Fushigi Yûgi: Genbo Kaiden Volume Two continues with Takiko’s journey to find the seven celestial warriors, each one with a different power. This straightforward quest format isn’t something I see in American comics often. I don’t know if it’s common in manga, but I do remember (and loved) it in Ninja Scroll. This volume’s goal is to find the warrior of needles, and to discover the backstory of mysterious Limdo. (Spoilers: he has daddy issues too.)
Takiko’s father, Einosuke, has been turned into a bare framing device for this volume. Surprisingly, Einosuke’s former student, and Takiko’s former crush, Takao is still in the story. I thought he fulfilled his purpose and had already left the plot. Takao is a flat character whose does nothing to move the story forward, so there had better be a good reason to have him taking up any amount of time and space.
Written and illustrated by Yuu Watase
During their journey Chamka and Takiko come upon a burning house. Chamka tries to save a young girl’s life and demonstrates his special power: to freeze things in ice! The effort weakens Chamka however, and he must stay in the village to recuperate. The girl’s family offers shelter, but her father sells Chamka out to the bandits who are hunting him. That’s when Limdo reenters the picture…
Loose notes:
When I write comic reviews, I like to read some other book to help organize my thoughts. For Fushigi Yûgi: Genbo Kaiden, I read Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, written in 1983 by Frederik L. Schodt, and I now know a little more than nothing about the history and world of mange. For example, I learned that manga readers in Japan typically read a page in under 4 seconds, which makes those long shelves of manga less intimidating to me. I also learned that the large sound effects are so carefully chosen that I’m definitely losing a lot in translation.
The action scenes are a baffling mass of strongly angled panels and placid faces. I’m still getting used to it. There was one very confusing scene where Taki yelled “You cut off my arm!” I didn’t even know it happened, and that seemed like a big thing to miss! The page right before Taki started screaming was about Limdo getting shot at by a mysterious assassin archer. I had to read backwards a couple times before I finally found where the arm was cut: it five pages back and half off-panel. There was a full conversation and a couple plot beats in-between Taki losing his arm and him speaking up about it.
Emojis are a third class citizen in our language, but moving upwards. This fact is the most exciting thing to happen to typography since the attempted promotion of the interrobang. Fushigi Yûgi: Genbo Kaiden features some (rare) smiley faces peppered through the dialog balloons. It’s nice to think that this mid-2000s comic foreshadowed the trend of emojis, even if slightly. I don’t know if this is common to all manga, I don’t remember seeing it in The Phoenix or Death Note, but maybe common in Shōjo manga.
I still don’t know much about the Japanese love of spontaneous-transsexuality-shift. I don’t even know what to call it. There wasn’t much of it in this volume. But there are two clues to this puzzle. One, there was touching scene between Takiko and Limdo when Limdo was in male form. Limdo has a clear sex preference, and it seems that Takiko does too, for him. Two, most of the scenes with Limdo in female form are played for a joke or for a fight, he’s rarely just enjoying his life as a woman. This is different from Ranma 1/2, where Ranma didn’t seem to care what sex he or she was when he or she went to school.
Looser notes:
- Limdo is very emo. I don’t know if there’s an equivalent term in manga for emo. Maybe I should just call him, “moody and unavailable.”
- Who does the greyscale fillings and patterns? Is that still Yuu Watase? They are sometimes inspired, sometimes odd, and sometimes rough.
- Chapter six has the first two page spread. It’s a nice moment of rest.
- Limdo’s latest limit break is Dragon’s Breath.
