la_vie_noire (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
la_vie_noire) wrote2010-04-08 10:45 pm
la_vie_noire) wrote2010-04-08 10:45 pm
Entry tags:
I need icons of this
My Amazon copies (yeah, I still buy from them, they are the less expensive) had stickers with "Eisner Award Nominee" on them. More awards for Oooku to come, and it so deserves it Apparently it was nominated back in 2008.
I read the first chapter on Mangafox and wasn't that seduced. It was good, but I did not understand the hype. Now? I don't think the hype makes it justice. It's really one of the best manga written until now. Just for the way it address the themes of its plot and the complexity of the relationships.
The first story was Mizuno's, which served to set the universe. A first glimpse of how complicated the things inside the Oooku are. Mizuno's point of view, and I wasn't that excited about him. Until Yoshimune appeared and blown me away.
Oh God, Yoshimune. Shogun and practicality embodied. The first thing she did when she saw the men of her Chamber was internally criticize their attires because they were so luxurious! They were such lost of resources! But she didn't even noticed that Mizuno's was made with silver thread (boy if she had) because she really had not eye for those things. I so feel her.
Yoshimune and Hisamichi were always emotionally, morally (debatable the latter) and politically (of course) superior to all the men around them. The bed scene with Mizuno was fascinating in its power dynamics. Yoshimune was older, always in control and her body wasn't even paid attention to due to the power imbalance. Mizuno cried his loved-one name in her arms. After, she happy was to give him his freedom to marry the woman he loved. I don't deny I enjoyed seeing her not wanting to pursue romantic relationships with any of the men she slept with.
And how she slept around! Ahahaha, that was amazing. She wanted all the young and handsome men away of the chamber and kept the others because "they were better in the Ooku." And how she just... approached them when she wanted sex. Boy, I want icons of those scenes. (And boy, I'm not saying that the whole thing about which men can be free and which can't, and why, wasn't extremely problematic, but I also don't think the series was particularly approving. Showing how she does things in a situation where she has all the power.)
In Yoshimune's point of view is made obvious that we really were just shown a surface of the political situation's complexity. Yoshimune had no idea why westerners thought of women as "weaker and more fragile" and so we know no one else in Japan would get it either. The "nothing that happens inside The Chambers can come out" had a reason after all. The Oooku guards the Nation's secrets.
Yoshimune looked for answers because some things were illogical for her. There were still customs and traditions that didn't make sense in a women-dominated Nation.
She discovered that Iemitsu, the celebrated third Tokugawa Shogun, was really a man. And the creator of the Chamber, Reverend Kasuga, was a woman. A shock for her.
The third story was set 80 years before the previous ones, back when the pox started. It explained how the male-dominated country was transformed into a female-dominated one. The political side of this was amazing and extremely complex.
Kasuga was Iemitsu's wet nurse and foster mother, a brilliant, ambitious, and cruel woman with no noble blood whatsoever, but who machinated an intricate plan to hide Iemitsu's death by the red pox and, that way, maintain Tokugawa's power. She did horrible things, avoided a crisis and created a new government smoothly, all that just playing the part of the Shogun's wet nurse. Things are more complex than we like to think. We also get to focus on her victims, and how even the "Shogun" was all but a puppet in her play.
The "Shogun" in this play wasMurasaki Chie (I got confused here since her name was mentioned in only one scene: after she was compared with Lady Murasaki, on a flashback of Chie as a child), a damaged young woman, Iemitsu's child with a woman he raped because he was a misogynist bastard. Chie was abducted and traumatized by Kasuga, who also "protected" Chie and gave her everything she wanted. No one could touch her, yet she couldn't do anything. Powerless while being at the top of the Nation, clever and conscious of her situation, Chie abused the ones under her to feel she had something. When she was raped, she killed her own rapist with her bare hands. She denied the rape to Kasuga, Chie said that "she wanted to had her way with him, he was clumsy and hurt her so she killed him."
There is also Gyokuei, the boy who killed the cute innocent cat loved by the Shogun because it was the only way to get revenge on his rapist: blaming him for the death.
Arikoto, the POV character. Well, he was really inhuman in his perfectness, but also a gender-reversed version of a type of character we always see: the pure, kind, unconditional, nurturing, self-sacrificing martyr one. He was even tainted by sex, something we see all the women in the series are not; knowing young Chie had a daughter wasn't something we had to think twice about. Arikoto having sex with a woman was blatantly his turning-down point.
The final scene of the second volume: Arikoto dressed as a woman, and Chie in her Shogun clothes, he telling her she is his master. Both damaged beyond repair while trying to comfort themselves.
The splash pages (which I suppose were originally in color) of both Yashimune with Mizuno, and Chie with Arikoto speak volumes on reversed gendered power dynamics.
Yoshinaga knows her shit. Boy, she does. And everything is tied so well and flows very smoothly.
Heck, I don't think the manga makes me feel completely comfortable, it's mostly a tale of reversed gender dynamics, there is a lot of abuse of power going on. I can't say I know the story's take on all of this. There are too many layers, and the tale it tells is a really complex one, it's really up to interpretation. Something that really bothered me, though, was how misogynist, gay Iemitsu's liking for only men was caused (as stated by him) by both Kasuga domineering ways and his biological mother hate for him. The trope that says gay men are "made" due to bad experience with women, specially mothers.
I read the first chapter on Mangafox and wasn't that seduced. It was good, but I did not understand the hype. Now? I don't think the hype makes it justice. It's really one of the best manga written until now. Just for the way it address the themes of its plot and the complexity of the relationships.
The first story was Mizuno's, which served to set the universe. A first glimpse of how complicated the things inside the Oooku are. Mizuno's point of view, and I wasn't that excited about him. Until Yoshimune appeared and blown me away.
Oh God, Yoshimune. Shogun and practicality embodied. The first thing she did when she saw the men of her Chamber was internally criticize their attires because they were so luxurious! They were such lost of resources! But she didn't even noticed that Mizuno's was made with silver thread (boy if she had) because she really had not eye for those things. I so feel her.
Yoshimune and Hisamichi were always emotionally, morally (debatable the latter) and politically (of course) superior to all the men around them. The bed scene with Mizuno was fascinating in its power dynamics. Yoshimune was older, always in control and her body wasn't even paid attention to due to the power imbalance. Mizuno cried his loved-one name in her arms. After, she happy was to give him his freedom to marry the woman he loved. I don't deny I enjoyed seeing her not wanting to pursue romantic relationships with any of the men she slept with.
And how she slept around! Ahahaha, that was amazing. She wanted all the young and handsome men away of the chamber and kept the others because "they were better in the Ooku." And how she just... approached them when she wanted sex. Boy, I want icons of those scenes. (And boy, I'm not saying that the whole thing about which men can be free and which can't, and why, wasn't extremely problematic, but I also don't think the series was particularly approving. Showing how she does things in a situation where she has all the power.)
In Yoshimune's point of view is made obvious that we really were just shown a surface of the political situation's complexity. Yoshimune had no idea why westerners thought of women as "weaker and more fragile" and so we know no one else in Japan would get it either. The "nothing that happens inside The Chambers can come out" had a reason after all. The Oooku guards the Nation's secrets.
Yoshimune looked for answers because some things were illogical for her. There were still customs and traditions that didn't make sense in a women-dominated Nation.
She discovered that Iemitsu, the celebrated third Tokugawa Shogun, was really a man. And the creator of the Chamber, Reverend Kasuga, was a woman. A shock for her.
The third story was set 80 years before the previous ones, back when the pox started. It explained how the male-dominated country was transformed into a female-dominated one. The political side of this was amazing and extremely complex.
Kasuga was Iemitsu's wet nurse and foster mother, a brilliant, ambitious, and cruel woman with no noble blood whatsoever, but who machinated an intricate plan to hide Iemitsu's death by the red pox and, that way, maintain Tokugawa's power. She did horrible things, avoided a crisis and created a new government smoothly, all that just playing the part of the Shogun's wet nurse. Things are more complex than we like to think. We also get to focus on her victims, and how even the "Shogun" was all but a puppet in her play.
The "Shogun" in this play was
There is also Gyokuei, the boy who killed the cute innocent cat loved by the Shogun because it was the only way to get revenge on his rapist: blaming him for the death.
Arikoto, the POV character. Well, he was really inhuman in his perfectness, but also a gender-reversed version of a type of character we always see: the pure, kind, unconditional, nurturing, self-sacrificing martyr one. He was even tainted by sex, something we see all the women in the series are not; knowing young Chie had a daughter wasn't something we had to think twice about. Arikoto having sex with a woman was blatantly his turning-down point.
The final scene of the second volume: Arikoto dressed as a woman, and Chie in her Shogun clothes, he telling her she is his master. Both damaged beyond repair while trying to comfort themselves.
The splash pages (which I suppose were originally in color) of both Yashimune with Mizuno, and Chie with Arikoto speak volumes on reversed gendered power dynamics.
Yoshinaga knows her shit. Boy, she does. And everything is tied so well and flows very smoothly.
Heck, I don't think the manga makes me feel completely comfortable, it's mostly a tale of reversed gender dynamics, there is a lot of abuse of power going on. I can't say I know the story's take on all of this. There are too many layers, and the tale it tells is a really complex one, it's really up to interpretation. Something that really bothered me, though, was how misogynist, gay Iemitsu's liking for only men was caused (as stated by him) by both Kasuga domineering ways and his biological mother hate for him. The trope that says gay men are "made" due to bad experience with women, specially mothers.