Tennis Time

Long time no read.
While I had no chance to write any blogs, I have continued to watch anime and manga. One anime series that has kept me surprisingly hooked for a long time is "Prince of Tennis".
This started when I wanted to try out a few shonen series. I did not seriously expect much, but you never know so I thought instead of carrying a prejudice against them about with me for the rest of my life I should rather just go and read a couple. I bought the first 8 or so volumes of the manga series at ebay and started reading. Nobody was more surprised than myself that I really enjoyed it - my belly hurt so much from laughing. Prince of Tennis is hilarious. Entertaining. Exciting. Inspiring. And simply lots of fun. Later I gave up on the mangas and simply watched the anime instead - and this is a case where I seriously even prefer the anime to the manga. Sports just come across a lot better in motion.



Sports?
Well, Prince of Tennis is - don't be shocked - about Tennis. Basically it follows a middle school boy named Echizen Ryouma, who as the promising son of a former pro tennis player more or less grew up playing tennis and does not do much apart from swinging the racket back and forth. He lives with his parents, cousin and cat. And his father registered him at Seigaku Middle school, where he himself was training once. Ryouma becomes the first first-year student of the Seigaku to enter the schools team of regular players. Together as a team they want to win the national championship.
The AMV I have selected above for you gives a glimpse of the story and how the anime is made and shows some of my favourite characters

Surprisingly the anime is really mostly about tennis. There is the odd episode in between that covers a bit of personal stuff. Or the odd chibi episode. But mostly it is about two (or in case of doubles four) guys playing tennis.
Now, I have taken a class of tennis at university sports about 230 years ago. I wouldn't say that I can play, but I staggered over a court, played balls into the net or the out-area and learned the basic rules. I wasn't good, but it was fun. What is not fun - to me at least - is watching other people play tennis. I fail to see the point of watching tennis matches in TV or elsewhere. The constant plop... plop... sound and the lemming-like turning of heads to the left ... to the right ...to the left is just so ... boring. But not in an anime! Watching Ryouma and friends play tennis was exciting. Would he be able to return the smash? Was the injury too bad to continue playing? Who would win? I was really absolutely into it.

But not only the sportive excitement makes this anime a success. There's also the characters. You get to know Ryouma and his fellow team-mates very well over the time of 178 (!) episodes ( plus some specials). Each player has his own style, his own repertoire of tennis tricks, his own character. There is Ryouma. Shortie, youngest in the team, rookie. He shows no respect towards anyone, unless they earn it the hard way. He seems cold and detached, but isn't. There are his friends and team-mates Momoshiro, Kaidou, Fuji, Tezuka, Inu, Oishi, Kawamura and Kikimaru. And there are also many other teams and their numerous members - friend and foe alike.

I want to introduce you to my favourite Prince of Tennis characters.


Echizen Ryouma - the prince himself. The main hero. He's such a cheeky little punk with no respect but plenty of attitude - you just have to admire him.


Ibu Shinji - Ibu is one of Ryoumas first opponents, there is some rivalry amongst them, but also understanding. What I like about Ibu, apart from the half long black hair is mostly his character. He is an even more reserved character than Ryouma. He's also a muttering guy. Always quietly muttering some things to himself. I just love this kind of weirdness.


Sanada Genichirou - another opponent of Ryouma, but much later and the first guy to seriously crack Ryoumas cool exterior - but not for long. Another cool guy, relatively quiet, but out of self-assurance not lack there-of.


Atobe Keigo - Now HE is anything but reserved. How much so you can deduct from his favourite saying "Beware of my prowess!". Atobe comes from a unbelievably wealthy background, complete with butler bringing him his racket and everything. He's arrogant - unbelievably vain. And very entertaining.

Even my children have started to get into "Prince of Tennis" - totally ignoring the fact that they don't understand Japanese and can't read the english subtitles. My son has become a big admirer of Kikimaru Eiji - to the point of where he wanted to die his hair red and was running around with an elastoplast on his cheek. I believe that is mostly because Kikimaru plays athletic tennis with lots of daring jumps and sommersaults - to be athletic and flexible like this equals true greatness in my sons eyes.

Yaoi? Are you kidding me? This is a boys' tennis club. Plenty of young men getting sweaty together ... of course Yaoi fans have long ago claimed the Prince of Tennis guys for their perverted fantasies. There's lots of stuff out there. Fan stories. Doujinshi mangas and fanart.
Just to prove my case:

When Gods of Death get bored

Ryuk, a death god has lived so long and life in the dry world of the death gods has become boring. So he drops a death note in the human world. A death note being a notebook, which looks like a normal notebook, but if you write the name of a person in it and picture their face in your mind, the person will die. This book falls onto the human earth and into the hands of genius best student of the year - Yagami Light, son of a police officer. Light decides to cleanse the world of evil and starts to take out numerous criminals by means of the death note. Soon - and totally in line with Lights plans - the world takes notice and the governments make L, the most famous of all investigators look for "Kira" as the killer is named. L is a genius himself, but will a human who does not know of the existence of death gods and their notebooks ever get to the truth of this case? A battle of minds ensues.

Death Note, a manga and later also an anime series made furore. The story is very excitingly told with numerous twists and turns and unexpected events. The art style is excellent, the characters outstanding. And very importantly: Death Note, both the manga and the anime appeal to a wide audience. Even my husband, a man who belittles my interest has shown an interest in Death Note. For everyone who would like a first small visual impression, I found a short AMV at youtube:





I liked the story very well, even if I did not believe it completely without fail. The middle of both the mangas and the anime has a little sag in the story, where I got a bit impatient and wanted the plot to proceed faster and to "get to the point". Still, it overcame that stage and it did get to the point. It was also made in a very appealing way with good graphics.


My favourite Death Note Characters are:


L. Of course. The reasons are simple: He's a mastermind and very cute. He's outstanding and I like his naked feet and crouched way of sitting. And the look of challenge and fun in his eyes.


Mello. This one is more difficult to explain. He's a bit of a villain after all. I liked him because he seemed rebellious and difficult to handle. And because he had the most outstanding fashion sense in the series ... well, maybe after the death gods. Also in the later part of the series Mello has half of his face covered in burn scars. And he's one of those people who look better with scars than without. They add to his character, before the scars he looked like a sulky teen, with the scars he has finally grown into his own role.


Ryuk - the Death God. He's mischievious, selfish and heartless and doesn't bother to hide it. Ryuk is just fun to watch.


Mikami Teru. I know this one is really difficult to explain. Another villain. But I prefer Mikami to Yagami Light, because even if he deceives himself about the means to achieve a better world he just fell for the whole "Kira = God"-thingy. I admire him for his strict, stoical habits and his discipline. And - let's be honest - I thought he was the best looking man in the series.

Hey, most of my favourite characters are baddies!!! Hmh ... I wonder - does that say something about me?

There were also characters I hated. Most of all Amane Misa. I hated her already in the manga for her stupidity and her dumb-is-cute-attitude and her totally misplaced believe in Light. I hated her even more when I saw the anime because she had a horrible high pitched voice that I could not endure for long without getting headaches.

No matter if it is the manga or the anime, Death Note would suit almost anybody with a mind open enough to try something new.

And just to prove my point - of course there is Death Note Doujinshi yaoi, lots of yaoi fanfiction and fanart out there! Check it out:

It's not porn ... it's art!

I am still enjoying my yaoi phase and the more I read the more I know that my taste runs towards a special subgenre of yaoi - hardcore yaoi.


When I was younger I felt astounded and bewildered by the growing display of sexuality - some of it rather explicit. I saw Pasolinis "Salo or The 120 days of Sodom", a movie loosely based on the book by the Marquis de Sade with a group of friends when I was 19. I don't know if the other people in my group really were as untouched as they behaved. We were sharing a pack of Haribo Cola bottle-gums while the actors were displaying the various kinds of sexual perversions known to humankind - plus lots of violence and the joy of living under a fascit regime (you get it - this movie is kinda hard to swallow to say the least ...). Whenever I reached into my neighbors Haribo pack I was keenly aware of the fact that he was male and I was not and even more aware that I hardly knew him and couldn't even hazard a guess as to what he might be thinking. As the movie continued I tried to make out the outline of my shoepoints in the dark while the movie characters were moving on to the world of having fun with feces. I never quite enjoyed cola bottle-gums anymore after this. I tried to let my eyes wander but keep my head still, so that it wouldn't be apparent that I was looking anywhere but the big screen in front of us. I did not want to loose face to my pals - maybe they wondered why I behaved so cool and gut-hardened while they were secretly feeling just as sick as I was.

After the movie we were all moving to the only bar we could still find open for a drink and a chat and I was surprised that we actually discussed the movie. That must have been were I heard it the first time - a sentence which should feature again and again in my later life: "It's not porn - it's art!" Huh?!
The eighties and nineties (I guess other decades as well, but I wasn't as aware of it then) have served us lots of sex under the disguise of art. Mostly I think that is just an excuse for people to indulge in their primary instincts under the pretence of being cultured. This whole movement presented us with magazines like "MAX" which was solely bought to admire the newest starlets unclad bossom while pretending to be interested in the article about lifestyle, pop-music or whatever. Or the sex education shows by Annie Sprinkle. I remember a local TV broadcasting company making a life interview of the people lining up at the entrance to ask why they wanted to visit the show. Some people gave reasons like wanting to get rid of their own inhibitations or sex problems, but most people tried to hide their faces from the camera - they knew they were just in it to once compare if Annie Sprinkles organs looked the same live as they did on the videos.


Despite all that I do believe that the sex-art-movement is founded on truth.
With mangas and anime take hardcore mangas like "Under Grand Hotel" by Sadahiro Mika or "Junai Fetizm" by Kanzaki Takashi and compare that to real porn. In both you'll get to see lots of sex, including close ups, dirty language and body fluids. I like hardcore mangas. I don't like porn. The difference lies in the plot, because the plot in a porn is just a sorry excuse of stringing one explicit sex scene after the other.

Let's take "Under Grand Hotel" as an example. This is a story about two originally straight men who meet in an high-security prison in the US. Sword (he is the man candy on above pic) is a black drug dealer, convicted in three cases of murder and sentenced to 200 years of prison. He made it to shut call, which is something like the gang leader of the inmates. New in prison is Sen, a Japanese who went to University and is sentenced to 80 years of prison after killing the husband of his (female) professor with whom he had an affair. The two end up as cell mates. Sword offers Sen protection in exchange for sex. He has been in prison for a while and came to accept doing it with men because ... well, because there aren't any women around and he still wants to have sex. Sen is very reluctant, but eventually sees that there is not much choice about having your backside used for someone elses pleasure in prison - only with Sword he can at least chose who is having a go at it. And after getting to know their bodies really, really well the two eventually fall in love.
If you decide to read the manga, all of the 3 published volumes are scanlated and available for free at mangafox.com - don't get confused at the first chapter: the real story starts at chapter 2.

This manga is really explicit, it shows very graphic hard sex plus it has lots of violence as well. It's also hot - so hot, you should turn your heater down and keep a cold shower available when reading it. Still to me "it isn't porn, it's art". Because in the end the manga is not about sex - it is about love. Plus the plot involves more (like prison life, drugs, social gaps) is well made and exciting and has excellent art work and intriguing characters (plus even the uke is cute and no 15-year old, chicken breasted wimp). I would definitely list this as one of my favourite yaoi mangas, but it is nothing for the faint hearted ones out there.

Of course between black and white there is also grey. To me the manga and anime "Sensitive Pornograph" was borderline - the anime even more so than the manga. It still has plot - sometimes it even has a plot with originality and potential. But (maybe because it is a collection of short stories) the plot doesn't develop much of that potential so that it gets lost in the abyss of too many all the same sex scenes. To me that is really borderline towards being merely porn, and not art.
As a final goodie I want to let you know of this 13-page-short manga story added as an omake to the manga "Shine" by Hoshino Masami. This short story called "H na kaze no yoru" (A night that should have been perverted) is about women who never saw any porn and want to try it out. It's a cute yet strange story and feels absolutely true to life. http://www.mangafox.com/page/manga/read/2364/shine/chapter.46661/page.3/

Parallel Universe: If the world was my dream

Since I have become a manga addict, I also am trying out a few animes as side dishes. The most recent one I have watched was "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". On her first day at high school the excentric Haruhi states that she has no interest in ordinary humans (I feel with her!), but if there were any aliens, time travelers, espers or the like present, they should please come forward and meet her. The boy sitting right in front of her, Kyon, is swept away (or rather kidnapped) into her whirlwind of strange and absurd activities and all kind of odd things start happening.

This anime is so daft that its stupidity clearly is founded in genius. We see most of the story from Kyons perspective and he has a dead black resigned and cynical way of relating to the world and Haruhis ideas.
There was a moment in the anime when, Koizumi, a rumoured esper says that the whole world is nothing but Haruhis dream, which means that when she is bored (or melancholic - hence the title) or having any sort of bad feelings, she unknowingly creates closed areas in which the laws of our world are not valid any more and which can threaten the existence of the whole world. Koizumi thinks that Haruhi herself is not aware that she creates her own world around her, like aliens, time travellers and espers (himself) appearing because it was Haruhis wish in the first place.
It is not really such a new idea, I am sure every kid who like me was waiting for a sign from Krypton or secret powers to finally unfold themselves (still waiting ...) has at one point encountered the concept, that what we perceive as reality is actually NOT reality but something else ... like the dream of someone, who would then probably appear as a kind of god in that world. What was new to me was thinking that it could be your own world, no excuse me - my world and that I myself could be the dreamer. (Maybe I'm just naturally humble that this possibility never came upon me before - na, just kidding, probably I had this thought before and just forgot about it. Have you noticed btw that I really like to write in brackets?)
So imagine: I am the only real person here (Yes, this sounds about right!!!). And the world as you know it is nothing but my dream. Plus therefore of course YOU are my dream. I made you up. How do you feel about that? I actually think it could be flattering not to exist because of that one sperm hitting the one egg, but because someone actually bothered to come up with your whole concept. And every time you make a stupid mistake you can lay the blame on me.
The whole idea has one major flaw: If I am currently sleeping and this whole world is my dream ... I must be a mentally disturbed person to think up Auschwitz, Saddam Hussein and plateau shoes. I'm clearly having a nightmare here, so could some one please wake me up?!