Paper Moon

I finally got the English edition of First End today. Non-spoilery thoughts:

1. This book is suddenly a LOT MORE INTERESTING when I can read it in my native language instead of plowing through all of that complicated technical kanji. Which is why I gave up on my first attempt to read the book last year. The ratio of tedious dictionary work to story rewards was too lopsided. But when I take away the tedious dictionary work, suddenly the story rewards are great and plenty.

2. Unfortunately, it is translated prose, and it reads like translated prose - slightly awkwardly. Some of the lines that come across as fanfic-ish and weird actually sounded much less weird in Japanese. Or maybe that's because Japanese, as a language, generally contains more turns of phrase that we English speakers view as fanfic-ish and weird. I.E. in Japanese it's not uncommon for narrative prose to randomly launch into detailed descriptions of the weather, or to have characters make exclamations like "I believe in the future!" and "As long as there is hope in my heart!" But in an English context, that's just cheesy. Meh, different cultural standards of cheesiness, I guess.

3. The story is much better than anything that Fujishima has written in the manga for the past five years.

4. The story is much, much better than Hiroaki Gohda's attempts to write original stories for the animated series. That's mostly because Touma Yumi understands the characters and actually has them act IN-character, which is more than I can say for Gohda.

5. If, at any point in the future, somebody gets it in their head to make another animated original story for A!MG, could we have Touma Yumi write it, please? The lady knows what she's doing.

6. Of course the novel is... Well, it's not really Urd-centric. But the plot is designed to give Urd continual opportunities to be very, very awesome. ;) Not that there's anything wrong with that.

7. Perhaps as a homage to Brian Jacques, there are waaaaay too many detailed descriptions of food throughout the novel. DO NOT READ while hungry.