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REVIEW: Gate 7 GN 1


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050795



Joined: 27 Mar 2009
Posts: 230
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:11 am Reply with quote
Quote:
An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.


They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]
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tuxedocat



Joined: 14 Dec 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:41 am Reply with quote
050795 wrote:
Quote:
An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.


They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]


That is really stupid. IMO they shouldn't have spoiled it like that on the back cover. Glad I decided not to order this title.
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Getsuga311



Joined: 06 Nov 2010
Posts: 86
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:05 am Reply with quote
tuxedocat wrote:
050795 wrote:
Quote:
An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.


They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]


That is really stupid. IMO they shouldn't have spoiled it like that on the back cover. Glad I decided not to order this title.


but is that the english copy that says that or the japanese copy? because i can believe that the translators for the english copy would do something like that by mistake, by giving Hana a gender in their heads like most people do but then writing it down on the description, totally forgetting it hasn't been confirmed one way or the other in the story yet, essentially assigning Hana a gender themselves without noticing it because they always use personal pronouns in all their other works they do the same thing here

however, if it was the japanese copy then that is just stupid, unless CLAMP didn't write the description and the publisher made a similar type of mistake
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Jaymie



Joined: 18 Jun 2009
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:01 am Reply with quote
Out of all of the things you guys could be complaining about (the lackluster CLAMP Mad Lib story being the biggest), you complain about the description at the back of the book? Who cares if it says her? Hana is obviously a girl, even if CLAMP hides her gender to throw a bone to yaoi fanfiction writers.

If you're not going to buy Gate 7, it should be because the story makes no frickin' sense. Even if they had crappy endings, xxxHolic and Tsubasa had really good starts. Gate 7's beginning is just like the confusing endings of those two series.
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050795



Joined: 27 Mar 2009
Posts: 230
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 4:29 pm Reply with quote
Quote:

but is that the english copy that says that or the japanese copy? because i can believe that the translators for the english copy would do something like that by mistake, by giving Hana a gender in their heads like most people do but then writing it down on the description, totally forgetting it hasn't been confirmed one way or the other in the story yet, essentially assigning Hana a gender themselves without noticing it because they always use personal pronouns in all their other works they do the same thing here

however, if it was the japanese copy then that is just stupid, unless CLAMP didn't write the description and the publisher made a similar type of mistake


It was the English version, I don't know what the Japanese version says. I kind of wondered if they gave it away by mistake or if it was intentional that everyone (including the reader) knows Hana's gender except the main character as a joke. Either way it didn't affect my enjoyment of the book.
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sainta



Joined: 21 Feb 2011
Posts: 989
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:12 pm Reply with quote
Talking about similarities between characters, one of the supporting ones reminds me of adult Subaru from Tokyo Babylon. Still haven't read too much, but it sometimes bothers me the lack of backgrounds in images and female characters (seriously! where are the girls? Embarassed )
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bahamut623



Joined: 23 Jun 2005
Posts: 1463
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:37 pm Reply with quote
The art definitely looks pretty, but I don't know about the story yet. I might wait for a few volumes to come out before I start reading. Shame to hear about cumbersome translations. The guy who translated this also did Tsubasa and xxxHolic, and I always found the English adaptation for those, particularly Tsubasa, to be incredibly awkward. So much so that I would actually rearrange sentences in my head as I read them. Of course, I could always chalk that up to Clamp being hard to translate in the first place. But still, clumsy translation does no favors for Clamp's convoluted storytelling.

Jaymie wrote:

If you're not going to buy Gate 7, it should be because the story makes no frickin' sense. Even if they had crappy endings, xxxHolic and Tsubasa had really good starts. Gate 7's beginning is just like the confusing endings of those two series.


I really really don't get the hate for Tsubasa's ending. The final third of the series had one too many twists, sure, but the last volume made sense of them quite well, I think. With people's reaction to it, and with the story getting more convoluted, I was expecting a horrible ending, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only good, but excellent. I truly don't see a problem with the final volume at all, but then again I'm kind of a sucker for spoiler[paradox] story elements (I'm guessing people either had a problem with that aspect, or the slightly open ending). I'm still in the early volumes of xxxHolic, but if the ending is as "crappy" as Tsubasa's, then I can't wait.
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Julia-the-Great



Joined: 14 May 2005
Posts: 328
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:41 pm Reply with quote
I'm actually surprised the review didn't bring up the fact that the story relies heavily on prior knowledge of Japanese historical figures. That was the main reason I had so much trouble getting into Gate 7. Imagine for a moment there was an American series about William Henry Harrison, Betty Ross, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Sacagawea, and Teddy Roosevelt all living together in modern times. As Americans, we've at least heard of these people, but it's not going to mean the same thing to someone living in another country who hasn't studied American History. I found Gate 7 inaccessible in part because even though I've heard the names of a lot of the characters, I don't really know anything about them, and they're not presented in story in a way that allows me to learn about them without extensive notes on the side.

They also inexplicably decided to introduce a ton of characters all at once before I had any kind of a chance to learn who was who. So, yeah, considering I was a CLAMP fan? Kind of disappointed with this.

bahamut623 wrote:

I really really don't get the hate for Tsubasa's ending. The final third of the series had one too many twists, sure, but the last volume made sense of them quite well, I think. With people's reaction to it, and with the story getting more convoluted, I was expecting a horrible ending, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only good, but excellent. I truly don't see a problem with the final volume at all, but then again I'm kind of a sucker for spoiler[paradox] story elements (I'm guessing people either had a problem with that aspect, or the slightly open ending). I'm still in the early volumes of xxxHolic, but if the ending is as "crappy" as Tsubasa's, then I can't wait.

Take it from someone who actually liked the ending of Tsubasa, xxxHolic's ending sucked for an entirely different reason. Where Tsubasa's final arc at least had a pretty good lead-up to an ending, xxxHolic just kind of peters out and doesn't so much end as it just stops. A total whimper that resolves pretty much nothing at all. And then there's the double whammy of realizing spoiler[every character you ever cared about besides Watanuki is dead] and you have an ending ripe to tick off fans.
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sainta



Joined: 21 Feb 2011
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:54 pm Reply with quote
Julia-the-Great wrote:
I'm actually surprised the review didn't bring up the fact that the story relies heavily on prior knowledge of Japanese historical figures. That was the main reason I had so much trouble getting into Gate 7. Imagine for a moment there was an American series about William Henry Harrison, Betty Ross, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Sacagawea, and Teddy Roosevelt all living together in modern times. As Americans, we've at least heard of these people, but it's not going to mean the same thing to someone living in another country who hasn't studied American History. I found Gate 7 inaccessible in part because even though I've heard the names of a lot of the characters, I don't really know anything about them, and they're not presented in story in a way that allows me to learn about them without extensive notes on the side.

They also inexplicably decided to introduce a ton of characters all at once before I had any kind of a chance to learn who was who. So, yeah, considering I was a CLAMP fan? Kind of disappointed with this.

bahamut623 wrote:

I really really don't get the hate for Tsubasa's ending. The final third of the series had one too many twists, sure, but the last volume made sense of them quite well, I think. With people's reaction to it, and with the story getting more convoluted, I was expecting a horrible ending, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only good, but excellent. I truly don't see a problem with the final volume at all, but then again I'm kind of a sucker for spoiler[paradox] story elements (I'm guessing people either had a problem with that aspect, or the slightly open ending). I'm still in the early volumes of xxxHolic, but if the ending is as "crappy" as Tsubasa's, then I can't wait.

Take it from someone who actually liked the ending of Tsubasa, xxxHolic's ending sucked for an entirely different reason. Where Tsubasa's final arc at least had a pretty good lead-up to an ending, xxxHolic just kind of peters out and doesn't so much end as it just stops. A total whimper that resolves pretty much nothing at all. And then there's the double whammy of realizing spoiler[every character you ever cared about besides Watanuki is dead] and you have an ending ripe to tick off fans.


I really couldn't agree more with you Julia-the-Great. Tsubasa's ending left only one mystery spoiler[(Fei-Wang's creator)] which was kind of obvious and the protagonists' fates were acceptable spoiler[although they don't explain what the original Sakura saw in her dream.]. xxxHolic spoiler[just skipped anything important that might have happened with ]Watanuki the fact that they never showed Himawari in Ro. Who created the shop? What happened with Mokona and Watanuki's real name still remain unknown.[/spoiler]
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:22 am Reply with quote
I hope the inside drawings are a lot better than that cover drawing. That looks like something Tim Burton had drawn to me.
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jyuichi



Joined: 26 Jun 2009
Posts: 125
PostPosted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 4:22 am Reply with quote
tuxedocat wrote:
050795 wrote:
Quote:
An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.


They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]


That is really stupid. IMO they shouldn't have spoiled it like that on the back cover. Glad I decided not to order this title.


Back-copy is often handled by marketers. You can't even be sure they read the book in question, rest assured they didn't read ahead and ruin it for you.

If the Japanese book had back text at all (they usually only have a few lines on the obi band) for the reasons given in the review, gender pronouns wouldn't have been in it.
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wyntre_rose



Joined: 16 Aug 2009
Posts: 111
PostPosted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 11:18 am Reply with quote
For the moment, I am firmly in the camp of "Oh, geez, CLAMP, have you ladies run out of story ideas? Come on, we've seen this already!" But...it's early days yet, and they've certainly taken me by surprise before. I'm a big CLAMP fan and I have read just about anything they've done that I can get my hands on, in English or Japanese (has anyone ever read Rex? It's adorable, but seems to be one of the few CLAMP stories that never got a legal English translation.) so I'm willing to wait a little before I make an official judgement on Gate 7. In the meantime, it's very pretty! And Watanuki is still my favorite CLAMP protagonist, so if there was any main character they were going to clone (HA!) and put in another series, I'm glad it was one like him.

The only thing that is really bothering me at the moment is his apparent crush on Hana. Sure, there've been love stories in the CLAMP-verse before where love has conquered a huge age gap, but usually the younger party of the couple is an adult in a child's body (the little girl in CCS in love with her teacher come immediately to mind). Or is at least a teenager. Hana strikes me as a really pretty, Japanese version of Bam-Bam. lol. Strong, huge appetite, speaks - and at the moment, seems to think - like a toddler (which could be the fault of the translation, of course) just a little taller and with prettier costumes. Granted, it's been a while since I've seen the Flintstones, so it's very possible I'm remembering Bam-Bam wrong. She was the first thing to come to mind, though.

Then again, the same thing bothered me initially about Honey and Clover, and I got over it and grew to love it.
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Konopan



Joined: 06 Oct 2011
Posts: 396
PostPosted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 12:09 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
They then feed him noodles

How often does cannibalism come up in a Clamp manga?
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Mohawk52



Joined: 16 Oct 2003
Posts: 8202
Location: England, UK
PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:06 am Reply with quote
jyuichi wrote:
If the Japanese book had back text at all (they usually only have a few lines on the obi band) for the reasons given in the review, gender pronouns wouldn't have been in it.
Yeah, but how many Japanese men have the name Hana as a given name? It would be like a boy named Susan. Wink
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 8:37 am Reply with quote
Julia-the-Great wrote:
I'm actually surprised the review didn't bring up the fact that the story relies heavily on prior knowledge of Japanese historical figures.


I did mention it briefly, but I probably should have given it more space. It is a definite detraction.

Mohawk52 wrote:
Yeah, but how many Japanese men have the name Hana as a given name?


Excellent point! Of course, one of the other guys is named Sakura, so... Laughing

Wyntre_Rose wrote:
has anyone ever read Rex?


I love Rex! Actually, as I was reading this one, I was thinking that that would have been a better choice to bring over. Very Happy
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