episode 13 of ouran high school host club has got to be my favourite so far!!! haruhi in fushigi no kuni!!!

"Kamisama ga Uso wo Tsuku.": Thoughts on "God tells lies."

This is the most recent piece presented by Ozaki Kaori. People will mostly know her as the mangaka of Immortal Rain aka Meteor Methuselah which ran from 1999 to 2011. Her art style hasn't changed much over the last 15 years and Immortal Rain was one of my favourites during my early teenage years. I was a bit too young to have known about Yuu Watase and I worshipped Ozaki's headstrong and street-smart heroine Machika Balfaltin.

God tells lies is similar in it's dealing with death, loss and love. It is only five chapters long and the story is immediately fascinating. I would say it is darker than Immortal Rain (not so that IR was not dark, it was was!) and despite the ages of the protagonists being younger, it reminded me of Ozaki's earliest work Knife. Rereading it also reveals that Ozaki has thought about how every panel should tell and there are small clues (a little more attention) which will enhance the reading experience.

I won't babble much longer. I loved Immortal Rain  though would never think it was without flaws, given that it spanned 66 chapters and over a decade but seemed to lack a certain amount of detail, relying heavily on the fast-paced plot.  

God tells lies is in my opinion far more polished. It's slow and a bit heavy but very rewarding. It might be that I've gotten older and that a reader's taste will change. This small series is firmly within the realms of "slice of life" and "seinen", with a great deal of cynicism on Ozaki's part about adults and adult responsibilities/roles.

I wonder if there is a difference to those who receive such tough lessons when they're younger? Will they break or grow stronger? It's something that this series handles very well.

Read on for spoilers.


Read more »

Thoughts on "Shinsekai Yori"

-SPOILERS-

A millennium in the future, humankind has developed psychokinesis. The world has been ravaged by weapons of mass destruction and ecological breakdown. On the Japanese archipelago, people survive in villages which are cordoned off by a Holy Barrier. Safe inside the barrier, these communities are seemingly free of hunger, pestilence and strife.

However, there is always a flipside to utopia. Everyone in the villages are able to wield psychokinesis which awakens when they are ten years of age. After that, children are taught through hypnosis and lessons to adhere to a set of prescribed values and conditioned to recoil from death, something known as death feedback. The children are closely monitored for any signs of abnormality or weakness - a chain is only as strong as the weakest link. If they exhibit signs of mental instability or have problems controlling their psychokinesis (called Cantus), they are secretly disposed of and a clean-up follows to get rid of any evidence that the aberrant every existed at all.

Society is essentially divided between human who possess Cantus and small, ugly creature called a queerat. They look like bald rodents and the tallest ones stand about 4 ft but most of them are squat, short and do not speak human language. These queerats live in highly structured societies similar to ant colonies where the queen's sole task is to reproduce and the workers tend to the resources and the state of their warren. 

Thoughts on "Mother" episode 1

Highly recommended jdrama from a few years back which bagged several awards. You will need a dark room, a comfortable cushion or soft toy to hug and some tissues.

Tragedy, child abuse and domestic violence, family melodrama, tsunderes played out against the backdrop of a bleak, wintry skyline in Hokkaido. Lots of white and grey with Rena's coat standing out in red. I haven't felt this human in a while.

Onwards to episode 2.