Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Ceres: Celestial Legend
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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It's funny (to me) that you mention these three series together, because I always thought of Ceres as a sort of failed magical girl story, where the heroine doesn't grasp what's really important and others suffer/die because of it. (Wow, reliving my MA dissertation here.  ) Aya gets so caught up in her own problems that she fails to see the bigger picture and the roles of others in her story. Because of this, spoiler[other celestial maidens die, her brother dies,] and she essentially ends up spoiler[barefoot and pregnant] at the story's conclusion. Where a successful magical girl is willing to sacrifice to save everyone, Aya fails in that she can't do that.
If anyone's interested in this, or wants to refute me utterly, I'll dig up my thesis and see what actual points I made, with quotes and everything. 
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I just listed them to show how different Ceres was from the typical shoujo norm. The thing with Ceres though is I don't really consider it the typical magical girl category. If anything, Ceres is sort of an anti-hero, and maybe even a type of monster. She's destroying people obviously evil, but she's also affecting people in the grey in her quest for revenge, and cares very little for anything outside of her female decedents. The appeal to Ceres for me was the use of world-wide mythology, and the whole grit and shock of Aya's world. From the get go I was hooked from volume 1: Instead of the typical, loving family heroines usually have with shoujo manga, Aya finds out that what she thought was a loving family is all out to kill her. It's a story of redemption and forgiveness, not love and justice. It isn't a happy world where everything always ends well in the end; It's gritty, it's heartbreaking, and just all out a fun read. |
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Anime_Rapture
 Posts: 33 Location: Madison, WI |
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Oh man, I picked this up in my local library years ago. They only had the 1st four manga in the left to right format. After finishing those volumes, I had to buy the next ones. Though it was only half published at that point.
To this day it still remains one of my favorite manga, though I didn't really like the anime. I remember thinking that the art in Ayashi no Ceres was fantastic back then. I even have the art book. Some of her newer series, like Absolute Boyfriend which I read when it ran through Shojo Beat, seem too clean with it's artwork, not to mention that I didn't like Absolute Boyfriend very much. I never finished collecting and reading the FY manga, but I did watch the anime, which I liked just fine. Someday I will finish my collection and continue FY:Genbu Kaiden. Watase is still one of my favorite mangaka. |
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_Emi_
 Posts: 498 Location: Langjökull |
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Upon first hearing about this series, I figured it would probably be about as deep as FY was. It seems I was wrong. I blame it on Aya and Toya looking like Miaka and Tamahome and reading a rather generic plot summary. I guess I'll have to move this up my insanely looooooong manga list even though I spoiled myself on the story.
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Youkai Warrior
 Posts: 505 Location: Sarayashiki |
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Cere: Celestial Legend actually sounds interesting. If I ever find the manga someday, I might give it a go.
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SaiyenGirl
 Posts: 17 Location: PA |
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Haha, I KNEW I always loved Ceres for good reason. I haven't read the whole of the manga, but I do have the anime dvds. I'll have to definitely find the manga now.
LOVED this article, I agree. Surprisingly, I never looked at the story in that way before and it makes me respect Watase a lot more than I have in the past. Ceres is definitely her best so far (Genbun Kaiden is close, but not completely up to the same level as Ceres.) |
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BrightxRingxFirefly
 Posts: 156 Location: Kentucky, US |
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I'm definitely going to check out this series now. I remember seeing ads for it several years ago, but I never would have guessed it would be like the article describes; I just thought it would be a series of "typical" shojo themes. Series that deal with gender politics are quite interesting to me, if not all that common (aside from many shojo series being accused of actively promoting sexism, but I'm referring to the actual themes of the stories here).
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I absolutely agree with you. It was that anti-hero quality that interested me and made me use it in my paper. I saw it as turning the traditional magical-girl-shoujo formula on its head, which I think is sort of what you're saying too. The story struck me with its bleakness. There are no happy endings here. The world mythology aspect also appealed to me. It joins "Tears to Tiara" as one of the few manga/anime/jrpgs to use the selkie myth, one of my personal favorites! But more importantly (?) it presents an interesting take on the animal bride tale type. Those stories, as opposed to the animal bridegroom rarely end well in their originals, though freedom is usually the motivator for the bride to leave, not vengeance. Watase's take makes a bit more sense to me - I mean, if some guy stole your skin/robe or let you pluck yourself bald to make him magic sailcloth, would you feel all warm and fuzzy towards him? 
As a side note, one of the most recent Yen Pluses had a "Time and Again" story that used the animal bride motif - that one about the snake. Much less grim than Ceres, but still pretty dark.[/i] |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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@Princess_Irene: Now I'm really curious about your dissertation. What was it about, and what other anime or manga did you cite in it?
I was not familiar with the selkie myth when I first tried to read Ceres, and had no clue what the author was talking about when she porporsed that cultures all over the world had a similar story to the Celtic Maiden. Now that I've seen the myth reinterpretted in a few different forms of fiction (including the shojo anime "Fairy Doctor") I'm more familiar with it. Curious: what would your take on Princess Tutu be? Is it yet another (incredibly unique) take on the myth since it's inspired by Swan Lake, or something completely different? |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Agent35:
The premise of my dissertation was that magical girl stories are a form of YA and middle grade literature to help girls feel empowered. The heroines transform and fight evil, but ultimately they end being secure teens or adults, having overcome the trials of adolescence. It sounds kind of weird now that I'm just summarizing it, actually.  But basically the idea was that there was a lot more to be gained from reading Sailor Moon than Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. The major works that I used were Sailor Moon, Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne, Ceres, and Shadow Lady, but Pretear and Tutu made it in as well. I also used the early picture scroll The Tale of Gisho and Gangyo and Minako Oba's short story "Cry of the Mountain Witch," and yamamba myths in general. It was a blast to write.
As far as my thoughts on Tutu, it's one of my favorite stories, both as a plain ol' anime and as a reimagining of the Swan Lake story. I especially like the Odette/Odile relationship (Ahiru/Rue). What made it such an interesting retelling was the way it wasn't afraid to mix source materials - you had the Swan Lake story, but also elements of The Nutcracker and even The Arabian Nights. In my thesis what I cited as most significant was the moment in the last episode when spoiler[Ahiru starts dancing even though she can no longer transform, declaring that "we write our own stories."] It's things like that, I think, that truly mark Aya out as a failed magical girl. Edit: Swan Maidens, which are similar to Selkie stories, are Aarne-Thompson Tale Type 400:http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/swan.html. The Ceres story is there. And because I'm a big dork, I think it's interesting to mention that the infamous Princess Kaguya story (Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) can be found in other cultures as AT-tale type 703, "The Snow Maiden." (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0703.html) |
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jgreen
 Posts: 1325 Location: St. Louis, MO |
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Interesting article. Watase has always been one of those creators that I was lukewarm about, and I gave this one a pass because it sounded fairly generic. Sounds like I was way off in that regard...this sounds right up my alley, and I'll have to give it a shot some time.
That said, I'm surprised by all the hatred for Watase's art. She's one of the few manga artists that I thought has really developed well...her "earliest and crudest" art left me cold, but I think Imadoki! is one of the sharpest looking romantic comedies I've read. |
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qollocust
 Posts: 182 Location: Philadelphia |
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Ayashi no Ceres was my favorite series when I was younger. I was a huge FY fan so naturally I checked out this series when it came out. I think I was around 16 when it was released which is just about the right age to read/watch a series like this. I loved everything about it - the characters, the story, the romance, the comedy, the not so happy ending - but I could never get my friends to appreciate it as much as I did.
It's funny, I was just talking about this series with some of my friends this weekend and mentioned how I need to revisit it. I think it may move further up my list of series now. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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I'm coming to this a little late, but I'm excited to see all the discussion of fairytales and sex/sexism in manga that this has led to. I hope I didn't make Ceres seem "dry" or polemical in my review, since at its heart it's a psychic action/horror romance story, not some thesis on gender roles. But it does address some deep (and, I think, personal to Watase) themes while also delivering the motorcycle chases, shirtless men and psychic explosions.
On a tangential note, one of my favorite books on women's issues in fiction and art (at least in the West, and really old stuff) is Bram Djikstra's "Idols of Perversity" (http://www.amazon.com/Idols-Perversity-Fin-Siècle-Paperbacks/dp/0195056523). You have to take the author's blanket condemnation of the art he reproduces with a grain of salt, but the imagery itself is amazing and frequently very disturbing even without Djikstra telling us just why it's sexist and in what way. |
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Aura Ichadora
 Posts: 2284 Location: In front of my computer |
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I read this for the first (and only time, to that extent) in high school when a friend and I did a "Watase trade" - she introduced me to Ceres while I introduced her to what I had of Absolute Boyfriend and we both discussed what we liked and disliked about both series and Watase's works in general.
Despite my awkwardness with reading some parts of the series during my classes, overall I found it to be enjoyable, albeit confusing a few times during the story, and probably would re-read it again another time. It did have beautiful artwork, but since at the time I was reading Absolute Boyfriend, I couldn't help but make so many character comparisons between the two stories (Aya and Riiko looked almost exactly alike you'd think Watase just carbon-copied Aya's face every time she was drawing Riiko IMO). Then again, this may just be Watase's style - I haven't read many of her other stories outside of a couple chapters of Arata so I don't have anything else I can really compare it to. |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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My favorite Watase artwork is actually her earliest, like the very beginning of Fushigi Yugi. That's when her work looks the most consistent, like she's actually drawing most of it herself. In her later work, starting even with the middle volumes of Fushigi Yugi (the Amazon women story arc -- bleagh!), the faces start to look tacked onto the bodies, like they were drawn by different people. |
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