Went to the bookstore today. Hooray!
I picked up Ah! My Goddess volume 38, with Chrono on the cover. In the manga canon, I guess she's officially strawberry blonde, now.
So I guess Crono is important enough to rank among Rind, Chihiro, and other supporting characters who have gotten their own volume covers. I'm... not sure how I feel about that. I mean, Crono is just so... stupid. But oh well. There are enough better characters in the cast that I really don't care whether Crono deserves her moment in the sun, or not.
The big surprise was an announcement in the back of the book: the Ah! My Goddess "Total Illustration Artbook 1998 ~ 2008" hits the shelves on Christmas Day! Holy crap!! I can't believe that date wasn't announced in last month's Afternoon. Uh, way to advertise your release dates well in advance, guys. Or not.
Speaking of release dates... How to Make Deathscythe was supposed to hit the shelves today, too. But of course, Squeenix has yet to ship any copies to any bookstores in the southern Nagano area. Of course. This always happens, argh! But that's what I get for living in a backwater.
Oh hey, and since I do live in a backwater, today was the first day that I found a copy of Mutuality on the bookstore shelf. Of course I immediately bought it. ;) Yes, yes, I know, the book has been out for three weeks already. But hey, backwater living! Gotta love it.
Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar, Mutuality is the big giant artbook collection of all of CLAMP's illustrations for Code Geass. And it is, absolutely, in a word, stunning. Worth every single penny. Say what you will about Code Geass - and you know I'm not shy about repeatedly stating that I think that it's utter shite, albeit extremely entertaining shite - but it's impossible to deny that CLAMP's artwork for the series, both production designs and promotional materials, really do represent the pinnacle of modern manga artistry. (If you can stand how overwrought they are, that is.)
Anyway, the book is gorgeous, almost mind-blowingly so, and contains many paintings so visually complicated that I could stare at them for hours and still not be able to appreciate every single detail. The best part of the book, however, is an extensive section of all of the early, rejected character designs that CLAMP churned out. Some of them are outright LOLarious. And some of them are extremely... telling. I know that I've written about this phenomenon before, when the original Lelouch and Suzaku character designs were first revealed in an issue of Newtype. But it still *fascinates* me to observe the process that CLAMP applied to evolving those two character designs from their rough versions to their final versions.
( Really long entry in which I ramble about anime character designs, racial coding, and yes, I actually tie Code Geass to Avatar and all of the ugly racewank it's generating. )
Edited to add: Now with visuals! Hooray!
Edit again: Another thing just occurred to me. I originally wrote this post with the intent to debunk the "Aang looks white" meme, but there's a more insidious meme out there that can be addressed here as well. That would be the "Avatar characters are raceless" meme. The most common justification for which seems to be the idea that because the main Avatar characters have such varied facial features, they aren't meant to all be of the same race! Mai and Ty Lee look so completely different, that they couldn't possibly both be of the same race, right? WRONG! This is a stupid idea, because it assumes that there's never any physical variations between people of the same race. It is an insidious packaging of the same old racist belief that a) only white people have varied facial features and b) all Asian people look exactly the same. Oh, barf. The character designs in most anime series, as well as in Avatar, directly defy that idea. But, you know. Viewers are still people, and people are still stupid.
Edit the Third: Just added a bunch more images, including scans of CLAMP's original character designs for Lelouch and Suzaku.
Edit the Fourth: Ampersand links an old essay by Matt Thorn about the same dealio, and a fascinating discussion ensues in the comments.
I picked up Ah! My Goddess volume 38, with Chrono on the cover. In the manga canon, I guess she's officially strawberry blonde, now.
So I guess Crono is important enough to rank among Rind, Chihiro, and other supporting characters who have gotten their own volume covers. I'm... not sure how I feel about that. I mean, Crono is just so... stupid. But oh well. There are enough better characters in the cast that I really don't care whether Crono deserves her moment in the sun, or not.
The big surprise was an announcement in the back of the book: the Ah! My Goddess "Total Illustration Artbook 1998 ~ 2008" hits the shelves on Christmas Day! Holy crap!! I can't believe that date wasn't announced in last month's Afternoon. Uh, way to advertise your release dates well in advance, guys. Or not.
Speaking of release dates... How to Make Deathscythe was supposed to hit the shelves today, too. But of course, Squeenix has yet to ship any copies to any bookstores in the southern Nagano area. Of course. This always happens, argh! But that's what I get for living in a backwater.
Oh hey, and since I do live in a backwater, today was the first day that I found a copy of Mutuality on the bookstore shelf. Of course I immediately bought it. ;) Yes, yes, I know, the book has been out for three weeks already. But hey, backwater living! Gotta love it.
Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar, Mutuality is the big giant artbook collection of all of CLAMP's illustrations for Code Geass. And it is, absolutely, in a word, stunning. Worth every single penny. Say what you will about Code Geass - and you know I'm not shy about repeatedly stating that I think that it's utter shite, albeit extremely entertaining shite - but it's impossible to deny that CLAMP's artwork for the series, both production designs and promotional materials, really do represent the pinnacle of modern manga artistry. (If you can stand how overwrought they are, that is.)
Anyway, the book is gorgeous, almost mind-blowingly so, and contains many paintings so visually complicated that I could stare at them for hours and still not be able to appreciate every single detail. The best part of the book, however, is an extensive section of all of the early, rejected character designs that CLAMP churned out. Some of them are outright LOLarious. And some of them are extremely... telling. I know that I've written about this phenomenon before, when the original Lelouch and Suzaku character designs were first revealed in an issue of Newtype. But it still *fascinates* me to observe the process that CLAMP applied to evolving those two character designs from their rough versions to their final versions.
( Really long entry in which I ramble about anime character designs, racial coding, and yes, I actually tie Code Geass to Avatar and all of the ugly racewank it's generating. )
Edited to add: Now with visuals! Hooray!
Edit again: Another thing just occurred to me. I originally wrote this post with the intent to debunk the "Aang looks white" meme, but there's a more insidious meme out there that can be addressed here as well. That would be the "Avatar characters are raceless" meme. The most common justification for which seems to be the idea that because the main Avatar characters have such varied facial features, they aren't meant to all be of the same race! Mai and Ty Lee look so completely different, that they couldn't possibly both be of the same race, right? WRONG! This is a stupid idea, because it assumes that there's never any physical variations between people of the same race. It is an insidious packaging of the same old racist belief that a) only white people have varied facial features and b) all Asian people look exactly the same. Oh, barf. The character designs in most anime series, as well as in Avatar, directly defy that idea. But, you know. Viewers are still people, and people are still stupid.
Edit the Third: Just added a bunch more images, including scans of CLAMP's original character designs for Lelouch and Suzaku.
Edit the Fourth: Ampersand links an old essay by Matt Thorn about the same dealio, and a fascinating discussion ensues in the comments.
