HARRY POTTER TO KENJA NO ISHI (or: D.Gray-Man is actually pretty good!)

I mean, I knew D.Gray-Man was going to be fairly good, but I was expecting something like KHR/Bleach/Naruto-style 'good', where when it is actually well-done it makes you go YAAAAY but most of the time it is terrible and hilarious. But DGM is surprisingly quality! Like, it is dark but not ridiculously dark, the fights don't take forever and a day, and the fanservice is not too bad. I mean, it's there, but it mostly consists of girls wearing short skirts and being awesome, not girls getting beat up in 'attractive' ways. (Speaking of fanservice, I love that Hoshino created Tyki because she wanted to draw a handsome guy. :D ) The art is also really consistently good. (Btw, Lavi's giant size-changing hammer totally reminds me of Sun Wukong's Compliant Rod. <3)

Also: LADIES. The gender representation is pretty disproportionate—think KHR levels—but the female characters are absolutely wonderful. Road is fabulous; I wasn't sure I'd like her at first, since I usually go for the more 'girly'-looking characters, but she is creepy and kind of sadistic and I loooove her. She steals the Earl's stuff to hang out with it! She makes her uncle I think Tyki is her uncle, I'm not sure do her homework! Miranda is also super-cool! I like the way she looks with her hair down, and her issues are absolutely understandable. But Lenalee, oh Lenalee, you own my HEART. When someone runs into trouble and is about to die, you're always there to rescue them! Instant death headed for someone's face? No problem, you're already kicking it out of the way. Big giant army with a super-elite boss the likes of which no-one's ever seen before? You tell your friends they can take care of the mooks while you take this dude out. AWESOME = YOU.

I think this is the first shounen series I've read with a male main character where a girl not only gets to kick ass, she gets to outright save her dude friends. Thank you, Hoshino Katsura! *love*


I've started listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in Japanese. I don't understand too much of it, but I love the way the narrator says things—not just English things, though those are the funniest. DAAZUREI. MAKUGONAGURU-SENSEI. POTTAA. MYSTERY DESU NEE. Did you know McGonnagol uses 'watakushi'? You do now! IDK why Vernon Dursley = Dursley-shi, though. Some suffix I don't know?


I have to finish my paper tomorrow, bah. It's not so much that I'm tired of it (though I am) as that I have to put in a bunch of explanations that I usually wouldn't, not just because it mentions fanfiction but because it's about Sun Wukong. Or rather, English-language (fan)works about Sun Wukong. And I didn't go into it thinking "oh, I need to explain everything!" because I just kind of assume that people know what the hell Journey to the West is, at the level of recognizing the words 'Great Sage Equal to Heaven' if nothing else. Even if they've never heard of fanfiction in their lives, I just kind of think people know about that? I read Laurence Yep's dragon quartet when I was about eight and transitioned into anime/manga/manhwa/manhua fandom a few years later, so it's a story I've known for more than half my life and I guess I just assume that even other white people know it too. But according to my mother, that's not accurate. *sigh*

(She also said that with my writing style if I don't start connecting things better, he might start wondering where I plagiarized it from. Now that would be a lol for the ages.)

3W4DW meme to be continued tomorrow, when I have brain and am not sleep. (For those of you following along on LJ: congratulations! I have posted like four things on DW you haven't seen, perhaps one of which you might care about! Also we are having mad fun over here, come hang out and help make our comms active have lots of fun with us.)