- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Right, okay, thanks Konoka, you're like soooooo helpful.
Erhm. All right then.
Anybody here ever read the manga series Saikano?
No..? Well I just finished it awhile ago, and I have only one line that can direct my true feelings about it.
"If anyone ever calls Japanese Manga a lower art form, I will slit open their throat and tear their jugular apart with my teeth."
Harsh? I don't think so. In my entire life, I've never been so moved by a series before. Its only 7 volumes long, but its made more of an impact on me than series that can run for over 50.
Its poignant, beautiful, harsh, merciless, depressing, hopeful....
Words can't describe it I suppose. I think what made me love Saikano the most, was because I'd written it off as another simple cliche'd story based on the first few pages on Viz's site where they gave a preview from the second chapter. It left me with an uninspired outlook, and I forgot about the series for almost a year, until Konoka all but slapped me across the face with the first 6 volumes and demanded I read them.
I did so....in one night....in one sitting. My eyes were sore, not because of the length that I spent reading the books, but because I wept so many times.
Yes, I freely admit, I cried like a little girl at specific parts, particularly Volume Three. It should be noted that I don't think I've let tears escape my eyes since I left my adolescence behind, so many years ago.
The books also depressed me, to a low I don't think I've ever been in before. I'm not sure if anyone would consider that a selling point, but for a simple book to evoke that deep of an emotion from me, its gotta be good.
There are, I'd say, several attributes a person must possess to fully appreciate the beauty that is this series. First things first, they must understand and like the art style. I've tried for a while to think of ways to describe it, but I just can't seem to grasp the right phrase. The closest I could think up was to call the art, "evanescent".
Secondly, the person needs to be mature. The story is quite soundly rated for reader's over 16 years of age, but to me even that seems a bit low. Of course, I'm generalizing on the basis that most people I've met and spoken with in that age frame are typically not the type that would be the most receptive audience of Saikano. Personal maturity and physical maturity do both play a role in understanding this series, and if you lack one that you may not get everything out of it that you might otherwise.
Lastly, and probably the biggest variable, would be the understanding of physical entanglement. The intricacies of love, not the adolescent and juvenile love that is simply lust masked in hormonic complexity, but the real form of love. Whether you have experienced it, or simply come to yearn the experience, this series will reach down and beat the living hell out you.
All seven volumes have been released, in their translated glory (Viz actually did a good job on them, much to my satisfaction). They'd likely be in whatever local comic book store that happens to inhabit your whereabouts, should that comic book store house a Manga section. So go! Snatch them up and devour them like the wonderful creation that they are. Should you read a synopsis of the story beforehand, so be it, but understand that the simplified idiocy spouted on the back of the book, or on the official site, are all meant to entice the flamboyant manga reader who lathers up blither and corny storylines. Inside though, you'll discover a story that is so deep and wonderful that you will never again wish to go back to whatever drivel you may have been reading before hand. (I was reading Moby Dick for the third time when I first read 'em, so that's not an easy statement for me to make, cause Moby Dick is like euphoria in literary form).
This series has influenced my storytelling style greatly, and you all saw it in the side story with Johnson.
I cannot recommend it enough for those that might think they'd know how to understand and take in this series. No matter how tough your emotional barriers, I assure you that at some point during the series, they'll be pulled down and you'll find yourself naked as you read.
It was made into a somewhat above average Anime, and I received news not too long ago that a live-action version is being created (absolutely unheard of in Japan, tells you how amazing the series is right?). Go for the manga before anything else.
[Edited on 1/22/2006]