Getbackers review
May. 1st, 2010 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootThree Weeks for Dreamwidth: I've noticed you've been posting about Getbackers recently- maybe some meta about that? I know nothing about that series, so if you could explain it a little & talk about why it excites you, I'd appreciate it.
It occurs to me that I never actually wrote up a review post for Getbackers, so this seems like a good opportunity to attend to that.
Getbackers is a manga by Ayamine (artist) and Aoki (writer), which ran 39 volumes. It sits on the line between a battle manga and a story manga; the characters spend most of their time having new and exciting fights, but there is an overall plot that provides a theme, as it were, and a reason for the fights. The characterization is a bit odd in that many of the secondary characters get good character development and emotional closure, while the two primary characters are not so much developed as uncovered, as the story goes on. This is because their love is already perfect and true.
I'm actually not kidding. Ban and Ginji, our two heroes, are the very image of "soulbonded". They understand each other without words. They can mystically hear each other calling out the other's name from across the city, and rush to the rescue. Of course, they still scuffle and pound on each other like good shounen friends; they even have one or two serious, life or death fights. I find it telling that the last of these is won by the power of trust. They are both presented as completely straight, which makes a lot of fans laugh in disbelief.
It should be mentioned that A&A are quite aware of the tropes they're playing with and do all of this on purpose, up to and including making Ginji, who would typically be instantly identified as uke, one centimeter taller than Ban. Ban, who spends an appreciable percentage of his time trying to grope one of the female character's boobs, at one point in the storyline gives one of the other male characters a very deep kiss. Two male characters have a repeating motif of being connected by a red thread--literally connected by an actual red thread. The authors like to toy with their audience.
It should also be mentioned that Ayamine is distressingly given to drawing T&A shots, in hentai levels of detail, and that whenever one of the relatively few female characters appears you are assured that her clothes will be torn off. Every single time, without fail, often in the middle of an otherwise serious fight. The frequency of this is just barely within my tolerance, and when I'm marathoning the manga I often have to stop and take a break and read Utena or watch Sailor Moon. A&A's approach to female characters is, unfortunately, typically shounen, and this sometimes expands to include even feminine male characters.
The overall plot is a bit unusual for a shounen story. It deals with the nature of reality and the result of reifying human will. If you think of Escaflowne done over as a shounen battle manga you may have some idea. There's a good deal of gore involved, and under normal circumstances not one of the main characters would survive an entire arc, far less a whole parade of them. The "science" of everyone's super abilities is laughable, though in an odd twist there is an underlying plot reason for this to be so.
The anime stays fairly close to the manga but covers only the first few arcs. After that, it takes some of the high points of later arcs and mixes them into a very different ending. The anime, of course, reduces the gore levels and the explicitness of the hentai moments also, which means that a lot of fans tend to prefer it. The anime does not, however, deal with the overall plot at all; if you want that, or the ending that makes some sense of it, you need the manga. Be warned that the Tokyopop release had truly dreadful localization for the first few volumes, with the characters talking in a twee and pathetic "street" dialect. It does get better after that, though.
Tokyopop also lost license with nine volumes yet to go, and the fan translators have stepped in to finish up. You can find up to date translations at mangafox.com. You can find the anime in all the usual places.
Why I Like It
This is kind of additional to my usual reviews, so it gets its own section.
For one thing, I'm a slash writer and the slash potential of both media is off the scale. I also saw the anime first and loved the visual style; the manga takes a while to arrive at that style, but it also has better action scenes. The anime was what got me interested enough in the characters to wade through Ayamine's disgusting drooling over his characters' breasts.
Moreover, I really like the secondary characters like Kazuki and his littleharem gang, Shido and Madoka, Akabane in all his polite psycho glory, Makubex who is alarmingly logical and very young at the same time. These are the characters who get to grow and develop, and they do so in ways I enjoy. The way all of the characters fit together has a nice level of tension and chemistry to it. There are buckets of angst but the story is pretty firmly focused on giving the characters emotional resolution and a happy ending of some kind, which is very important to me.
And, again, even the manga ending leaves a whole lot of openings for writing the story forward. There's room for me to play with these characters, both in canon and post canon. And, while there isn't a lot of fic for GB these days, what there is has quite a good ratio of "good" to "crap".
It occurs to me that I never actually wrote up a review post for Getbackers, so this seems like a good opportunity to attend to that.
Getbackers is a manga by Ayamine (artist) and Aoki (writer), which ran 39 volumes. It sits on the line between a battle manga and a story manga; the characters spend most of their time having new and exciting fights, but there is an overall plot that provides a theme, as it were, and a reason for the fights. The characterization is a bit odd in that many of the secondary characters get good character development and emotional closure, while the two primary characters are not so much developed as uncovered, as the story goes on. This is because their love is already perfect and true.
I'm actually not kidding. Ban and Ginji, our two heroes, are the very image of "soulbonded". They understand each other without words. They can mystically hear each other calling out the other's name from across the city, and rush to the rescue. Of course, they still scuffle and pound on each other like good shounen friends; they even have one or two serious, life or death fights. I find it telling that the last of these is won by the power of trust. They are both presented as completely straight, which makes a lot of fans laugh in disbelief.
It should be mentioned that A&A are quite aware of the tropes they're playing with and do all of this on purpose, up to and including making Ginji, who would typically be instantly identified as uke, one centimeter taller than Ban. Ban, who spends an appreciable percentage of his time trying to grope one of the female character's boobs, at one point in the storyline gives one of the other male characters a very deep kiss. Two male characters have a repeating motif of being connected by a red thread--literally connected by an actual red thread. The authors like to toy with their audience.
It should also be mentioned that Ayamine is distressingly given to drawing T&A shots, in hentai levels of detail, and that whenever one of the relatively few female characters appears you are assured that her clothes will be torn off. Every single time, without fail, often in the middle of an otherwise serious fight. The frequency of this is just barely within my tolerance, and when I'm marathoning the manga I often have to stop and take a break and read Utena or watch Sailor Moon. A&A's approach to female characters is, unfortunately, typically shounen, and this sometimes expands to include even feminine male characters.
The overall plot is a bit unusual for a shounen story. It deals with the nature of reality and the result of reifying human will. If you think of Escaflowne done over as a shounen battle manga you may have some idea. There's a good deal of gore involved, and under normal circumstances not one of the main characters would survive an entire arc, far less a whole parade of them. The "science" of everyone's super abilities is laughable, though in an odd twist there is an underlying plot reason for this to be so.
The anime stays fairly close to the manga but covers only the first few arcs. After that, it takes some of the high points of later arcs and mixes them into a very different ending. The anime, of course, reduces the gore levels and the explicitness of the hentai moments also, which means that a lot of fans tend to prefer it. The anime does not, however, deal with the overall plot at all; if you want that, or the ending that makes some sense of it, you need the manga. Be warned that the Tokyopop release had truly dreadful localization for the first few volumes, with the characters talking in a twee and pathetic "street" dialect. It does get better after that, though.
Tokyopop also lost license with nine volumes yet to go, and the fan translators have stepped in to finish up. You can find up to date translations at mangafox.com. You can find the anime in all the usual places.
Why I Like It
This is kind of additional to my usual reviews, so it gets its own section.
For one thing, I'm a slash writer and the slash potential of both media is off the scale. I also saw the anime first and loved the visual style; the manga takes a while to arrive at that style, but it also has better action scenes. The anime was what got me interested enough in the characters to wade through Ayamine's disgusting drooling over his characters' breasts.
Moreover, I really like the secondary characters like Kazuki and his little
And, again, even the manga ending leaves a whole lot of openings for writing the story forward. There's room for me to play with these characters, both in canon and post canon. And, while there isn't a lot of fic for GB these days, what there is has quite a good ratio of "good" to "crap".
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-01 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 12:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 08:58 am (UTC)I like what you say about the creators actually playing out the tropes the fullest, and I imagine them smirking and giggling while doing it too. ;) And I, too, disbelieve the straightness of Ban and Ginji. No way. They have to be at least bi. :D Or, they're the perfect gay-for-each-other pairing.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 02:19 pm (UTC)And that's what keeps me from reading the manga, even though I loved the anime.
But maybe I'll try again, just for the plot.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-02 04:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-04 09:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-04 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 05:39 am (UTC)And where might I find the good stuff? Reading through your GB fics has reawakened my interest in this fandom and my thirst for good fic. It's been years since I've read in this fandom, so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-11 04:24 pm (UTC)