animemiz’s scribblings..

Whenever there is a chance in Manga Movable Feast to talk abut a title that tugged my interest, then you would see a prospective from me. This feast’s pick is Karakuri Odette by Julietta Suzuki, and other blogger responses to this MMF will be hosted by Anna of Manga Report here.

Reading about androids is nothing new in my experience. I didn’t initially think much of Karakuri Odette, since the art really wasn’t that great to look at, but the plot draws people in slowly, and appeal in the discovery department. People can on a superficial level can compare Karakuri Odette to Chobits, but I find myself staring at another works as being something more similar.

Arale as part of a bag, photographed by me.

Dr. Slump.

There is large difference in the appearance, and plot happenings, however there are some similarities to be made between Odette and Arale.

• Both have creators  deceiving a large part of the world on their non-living creation.
• Both have an inherent desire to be a part of the world that they are living in.
• Both do change other people in their life.
• There is the appearance of another robot, that may or may not like the female robot (Chris, and Obotchanman/Carmelman#4)

There are also plot parts that are similar such as the mention of food/cooking, in volume 2, and the part when the professor placed a camera on their robot in volume 1. Both are of different time, so reading is your choice. Dr. Slump deviates from slice of life into talking about other aspects, and ends in 18 volumes, while Karakuri Odette ends with six volumes.

All right.. mostly NYC has been cold.. and really cold.. dreary even, with the amount of snow and slush that has happen. So what to curl up with, in spite of my waiting for one more shipment of manga from RightStuf…. is listening and comparing different versions of Ayumi Hamasaki’s Days on youtube. A friend loves to sing this song at karoke, so I happen to fall back into listening to more of Ayumi’s songs. She also recently got married, so that was a surprise.

Days is a great song on a one sided love…. so of course I have my preference in watching the original, unfortunately that song is only half complete on Youtube….

Where as the acoustic orchestral version got the entire version of the music video up. It is okay, but it doesn’t leave me with the same feeling as the original. (sighs)

But never fear.. there’s the live concert version, which is a little off.. since Ayumi is crying in this one. It was quite interesting explaining this to an obvious non-J-pop friend of mine, who asked why the guy was half naked… and I explained to fan on the enthusiasm of the screaming fans.

Lately I have been on such a Grasshopper listening binge.. if you see my tweets, and hear my sister complaining about how much links I throw on. But FYI, Grasshopper is a Cantonese pop trio, who sings a lot of sappy romance songs. I grew up with listening them when they were students of the late and great Anita Mui. But I digress..

What promoted this entry is just a need to show a slew of Youtube videos.. and raise questions on gender thoughts…

While you don’t need to understand the video, the song is basically on how easy it it is for woman to be emotional, while to be a man is something of strength, so Grasshoppers were singing of this desire to be born a woman, with men kissing fanservice thrown in. That I see a lot of when my friend Aya shows pictures of Japanese concert fanservice.  Fanservice for men and woman.. there’s also half naked woman in this clip. Brings to mind another video on DJ Ozma, and Kohaku several years ago.

Now take a look on the opposite side, with Hikki’s You Make Me Want to be a Man. Her inspiration for writing this though was, born of wanting to deal with her martial issues at the time. Leading to the issues of how gender issues between men and woman are different.

Lastly, there is Haruna Ai… I always find her to be a great Japanese celebrity example of crossing the barrier between gender reassignment, though I am not sure about her gaining a boyfriend. At times it boggles the mind of how confident she appears to be, she’s always wearing these outfits, and how she acts as a celebrity to earn money for her surgery.

This following video is when she went to the Philippines and visited the CPDRC prison there. The warden is saying what type of prisoners are there, a tour thru the facilities, then a look at the prisoners. Finally the video ends on 700 prisoners following after Haruna Ai in a dance.

So then gender thoughts…. it is a pretty interesting thought to think about, and you see either through song, or an example of what makes a desire of this either figuratively or literally.