Forum - View topicREVIEW: Whispered Words GN 1
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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1. Aoi Hana is probably the closest that'll get to what I'm interested in, but Akira is ultimately left as a blank slate for most of the story, she never really commit (maybe in the ending which I don't quite re call). It is a very interesting situation but not quite what I'm talking about. Once again it's very close to a case where the main character is reluctant to tell his/her feeling to the person they love. I'm talking about going one step further, a situation where the MC know that the other person is not interested. 2. I think it's fairly obvious that the experience of love is different based on sexual orientation, if only because of societal pressure/prejudice. Maybe if you took two person, put them in a completely neutral environment ensure that they never even know there parent or even the concept of parent (can't know that baby come from one mom and one dad), and remove any interaction with real society, then maybe you could argue that sexual orientation doesn't change anything to love. But that would make a very strange manga (actually it's kinda close to strawberry panic which, as far as I remember, feature absolutely no male character or even the mention of male character). If you want a love story set in this world between two human being, then sexual orientation will have drastic effect. I think treating person sexes as nothing more than a cosmetic effect is seriously limiting the potential of the genre and, as I mention earlier, ignore the fact that we have different word for homosexual love story in manga where we don't have word for story involving people of certain hair color, so there already is an acceptance that love between homosexual is different than love between straight couple. 3. It's true that Ushio often get close to this situation, which is partly why I bring it up here. I think it would have been more interesting if Ushio had been the main character, especially when she was hoping to date the librarian who, if I remember right, was straight. Rather than have Sumika who's only "barrier" was that she thought she wasn't her types. I make a difference between cases where someone is in love with someone who's uninterested because of there sexes and case where someone is in love with someone who like person of a different height or hair color. Again, I'm not saying this story is bad, I'm saying it's difference to ordinary love story, which exist in the tens of thousands in the manga/anime world alone, are very small and it could aspire to more, the difference between a love manga that will maybe be lost in 10-15 year under piles and piles of similar manga/anime and one that would explore truly uncharted territory. |
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Fencedude5609
 Posts: 5088 |
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You definitely seem pretty upset that the characters didn't face enough bigotry and homophobia.
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zensunni
 Posts: 1293 |
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OK, I will grant you that societal pressure does make a difference, but the way it was originally phrased suggested something different from that. I wouldn't classify that as impacting the way the person experiences love, however, which suggests some difference in the feelings involved. It impacts ones behavior and ones openness, but not the actual emotional experience. Oh, and for a story with a bit of the concept you are looking for, I would suggest Poor Poor Lips by Hayako Gotou. It is a bit less on the serious side, being a 4-koma with a comedy emphasis, but it does have an openly gay character who falls in love with a girl who appears to be hetero. (Of course, similar to Girl Friends, the love interest has never really had a serious relationship with a man or woman, so there is no real track record to go on...)
Well, I did say "potentially". I can see it being totally amazing, or going off the rails. Not sure which direction it will go... I totally agree about the ending of Aoi Hana! I enjoyed the way the final chapter resolved things, but I would have rather seen it happen in a different way with more story and less hand waving. Whispered Words, I don't agree with. I loved the ending. Possibly more than I have loved the ending of any other manga. But, as you say, we all have our own opinions. PS. I totally agree that Girl Friends deserved an anime, and is short enough to do justice without cutting too much out of the story. It is more likely to get a live action adaptation at this point, since the manga is done, but I don't see the Japanese media doing that either. I didn't realize that there was a drama CD for Girl Friends... I will have to see if I can find a copy of it, with a translation... (PM me if you know where to find that...  )
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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You just don't understand Meiam. Your point number 2 is unacceptable because we should be treating biological gender as a cosmetic feature. Demanding more focus on dealing with bigotry is only accepting that bigotry as is it were the norm and not deviant behavior. Why are you so willing to simply accept the abuse of bigots and desire to see more of this in yuri and yaoi? It seems kinda sick to me.
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I dunno, why do people watch murder reenactment show? Holocaust documentary? The news about horrible event happening at this very moment? Horror movie? Any sort of story with violence? Drama? Sad story? Tragedy? Covering your eyes and ears and going "LALALALA NOTHING TO SEE HERE" never made anything go away. |
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誤称
Posts: 549 |
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And tired, forced drama has never made for good storytelling. And honestly, did you just compare high school romantic comedy manga to holocaust documentaries? Seriously? You're a very silly person or a terribly troll. I'm not sure which. |
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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I wish I could look past it.  It makes me very sad and frustrated since I had Whispered Words on pre-order for months so I was looking forward to it. I guess I hope One Peace Books are able to reprint it to fix it up some.
As much as I like to support manga I like in English I'm to the point that I won't pay for books published in such poor states that they should have never reached the public that way. If situations like this happened less I might have more tolerance. Instead I come across several volumes every year with multiple problems that can truly affect the reading experience. Yet, I buy 2-3 times less manga in English every month than importing. If I keep seeing these problems it makes me wonder if the English manga industry has some sort of larger problem. I feel bad for the hard working people publishing these books for whatever circumstances lead to releases that reflect badly happening over and over.  Certainly the publishing industry as a whole is a difficult business and isn't flawless. Still, people outside the manga fandom think I'm crazy to even bother with English releases at all when I've explained certain things I've encountered.
It's all just a shame. |
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fireaxe
 Posts: 503 Location: Trois-Rivieres, Canada |
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I'm going to assume you're referring to the anime adaptation of Sasameki Koto? It's kind of hard to tell since you're comparing them to Girl Friends in the next sentence, but I find it hard to believe anyone could find the final chapters of the Sasameki Koto manga disappointing. Like others have said already, the ending is nothing short of a masterpiece. |
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zensunni
Posts: 1293 |
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Incidentally, I got the 2nd volume of Whispered Words quite a few weeks ago and I found that the translation job was done considerably better than the first volume. It is a shame they dropped the ball on the first part, but volume 2 is, to a large extent, the meat of the story. It is an excellent volume!
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Polycell
 Posts: 4623 |
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They definitely seemed to have gotten everything translated, though there were plenty of places it seems they couldn't be bothered to clean. They also went and left hearts out of the text in a place where the dialogue refers to them.
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