Mosaic Fragments

Amazon decided to give me another free trial of Prime, and I took the opportunity to watch the first season of the Legend of Korra. :] Seemed to have a lot more fight scenes and less introspection than the first series, and I liked the old cast of characters better, but overall I still loved it.

( Cut for mild spoilers. )

So in addition to working hard, lately I've been trying out a few new series in various media.

First, there's The Deep End, the new show about first-year lawyers in a big law firm. When I read the summary of the first episode -- especially the part about the impossible pro bono case -- I thought, "Hey, this show is about me!" and worried a little that it would be too close to home for me to be able to watch it. Ha. I should have known Hollywood would never let me down like that. Now, I watch it because it is so ridiculous it's funny. Amazingly, the second episode was even more outrageous than the first. Having a first-year co-chair a million-dollar class action lawsuit? Telling her to go memorize the requirements of Rule 23(b)(3) two hours before the class certification hearing? [What about 23(a), huh?] Having the judge certify the class from the bench at the end of the hearing and schedule a pretrial conference the next day? And people don't think Hollywood could make a show about grad students interesting.

Then, I've been trying out manga series whose covers catch my eye at Kinokuniya.

The first series I tried is Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai, or "The World God Only Knows." It's about this guy who is so good at dating sims that he's known as "Otoshigami" -- it doesn't really translate, but basically it means he's the god of capturing girls' hearts. He ends up in a contract with the underworld, who missed the fact that his expertise is only in games and real life girls shun him. Now he has to make real girls fall in love with him (kissing is enough), which forces out evil spirits that hide in their hearts. Of course, he does it by applying the scenarios he's learned from games.

Obviously, the series is totally not targeted at me. For the guys who read it in Shounen Sunday, it's probably a sweet romanticomedy with lots of moe girls. Whereas I find it amusing because it gets so ridiculous. I guess you would say I get an extra degree of mocking out of it that guys probably don't. But yeah, it's pretty hilarious. And I guess the stories are kind of cute, too.

The next series I tried is Ilegenes, which is more targeted at me. It's about boys at a military academy on an island that specializes in genetic modification technology. The main character hates how genetically modified beings and clones are treated like merchandise, especially in the black market, and he's out to change the system.

I imagine that the series is what 07-GHOST would have been like if it had spent more time on Teito while he was in school. You've got the prickly main character with a tragic past (Teito/Fon), the easy-going guy roommate who tries to get close to him (Mikage/Jacques), and the jealous, privileged son of a high-powered family who bullies him (Shuri/Andrew). And, you know, the whole military academy setting and all.

It's not really BL, but I'm sure anyone who looks at it will think it is, from high concentration of bishies and the lack of females. It's funny how to a certain point you want protagonists who are the same gender as the target audience -- think shoujo heroine and shounen lead. But at some point an over-concentration of one gender makes it more attractive to the other gender -- especially the all-boys schools and the all-girls schools settings. And so many of them aren't even BL. I got sick of trying to disabuse people of the notion with series like Cluster Edge and Meine Liebe. (Actually, I think the school in Meine Liebe is co-ed.) But at least with Ilegenes, I think it might get to the point of BL, or at least something like the deep bond of friendship/brotherhood. Like what Teito has with Mikage and Hakuren in 07-GHOST. Definitely slashable, but not really slash if you follow the word of the series.

So yeah, Ilegenes has basically nothing original plot-wise, really. It's just your typical fighting off the bullies at school type of story. Plus some moralistic stuff about genetic modification and cloning, which is also pretty well-covered at this point. But I like the characters. Fon is hot. Jacques is intriguing -- I mapped him onto Mikage, but he's a little less effusive and more thoughtful, and with a deeper background, I think. Also, there's the good-student glasses-guy Nicolas who cracks me up. So yeah. We'll see. I'm afraid the series will either spin out of control or run out of steam, but in the meantime, it's not a bad ride.