyline, so they just... well, didn't. They didn't really resolve anything. They just stopped.

( And HOW. )

Edited to add: Epilogue recap is GO. Have any of the plot holes listed above been addressed in the epilogue? The answer is: No, not really. But that's no surprise.

Clearly Noah has embraced the Dartboard Method of Supervillainy here.



See, now this is what happens when your archvillains do stupid contradictory shit that makes no sense.

Maybe he was tutored by Fei Wong Reed? I dunno. But here we go, another chapter of Soul Eater.

( WHERE ARE MY FEATHERS, DOUCHEBAG?!?! )

If you don't yet own a copy of CLAMP's Clover, now is a great time to get one. In case anyone needed a reminder of what CLAMP is really capable of, when they're not, you know, writing Tsubasa.

Next, a scathing takedown of Michelle Bachmann and the Minnesota press that helped her get elected, in comic book form. I don't care what side of the political spectrum you fall on, Michelle Bachman is crazy in a terrifying way. And she doesn't care what side of the political spectrum you fall on, either: Bachmann was accusing a Republican-controlled Congress AND President Bush of being "Anti-American Marxists" even before Obama and the Democrats took over.

Okay, so, the Tsubasa ch.201 spoiler has been leaked all over the internet, thanks to a sneaky Kodansha employee. The actual chapter does not come out until Wednesday morning, but for those of you dying to know....

( I cannot be the only person who predicted this. I mean, DUH. )

Rrrright. End of spoiler. Moving on. So, speaking of spoilers! Spoiler Space #2 is looking for submissions! Here is the shameless promotional copy-n-paste:

In case you haven't yet seen it, SPOILER SPACE, Girl-Wonder.org's brand spankin' new bi-monthly 'zine is now up at http://www.girl-wonder.org/webzine. Wish you were among the ranks of the enviable and famous people who got to be published? Guess what...

We're looking for even more submissions for SPOILER SPACE'S second issue, due out December 1st.

Written submissions can cover a range of topics discussing the intersection between race, gender, religion, ableism and sexuality with comic books and comic book characters. We will also accept for consideration short fanfiction, reviews, and other commentary on comics and comic books. ALL written submissions must be 1500 words or less.

Graphical submissions can include cover or interior artwork, comic book pages, and fanart.

Please include with all submissions the name you would like to be published under (real name or Internet handle), an email address that can be used to contact you in the event of acceptance, and a brief 1-2 sentence biography written in the third-person. ALL SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE NOVEMBER 15TH, MIDNIGHT at jenn@reappropriate.com, or through the SPOILER SPACE website (http://www.girl-wonder.org/webzine).

Caption Contest
Also, take part in our regular caption contest feature. Send me your caption to this panel (http://www.reappropriate.com/comic/2008-10-caption.jpg) before November 15th, midnight, and be entered into the contest to win a fabulous basket of Girl-Wonder.org goodies. All caption contest entries will be put to a vote on the Girl-Wonder.org Forum, and the entry that earns the most votes is the winner!

Subbbbbmmmmmmmmiiiiiiiittttttttt! You know you want to.

One more thing.

This is the most amazing thing I've seen in a long while.

Okay, um... You know how sometimes I go all feminist-ranty about the comics I read, and sometimes I go all bad-writing-ranty about Tsubasa, and normally I try to keep the two separate, but... This week, I can't. I just can't. Because there's a big huge HELLO STRAW, MEET CAMEL'S BACK moment right in the beginning of this chapter, and just... well. Er. You've been warned.

Spoilers and venomous spite, behind the cut.

( This is some serious bullshit, right here. )

A week late, but hey, I was on vacation. ( In this chapter... )

Aaaaaand that's it for chapter 191. In tiny text at the bottom of the last page, CLAMP announces that they're taking a five-week hiatus for "research" purposes. I'm sure that "research" is probably code for "desperately concocting some sort of plan to write ourselves out of all of these irreconcilable plot holes." But! Come volume 31 of Shounen Ace, there will be a super-sized chapter complete with color illustrations! Hooray!

Okay, now for something completely unrelated: This looks really awesome. American gag doujinshi! Who knew?

Okay, so. The post that I HAD planned for tonight is clearly not going to happen, due to the fact that megami-sama.net's server is throwing a temper tantrum and refusing to let me upload anything. So I'm going to skip ahead of myself a bit, and throw up one of the posts that I was planning on doing toward the end of the week. Or half-week. Whatever.

Anyway, ladykleo posted this video of Maria and Orihime serenading each other, in the comments of the previous post:



And my first thought when I saw that video was be still, my little femmeslashy heart!

Pairings in the Sakura Taisen fandom are a tricky beast. Because of the choose-your-own-romance nature of the games, it's up to each game player to pair up Shinjiro and Ichiro with one of a dozen possible love interests. However, because the animated adaptations have to pick a side, so to speak, exactly two pairings become canonized in the anime Sakura Taisen universe: Ichiro/Sakura and Shinjiro/Gemini. (Ichiro/Erica is also hinted at in the anime, but ultimately can never be anything more than a platonic love, because SHE'S A NUN.)

But in the anime, there's a lot more going on pairing-wise than just what the two token males are interested in. I mean, I can't have been the only person who was picking up Maria/Kanna and Iris/Reni subtext while watching the anime, right? Not to mention Lobelia/Glycine subtext, which comes across not-so-subtley in the fourth OAV series.

And even without any canonical subtext to support them, Sakura Taisen is rife with potential femmeslash pairings. I mean, the story basically centers around a group of girls enlisted in the military who live and work together... There are plenty of buddy-buddy relationships in the series that it wouldn't require too much of a stretch to see blossoming into something deeper. And there are already all of the requisite pairing fetish dynamics in place for many of the characters: butch/femme, sempai/kohai, commander/subordinate, love-hate rivalries, hurt/comfort, and more.

So, open thread time. What are your favorite Sakura Taisen femmeslash pairings?

I'll get the ball rolling. I vote for:
1. Reni/Iris. They've kind of got that Cardcaptor Sakura Sakura/Tomoyo dynamic going, anyway.
2. Lobelia/anybody. I wouldn't put it past her to seduce any of the other characters just to demonstrate that she could.
3. Subaru/anybody. For the same reasons.
4. Maria/Kanna. I think that they have a great dynamic together, and are the perfect foils for each other. Plus I like the way that a Maria/Kanna pairing would subvert the butch/femme dynamic, since they're both the resident "butches" of their troupe.
5. Kanna/Li. This pairing has no basis in canon whatsoever, but tell me that it wouldn't be cute as heck.

Thoughts?

ETA: I can't believe I forgot this one: Sagitta/Gemini. Oh yeah, baby.

Psalm of Planets Eureka Seven is brilliant. I can't believe that I missed this series the first time around. (Well, "the first time around" was when I was still in college and had no life outside of research and occassional bouts of eating and sleeping, so I guess I can believe that I missed it.) A lovely person in Iida lent me his DVDs and I've been marathoning it for the past week.

For those of you unfamiliar... Eureka Seven is basically Solaris. Yes, that's pretty much it. It's Solaris right down to the last ethical what-if, only instead of a bleak ending Eureka Seven ends in a burst of beautiful hopefulness. Unlike Solaris, however, there are very dark parts wherein the alien entity in question defends itself from human intrusion in violent and quite frankly absolutely horrifying ways. Oh yes, and there are also surfboarding giant robots. And there are references to Dostoevsky and Sir James George Frazer (Golden Bough FTW) that I am ashamed to admit I did NOT understand, and that I had to resort to fansubs and Google and Wikipedia before I "got" them. Yes, I am a failure as a college-educated upper-middle-class white person. I am not literate enough to appreciate the depth of this anime series about surfboarding giant robots! Woe.

Also, the fourth opening song is the best use of "Amazing Grace" in Japanese dance-pop EVER.

Eureka Seven is interesting to watch because it's told through the eyes of its young hero, Renton. Renton is, of course, an immature and wanky teenage boy. At the beginning of the series he thinks that he's setting off on some big happy adventure with a bunch of lovable counter-culture rogues who are only interested in having fun. (This is so, so wrong.) Renton thinks that when he and Eureka defeat the "bad robots" this is a cause for happy swelling music and sparkly uplifting fun-ness. (And indeed, it is, at the beginning of the series, where the narrative voice of the series itself is basically Renton's point of view.) Only later does Renton realize that fighting the "bad robots" and sticking it to the man means, you know, killing people. Nobody ever hid this fact from Renton, he was just too much of, well, a dumb kid to realize it. Eureka Seven is essentially a coming-of-age story about both Renton and Eureka, but unlike so many other anime that attempt to be heartfelt coming-of-age stories involving kids and giant robots, Eureka Seven doesn't suck. It's painful to watch at times, especially when Eureka and Renton are thrust into ugly situations in which there is no clear or good answer. Overall, though, the characterization and the writing of these two characters is just so damn good. Really, truly beautiful. The supporting cast is great too, and the villains (particularly Dewey and Anemone) are truly memorable. This is a fantastic series.

Speaking of giant robots... I don't care if Code Geass is a rip-off of everything under the sun, it's simply more fun and entertaining than half of the things that it's ripped off. Most of its entertainment value comes from its badness, however. Which is always fun. The premise and half of the character designs are play-by-play Gundam Seed. There's also shades of Death Note (dissatistified genius boy suddenly granted god-like powers and doing horribly unspeakable things in the name of "justice") and even Suzumiya Haruhi (particularly the pervy fangirl student council president who thinks it's a good idea to have everyone come to school in swimsuits). The character designs are vintage CLAMP, right down to the girl who is blind and thus is always drawn with her eyes closed. Because, you know, blind people always keep their eyes closed. Lloyd looks so much like Yukito from Cardcaptor Sakura that I keep thinking I'm watching an AU version of Yukito who is an insane evil genius that cackles a lot and refers to human pilots as "parts" for his giant robots. Oh yeah, and the hilarious SUBTLE OVERTONES OF JAPANESE JINGOISIM which are totally SUBTLE. You know, the way that the political message in Marvel's Civil War is totally two-sided and SUBTLE.

Karen should be an interesting lead female character. Unfortunately, for some reason, I find her as boring as toast.

One thing I will praise Code Geass for, however: I believe that this is the first anime series I have ever seen that suceeds in making a beautiful play on words in English. (The play on words in question would be "Knightmare.") The linguist within me squees with delight. And I know that this is cheesy and manipulative, but I actually like how every episode ends with a DUN DUN DUN! cliffhanger. At least it makes me actually want to see the next episode.