recent manga reads & rereads
25 Jan 2012 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaigouIn this post: GetBackers, Vampire Knight, D.Gray-man, Amatsuki, Di(e)ce.
I gave up on GetBackers, despitebranchandroot's rec. Mostly, though, because of its discordance. Background, if you're not aware: it's the usual shonen bromance kind of story, with a fair bit of quasi-science-fiction/supernatural mixings, and plenty of the usual cliches. Two things about its development stuck in my head while reading. Hmm, make that three. I made it about halfway through the anime, then tried the manga, and quit about halfway through. While watching the anime, I also checked into the anime's development, and noted an unusual bit of info about the series' wrap-up (which happened prior to the story wrap-up, so there was the usual question of whether to do an anime-original ending).
Note: the story is actually a three-way invention, from what I gather. I think, not sure, but I seem to recall the author is actually a brother-sister penname, who work jointly with an artist. That is, the penname gives credit to brother and sister, but apparently (why am I surprised) the only mention of author quotations act like it's just one guy. So, dunno what the sister does. Anyway.
I can't find where I came across this bit -- I think in one of the articles cited in the wiki entry. Apparently, the anime director suggested making Kazuki's relationship canonical (anime canon, that is) with his second, Juubei. (Their respective weaponry, threads and needles, even suggest the pairing... among the many, many other things that do, including their own dialogue.) The mangaka-author refused, saying that Kazuki already had a destined pairing, Ren Radou.
Then I got to that character's introduction in the anime, and discovered the character isn't even real. She's part of the 3D/holographic construct. Alright, it's one thing if there's a flesh-and-blood half to match with the flesh-and-blood (err, in context, that is) character, but I have major issues with a story-author who'd insist there's a pairing, and choose a pairing in which one character is a computer program. It'd be one thing if the author insisted it be left undefined, but it says a lot to me about the author's agenda if he'd choose this real/nonreal pairing over the damn-near-text of a real/real pairing. There's erasure, and then there's replacement that reaches the level of ridiculous.
The second bit was the mangaka-artist, who -- based on the copious amounts of ho-yay artwork -- has some serious yaoi fanboi leanings. Like, not even leanings. I'd say that tree fell over in the forest awhile back. Flat-out yaoi fanboi. But in the manga, in the chapter's end-notes, the mangaka-artist makes reference consistently (and by "consistently" I mean, "in pretty much every author's note") about how he wanted to "lighten up" the story or give it a bit more fun... and his only means of doing so is taking any female characters introduced and giving them double-D cups, anatomically painful-looking tiny waists, and a heaping of panty shots and cleavage.
Meanwhile, if the text itself were a main-female main duo, it'd be hitting every shoujo-action trope known. You've got the "can sense each other's feelings", the "constant calling of each other's names", you've even got the bad guys who have serious hard-ons for one or the other of the main duo, with the attendant implied (or sometimes outright) jealousy, alternating with smug assurance that the duo can't be broken apart.
And for every intensely "this is bromance, really" moment of deep emotion between the main duo, the artist throws in a post-story footnote of one of the two (usually Ban, I believe) surrounded by chicks and doing his best to get laid. But from my western eyes, it's the kind of "doing his best" that's got an edge of desperation akin to someone seriously, seriously self-denying. Like someone so far into the closet he's gone through the drywall and ended up in the apartment next door.
And the third thing? The artist makes a comment in his notes, in one of the early volumes, that he was interested in the story for Kazuki, because he'd always wanted to draw a male character who "looked like a girl" (or "could pass for a girl", can't recall now how he phrased it). The problem? I think the artist basically drew a girl, but removed the standard double-D breast part. Kazuki has hips. Like, hips as large as any of the girl characters, and shoulders as narrow as the girl characters.
Frankly, Kazuki doesn't look like a boy, at all. He looks like a, well, a woman whose shape and build says she should be a curvy thing, except her chest is completely flat. Or he looks like a boy whose triangle is completely upside-down, to the point of a slender kind of pear-shape. I know my share of androgynous people, and given the choice it's a look I prefer, but generally speaking, either you're going to see subtle tells that indicate the body's development during adolescence, or you're not going to see those tells at all. So a woman will still have proportions that indicate estrogen showed up along the way, though her body may be more slender/athletic. (Himiko Kudou, in Getbackers, is a good example.)
If you look at manga with more androgynous (by Western standards, I suppose) male characters, there's still the inverted triangle of shoulders broader than their hips, to some degree. So Kazuki... I guess you could say, he's got the wrong tells. To me, that's a failure of the artist, for not understanding the anatomical 'shape' of things. Basically, the visuals of Kazuki made me feel like the artist's unintentional message was: "(feminine) man" is just "woman without breasts". Or the more problematic version: a woman without breasts is automatically not-a-woman, ergo, a man.
The combination of those factors are what made me eventually give up on the series. It felt like I was being constantly hammered with these conflicting undertones. Here, these two main characters are totally life-partners, and we're going to hit you with every shoujo/romance cliche in the book to reinforce that impression. But wait, they're not gay, so now we'll slap you with the same characters being so TOTALLY and COMPLETELY and REGULAR-GUY in their HET SKIRT-CHASING footnotes. Just so you know, because their love is so, uh, not-gay. Also, this flat-chest girl-character is really a boy, even if we've also thrown in every shoujo/shonen romance cliche betweenher him and his het life-partner, Juubei. But not gay! And since we know you couldn't possibly be seeing anything like romantic, dedicated, monogamous life-partners in this story, we'll throw in random big-boobed, purely-for-the-eye-candy, playboy-posed female characters because that's what you're really here for. Because you, too, must be reading this as cover, and have every intention of waving this around on your morning commute as proof that you, too, are totally HERE FOR THE BOOBAGE and TOTALLY NOT GAY.
I get enough of that shit in other stories. I don't need to waste my time on a series that not only gives me that usual really-so-not-gay erasure shit, but does it with a massive heaping of T&A like we're living in some kind of closeted early-eighties horror story of suburban repressive and oppressive living.
Moving on, to Vampire Knight.
Yes, I know it's a total gothic send-up, and it's got vampires, and I have no idea why I like it so much. I put it down as one of my guilty pleasures, right up there with early afternoon naps and a secret envy of people who look good in hotpants as the kind of things you'll never hear me admit in person. I also am aware that the mangaka has professed that she actually ships the two male leads, which I find funny -- but also rather... curious. Given that in the anime, there are two different (and pivotal) scenes between the two male leads, the vampire and the vampire hunter. These are not illustrated in the manga, unless I ended up with scanned releases that exised those scenes. Oh, one scene is referenced as a flashback, except I could never find the first instance. The second, the manga version cuts to black. It's tell, and no show, and if I hadn't watched the anime, I probably would've been both baffled and stunned to find out, several volumes later, that Zero had drunk Kaname's blood, at least twice, and no one bothered to let me, the reader, in on this important detail.
I find that rather strange, in comparing the manga to the anime. Like, maybe the mangaka didn't think she could get away with (in LaLa's pages) that kind of homoerotic tension, but the anime knew their potential audience and was willing to make the implied-text explicit. (Well, explicit in the sense of showing the blood-drinking; the rest remains subtext, but it's really more of a rivalry/hatred kind of subtext.)
For that matter, the anime ends right where the manga really starts to get interesting. The anime really only covers the first few volumes, because the manga actually moves at an incredible clip through the storyline. High school setting, childhood friends, all the usual shoujo cliches, and then our presumed primary character -- Yuuki -- leaves the private social-experiment human/vampire school, we get a one-year timeskip, and then the story really kicks in.
I came across a post from one of the translators (of SGK scans, I believe) who observed that fundamentally, this isn't really shoujo in the usual way. Sure, Yuuki is a main character, but what drives the story, ultimately, is Kaname (the male vampire). Normally, a major definition of shoujo is that the story is the girl's story, but in Vampire Knight, it's really a story with three main leads. And of them, Kaname is the pivot; his actions are the point around which all the rest revolve, and his choices warp the story violently in one direction or another. The most recent chapters really exemplify that, with Kaname suddenly (and with no warning that I could see) apparently ditching his previous pacifist intentions and is now on, well, a killing spree. This torques the entire story (not in a bad way, but it does torque it out of its previous track).
Sure, a part of me feels like there was little warning, and at some points I wonder if the author is introducing conflict for the sake of conflict (with disregard for character history). Except Kaname's always been enigmatic enough that there is wiggle room for him to make an apparently-sudden change of direction. Part of the problem there is, oddly, the translations. When I could find chapters done by SGK, I nabbed them, because SGK (I think) is a one-person act... who really, really does translation proud. There are footnotes on at least every two out of three pages. Sometimes it's simple things, where it's not entirely clear that all these thought bubbles are such-and-such a character, so it's nice to have a note, somewhere, on the side, letting me know who's speaking. (It's not like english has a distinction between male and female "I" or "you" patterns as a signifier, after all.)
And sometimes, it's because the dialogue is colloquial in some way. Like a conversation where Yuuki refers to herself as "realizing she's just in the palm of Kaname's hand", or some such. Now, in English, we have the phrase "in the palm of your hand" but it usually implies manipulation to some degree (whether or not malicious), or at the very least, is somewhat synonymous with "wrapped around your finger". In the original, however, Yuuki is referencing the story of Monkey King and Buddha, where Monkey King challenged Buddha to go to the ends of the earth, mark the spot, and return, to demonstrate who's the most powerful. Monkey King travelled in massive leaps and bounds to the mountains at the edge of the world, peed off the highest peak, and returned... only to discover that he'd never left Buddha's palm (and had peed on one of Buddha's fingers, at that).
It has little to do with manipulation, and has everything to do with realizing that you're so incredibly out-classed, just by the very nature of your so-called opponent. And there's the aspect of thinking you're actually something pretty amazing, in your own right, only to cross the entirety of the world and discover you never left Buddha's palm.
While I guess there might be a way for a translator to put this in English and convey it (and it wouldn't be with use of the English colloquial "in the palm of your hand"), SGK's translator attempted it... and then put a nice long footnote in the side margin. Thing is, you don't realize how much you're missing in a story until you've learned to rely on a translator who takes the time to let you know what you're missing. Or, in some cases, to remind you about characters reappearing, and where you've seen them before.
Because the other thing Vampire Knight has is a massive cast of characters. Many of them showed up in cameos, here and there, unnamed, in the first few volumes -- and then reappeared as major players in the most recent volumes. The first two or three volumes, in the high school setting, is really a fake-out. You get past that, and suddenly you're knee-deep (and getting deeper) into major political, ambiguous, multi-meaning interactions with characters you've only seen once or twice before, drawn in the background or mentioned in passing. Having a translator willing to remind you politely that so-and-so first showed up in vol X, chapter Y, at such-and-such a party, really... really... helps.
Enough that when SGK went on hiatus, and another group's releases became available, it only took two chapters and I was utterly, completely, lost. It's right around what will probably be vol15 (ch69-73, based on the pattern of previous volumes' sizes), and some of those chapters, wow. I couldn't tell whether the mangaka had just totally ditched any kind of linear storytelling, or if half of it was flashbacks, or if there was supposed to be some kind of a connection between the myriad jump-cut scenes in the chapters, or what. The translation is adequate, but a little too literal to manage the political undercurrents and ambiguity that are getting layered into the story. Either you expand the dialogue in some way to contain the implied information encoded in the original language, or you provide footnotes. When there's neither, it's like reading a textual version of a D.Gray-man fight scene: you haven't the faintest clue what's going on.
I'm holding off on reading more VK, in hopes that SGK will start releasing again, and I can go back to getting my top-notch translator notes to help me remember who the hell is who in the cast of however many characters there are now...
Speaking of D.Gray-man.
I'd read to, uhm, about ch120 or so, I think, then watched the anime. Only recently did I pick up D.Gray-man the manga again, and wow, it really did get adaptation decay much worse than I'd originally realized. In the manga, Lenalee has her moments of transitional damsel, but she also gets a fair bit of straight-up shonen hero (who just happens to be female), including the beaten-down and powering-up. In the anime, well, it's overshadowed by all the episodes she has to spend crying uselessly (and the random filler episodes that always, always, cast her as the damsel to be rescued).
And I do love D.Gray-man, on some levels, because it plays with a lot of things that hit sweet spots for me. Okay, with failings on the way it hits some of those things, since I remain unimpressed with the fact that Cross Marian gets valourized, let alone a late-model retconning that I guess is supposed to give us 'insight' and to me amounts to nothing more than trying to rehabilitate a character whose actions were, without exception, nothing short of abusive. And then there's the way two different main characters (Lenalee and Kanda) are manipulated by story events -- or, in Kanda's case, not even that much -- into deciding on their own to fight for a cause that had previously given them every reason to be justified mass murderers in their own defense rather than sign up for that same abusive cause. Lenalee's backstory is horrifying, and Kanda's is simply horrific.
Lenalee, at least, gets put in the deliciously tense (story-telling-wise) moment of having to make a decision to support an abusive process simply because her family/friends lives are on the line. As a reader, I hated it; as a writer, I thought it was awesome, because it could provoke such unease. The Black Order had basically kidnapped Lenalee as a child, abusing her in the pursuit of forcing her into the position of an exorcist, and putting her through immense physical and emotional trauma. When she loses the ability to use the Black Order's weapon (a type of material/energy known as "innocence"), she feels incredibly free, and light, no longer weighed down by this role that had been forced upon her.
Then, due to circumstances arranged by the story and the bad guys taking out countless numbers of characters in a major attack, she chooses to walk back into that prison, re-accept the weapon, and come back stronger. She might be the one hope for tipping the scales in the good guys' favor, but that requires she not only accept, but condone, a process that had basically made her childhood a living hell.
To me, it reads like taking a decade-long torture victim, freeing them, and then putting them in the situation of having to choose that torture again (with major risk of death, this time), to save the ones who matter to them. It's an incredible burden, and Hoshino thankfully doesn't shy away from the emotional pain, tension, and uncertainty of such a choice, so it ends up being pretty powerful, too.
Thing is, Kanda gets nearly triple the chapter-time in his backstory, which is even more horrendous, since he didn't even have the (eventual) emotional support of a sibling to accompany him on his path. In fact, the closest thing he had, he was forced to kill. Yet, after being able to escape and written off for dead, he returns. He gets maybe a line or two, to explain his reasons, and that's it. Given the flow of the story, and the mangaka's obvious intention to mislead us for a bit (with the implication that Kanda is MIA, presumed dead), I can see why we didn't get at least a few pages of Kanda grappling with his decision. But still. His return is so deadpan (in-character for him, true) that it's not until he reveals his own motivations that it's possible to accept his apparent heel-turn. It's a weakness in the story, but it's one endemic to the way the author chose to tug on reader heart-strings.
All that said... damn, I have trouble following this series. I've become too spoiled, I think, by reading mangaka like Tito and Kishimoto and Watsuki, who can choreograph a fight-scene such that you can always tell at a glance, who's doing what, who's where, and what's going on. Not only can Hoshino still not choreograph a fight scene to save her life (and after two-hundred-plus chapters, wouldn't that be enough practice to start getting at least a little of the art?), her style has also subtly changed. It was somewhat consistent, then began evolving, and then has a definite and obvious shift somewhere around the start of Kanda's major arc. I'm chalking it up to a new assistant with a strong style that didn't quite flex enough to hold onto Hoshino's designs, which in turn then began influencing the rest of the team. (Now if only they'd do the same, for the fight scene parts...)
So not only do you have Hoshino's apparent dislike of bothering to draw intelligible fight scenes, you can't even tell which characters are which. At least, I can't. Allen's face-shape goes from the more oval, narrowed jawline that Hoshino had given him, to an almost roundish shape. Kanda does the same, as do a number of the other characters. Allen's hair also changes, in subtle ways. I'm left studying the images, trying to find clues as to which character is in the image. Just a hint, fer crying out loud.
At least with Tito, Kishimoto, Watsuki, and the other big mangaka-shonen names I can think of, there's attention to some kind of detail that lets you know -- if nothing else -- that this character, or these characters, are what you're seeing. You get a glimpse of Naruto's distinctive jacket, or the way he rolls up the bottom of his pants, or a flash of Sakura's skirt, or the jagged edge of Ichigo's hakama. Something that signals, it's this character.
Hoshino doesn't even do that -- it's like she figures, well, everyone in the Black Order wears this basic uniform (which curiously, she adapts and updates over the course of the series, in a way that reminds me of the Gundam franchise mid-series update as a way to push more toys). And then she draws just that basic uniform, and gives you a bit of hair, and some swirling motions. When I'm turning on the loupe just to see if there's a squiggle on the face of Allen's scar, it's pretty bad. (Especially since she, or her assistants, frequently leave off the scar in the fight scenes, as well as the large-enough-to-be-seen, even just partially, of the inverted star on his forehead.)
At least I'm not alone, in that. I dug up the wikia for D.Gray-man, hoping the chapter summaries would tell me what's going on. I mean, if I don't know who's winning or losing, how do I know whether to be upset, worried, scared, or hopeful? Unfortunately, the way the wikia's summaries are written... I'd say it's pretty clear their authors don't know, either. They seem to be guessing just as much as I am. Cripes.
Next: Amatsuki.
I wanted to get into this anime, I really did, but I couldn't. Too much adaptation decay with the female character. Most obvious instance: her breasts go from normal-sized to larger-than-normal. Okay, not quite GetBacker's double-D, but still. The manga, I'd read some of, set aside for watching the anime, and then never returned to. Trying again. Still not sure of it, but there are some parts that are just so unusual that I can only hope the mangaka has more waiting for me in the story, down the line. And I mean historically, sociologically, culturally unusual, like the notion of how modern people think versus how people thought before those modern categories and compartments were created.
Last: Di(e)ce.
Look, it's bromance done right. Or maybe I should say, it's bromance without GetBacker's kneejerk need to dismiss, ignore, gloss, or evade with no-really-we're-all-straight antics. Diece doesn't make apologies for its two main characters being two opposites who are still firmly each other's best friend. They rely on each other, and are attuned to each other, as much as any other pair of best friends, and while they don't go quite as far as GetBacker's "I can feel it when he hurts" text, the story dances close.
But it makes no apologies; instead, it acts as though this is the natural state of affairs for a truly strong friendship. In a way, that makes the unbelievable (another quasi Lord of the Flies or Battle Royale notion of games to the death with two friends forced to fight) more accessible, because it creates a solid emotional grounding. And, unlike GetBackers, the author/artist doesn't dismiss or deny this emotional grounding, let alone mock it. Diece's mangaka respects it, as the pivotal friendship we must accept, as readers, to believe the pain the two characters face at being forced to oppose each other.
...and that should be enough for now. Back to catching up on Amatsuki, and at some point, I really will finally finish Kekkaishi, and catch up on Nurarihyon no Mago. Well, once I finish two other major projects on my plate, and there's always the kitchen...
I gave up on GetBackers, despite
branchandroot's rec. Mostly, though, because of its discordance. Background, if you're not aware: it's the usual shonen bromance kind of story, with a fair bit of quasi-science-fiction/supernatural mixings, and plenty of the usual cliches. Two things about its development stuck in my head while reading. Hmm, make that three. I made it about halfway through the anime, then tried the manga, and quit about halfway through. While watching the anime, I also checked into the anime's development, and noted an unusual bit of info about the series' wrap-up (which happened prior to the story wrap-up, so there was the usual question of whether to do an anime-original ending). Note: the story is actually a three-way invention, from what I gather. I think, not sure, but I seem to recall the author is actually a brother-sister penname, who work jointly with an artist. That is, the penname gives credit to brother and sister, but apparently (why am I surprised) the only mention of author quotations act like it's just one guy. So, dunno what the sister does. Anyway.
I can't find where I came across this bit -- I think in one of the articles cited in the wiki entry. Apparently, the anime director suggested making Kazuki's relationship canonical (anime canon, that is) with his second, Juubei. (Their respective weaponry, threads and needles, even suggest the pairing... among the many, many other things that do, including their own dialogue.) The mangaka-author refused, saying that Kazuki already had a destined pairing, Ren Radou.
Then I got to that character's introduction in the anime, and discovered the character isn't even real. She's part of the 3D/holographic construct. Alright, it's one thing if there's a flesh-and-blood half to match with the flesh-and-blood (err, in context, that is) character, but I have major issues with a story-author who'd insist there's a pairing, and choose a pairing in which one character is a computer program. It'd be one thing if the author insisted it be left undefined, but it says a lot to me about the author's agenda if he'd choose this real/nonreal pairing over the damn-near-text of a real/real pairing. There's erasure, and then there's replacement that reaches the level of ridiculous.
The second bit was the mangaka-artist, who -- based on the copious amounts of ho-yay artwork -- has some serious yaoi fanboi leanings. Like, not even leanings. I'd say that tree fell over in the forest awhile back. Flat-out yaoi fanboi. But in the manga, in the chapter's end-notes, the mangaka-artist makes reference consistently (and by "consistently" I mean, "in pretty much every author's note") about how he wanted to "lighten up" the story or give it a bit more fun... and his only means of doing so is taking any female characters introduced and giving them double-D cups, anatomically painful-looking tiny waists, and a heaping of panty shots and cleavage.
Meanwhile, if the text itself were a main-female main duo, it'd be hitting every shoujo-action trope known. You've got the "can sense each other's feelings", the "constant calling of each other's names", you've even got the bad guys who have serious hard-ons for one or the other of the main duo, with the attendant implied (or sometimes outright) jealousy, alternating with smug assurance that the duo can't be broken apart.
And for every intensely "this is bromance, really" moment of deep emotion between the main duo, the artist throws in a post-story footnote of one of the two (usually Ban, I believe) surrounded by chicks and doing his best to get laid. But from my western eyes, it's the kind of "doing his best" that's got an edge of desperation akin to someone seriously, seriously self-denying. Like someone so far into the closet he's gone through the drywall and ended up in the apartment next door.
And the third thing? The artist makes a comment in his notes, in one of the early volumes, that he was interested in the story for Kazuki, because he'd always wanted to draw a male character who "looked like a girl" (or "could pass for a girl", can't recall now how he phrased it). The problem? I think the artist basically drew a girl, but removed the standard double-D breast part. Kazuki has hips. Like, hips as large as any of the girl characters, and shoulders as narrow as the girl characters.
Frankly, Kazuki doesn't look like a boy, at all. He looks like a, well, a woman whose shape and build says she should be a curvy thing, except her chest is completely flat. Or he looks like a boy whose triangle is completely upside-down, to the point of a slender kind of pear-shape. I know my share of androgynous people, and given the choice it's a look I prefer, but generally speaking, either you're going to see subtle tells that indicate the body's development during adolescence, or you're not going to see those tells at all. So a woman will still have proportions that indicate estrogen showed up along the way, though her body may be more slender/athletic. (Himiko Kudou, in Getbackers, is a good example.)
If you look at manga with more androgynous (by Western standards, I suppose) male characters, there's still the inverted triangle of shoulders broader than their hips, to some degree. So Kazuki... I guess you could say, he's got the wrong tells. To me, that's a failure of the artist, for not understanding the anatomical 'shape' of things. Basically, the visuals of Kazuki made me feel like the artist's unintentional message was: "(feminine) man" is just "woman without breasts". Or the more problematic version: a woman without breasts is automatically not-a-woman, ergo, a man.
The combination of those factors are what made me eventually give up on the series. It felt like I was being constantly hammered with these conflicting undertones. Here, these two main characters are totally life-partners, and we're going to hit you with every shoujo/romance cliche in the book to reinforce that impression. But wait, they're not gay, so now we'll slap you with the same characters being so TOTALLY and COMPLETELY and REGULAR-GUY in their HET SKIRT-CHASING footnotes. Just so you know, because their love is so, uh, not-gay. Also, this flat-chest girl-character is really a boy, even if we've also thrown in every shoujo/shonen romance cliche between
I get enough of that shit in other stories. I don't need to waste my time on a series that not only gives me that usual really-so-not-gay erasure shit, but does it with a massive heaping of T&A like we're living in some kind of closeted early-eighties horror story of suburban repressive and oppressive living.
Moving on, to Vampire Knight.
Yes, I know it's a total gothic send-up, and it's got vampires, and I have no idea why I like it so much. I put it down as one of my guilty pleasures, right up there with early afternoon naps and a secret envy of people who look good in hotpants as the kind of things you'll never hear me admit in person. I also am aware that the mangaka has professed that she actually ships the two male leads, which I find funny -- but also rather... curious. Given that in the anime, there are two different (and pivotal) scenes between the two male leads, the vampire and the vampire hunter. These are not illustrated in the manga, unless I ended up with scanned releases that exised those scenes. Oh, one scene is referenced as a flashback, except I could never find the first instance. The second, the manga version cuts to black. It's tell, and no show, and if I hadn't watched the anime, I probably would've been both baffled and stunned to find out, several volumes later, that Zero had drunk Kaname's blood, at least twice, and no one bothered to let me, the reader, in on this important detail.
I find that rather strange, in comparing the manga to the anime. Like, maybe the mangaka didn't think she could get away with (in LaLa's pages) that kind of homoerotic tension, but the anime knew their potential audience and was willing to make the implied-text explicit. (Well, explicit in the sense of showing the blood-drinking; the rest remains subtext, but it's really more of a rivalry/hatred kind of subtext.)
For that matter, the anime ends right where the manga really starts to get interesting. The anime really only covers the first few volumes, because the manga actually moves at an incredible clip through the storyline. High school setting, childhood friends, all the usual shoujo cliches, and then our presumed primary character -- Yuuki -- leaves the private social-experiment human/vampire school, we get a one-year timeskip, and then the story really kicks in.
I came across a post from one of the translators (of SGK scans, I believe) who observed that fundamentally, this isn't really shoujo in the usual way. Sure, Yuuki is a main character, but what drives the story, ultimately, is Kaname (the male vampire). Normally, a major definition of shoujo is that the story is the girl's story, but in Vampire Knight, it's really a story with three main leads. And of them, Kaname is the pivot; his actions are the point around which all the rest revolve, and his choices warp the story violently in one direction or another. The most recent chapters really exemplify that, with Kaname suddenly (and with no warning that I could see) apparently ditching his previous pacifist intentions and is now on, well, a killing spree. This torques the entire story (not in a bad way, but it does torque it out of its previous track).
Sure, a part of me feels like there was little warning, and at some points I wonder if the author is introducing conflict for the sake of conflict (with disregard for character history). Except Kaname's always been enigmatic enough that there is wiggle room for him to make an apparently-sudden change of direction. Part of the problem there is, oddly, the translations. When I could find chapters done by SGK, I nabbed them, because SGK (I think) is a one-person act... who really, really does translation proud. There are footnotes on at least every two out of three pages. Sometimes it's simple things, where it's not entirely clear that all these thought bubbles are such-and-such a character, so it's nice to have a note, somewhere, on the side, letting me know who's speaking. (It's not like english has a distinction between male and female "I" or "you" patterns as a signifier, after all.)
And sometimes, it's because the dialogue is colloquial in some way. Like a conversation where Yuuki refers to herself as "realizing she's just in the palm of Kaname's hand", or some such. Now, in English, we have the phrase "in the palm of your hand" but it usually implies manipulation to some degree (whether or not malicious), or at the very least, is somewhat synonymous with "wrapped around your finger". In the original, however, Yuuki is referencing the story of Monkey King and Buddha, where Monkey King challenged Buddha to go to the ends of the earth, mark the spot, and return, to demonstrate who's the most powerful. Monkey King travelled in massive leaps and bounds to the mountains at the edge of the world, peed off the highest peak, and returned... only to discover that he'd never left Buddha's palm (and had peed on one of Buddha's fingers, at that).
It has little to do with manipulation, and has everything to do with realizing that you're so incredibly out-classed, just by the very nature of your so-called opponent. And there's the aspect of thinking you're actually something pretty amazing, in your own right, only to cross the entirety of the world and discover you never left Buddha's palm.
While I guess there might be a way for a translator to put this in English and convey it (and it wouldn't be with use of the English colloquial "in the palm of your hand"), SGK's translator attempted it... and then put a nice long footnote in the side margin. Thing is, you don't realize how much you're missing in a story until you've learned to rely on a translator who takes the time to let you know what you're missing. Or, in some cases, to remind you about characters reappearing, and where you've seen them before.
Because the other thing Vampire Knight has is a massive cast of characters. Many of them showed up in cameos, here and there, unnamed, in the first few volumes -- and then reappeared as major players in the most recent volumes. The first two or three volumes, in the high school setting, is really a fake-out. You get past that, and suddenly you're knee-deep (and getting deeper) into major political, ambiguous, multi-meaning interactions with characters you've only seen once or twice before, drawn in the background or mentioned in passing. Having a translator willing to remind you politely that so-and-so first showed up in vol X, chapter Y, at such-and-such a party, really... really... helps.
Enough that when SGK went on hiatus, and another group's releases became available, it only took two chapters and I was utterly, completely, lost. It's right around what will probably be vol15 (ch69-73, based on the pattern of previous volumes' sizes), and some of those chapters, wow. I couldn't tell whether the mangaka had just totally ditched any kind of linear storytelling, or if half of it was flashbacks, or if there was supposed to be some kind of a connection between the myriad jump-cut scenes in the chapters, or what. The translation is adequate, but a little too literal to manage the political undercurrents and ambiguity that are getting layered into the story. Either you expand the dialogue in some way to contain the implied information encoded in the original language, or you provide footnotes. When there's neither, it's like reading a textual version of a D.Gray-man fight scene: you haven't the faintest clue what's going on.
I'm holding off on reading more VK, in hopes that SGK will start releasing again, and I can go back to getting my top-notch translator notes to help me remember who the hell is who in the cast of however many characters there are now...
Speaking of D.Gray-man.
I'd read to, uhm, about ch120 or so, I think, then watched the anime. Only recently did I pick up D.Gray-man the manga again, and wow, it really did get adaptation decay much worse than I'd originally realized. In the manga, Lenalee has her moments of transitional damsel, but she also gets a fair bit of straight-up shonen hero (who just happens to be female), including the beaten-down and powering-up. In the anime, well, it's overshadowed by all the episodes she has to spend crying uselessly (and the random filler episodes that always, always, cast her as the damsel to be rescued).
And I do love D.Gray-man, on some levels, because it plays with a lot of things that hit sweet spots for me. Okay, with failings on the way it hits some of those things, since I remain unimpressed with the fact that Cross Marian gets valourized, let alone a late-model retconning that I guess is supposed to give us 'insight' and to me amounts to nothing more than trying to rehabilitate a character whose actions were, without exception, nothing short of abusive. And then there's the way two different main characters (Lenalee and Kanda) are manipulated by story events -- or, in Kanda's case, not even that much -- into deciding on their own to fight for a cause that had previously given them every reason to be justified mass murderers in their own defense rather than sign up for that same abusive cause. Lenalee's backstory is horrifying, and Kanda's is simply horrific.
Lenalee, at least, gets put in the deliciously tense (story-telling-wise) moment of having to make a decision to support an abusive process simply because her family/friends lives are on the line. As a reader, I hated it; as a writer, I thought it was awesome, because it could provoke such unease. The Black Order had basically kidnapped Lenalee as a child, abusing her in the pursuit of forcing her into the position of an exorcist, and putting her through immense physical and emotional trauma. When she loses the ability to use the Black Order's weapon (a type of material/energy known as "innocence"), she feels incredibly free, and light, no longer weighed down by this role that had been forced upon her.
Then, due to circumstances arranged by the story and the bad guys taking out countless numbers of characters in a major attack, she chooses to walk back into that prison, re-accept the weapon, and come back stronger. She might be the one hope for tipping the scales in the good guys' favor, but that requires she not only accept, but condone, a process that had basically made her childhood a living hell.
To me, it reads like taking a decade-long torture victim, freeing them, and then putting them in the situation of having to choose that torture again (with major risk of death, this time), to save the ones who matter to them. It's an incredible burden, and Hoshino thankfully doesn't shy away from the emotional pain, tension, and uncertainty of such a choice, so it ends up being pretty powerful, too.
Thing is, Kanda gets nearly triple the chapter-time in his backstory, which is even more horrendous, since he didn't even have the (eventual) emotional support of a sibling to accompany him on his path. In fact, the closest thing he had, he was forced to kill. Yet, after being able to escape and written off for dead, he returns. He gets maybe a line or two, to explain his reasons, and that's it. Given the flow of the story, and the mangaka's obvious intention to mislead us for a bit (with the implication that Kanda is MIA, presumed dead), I can see why we didn't get at least a few pages of Kanda grappling with his decision. But still. His return is so deadpan (in-character for him, true) that it's not until he reveals his own motivations that it's possible to accept his apparent heel-turn. It's a weakness in the story, but it's one endemic to the way the author chose to tug on reader heart-strings.
All that said... damn, I have trouble following this series. I've become too spoiled, I think, by reading mangaka like Tito and Kishimoto and Watsuki, who can choreograph a fight-scene such that you can always tell at a glance, who's doing what, who's where, and what's going on. Not only can Hoshino still not choreograph a fight scene to save her life (and after two-hundred-plus chapters, wouldn't that be enough practice to start getting at least a little of the art?), her style has also subtly changed. It was somewhat consistent, then began evolving, and then has a definite and obvious shift somewhere around the start of Kanda's major arc. I'm chalking it up to a new assistant with a strong style that didn't quite flex enough to hold onto Hoshino's designs, which in turn then began influencing the rest of the team. (Now if only they'd do the same, for the fight scene parts...)
So not only do you have Hoshino's apparent dislike of bothering to draw intelligible fight scenes, you can't even tell which characters are which. At least, I can't. Allen's face-shape goes from the more oval, narrowed jawline that Hoshino had given him, to an almost roundish shape. Kanda does the same, as do a number of the other characters. Allen's hair also changes, in subtle ways. I'm left studying the images, trying to find clues as to which character is in the image. Just a hint, fer crying out loud.
At least with Tito, Kishimoto, Watsuki, and the other big mangaka-shonen names I can think of, there's attention to some kind of detail that lets you know -- if nothing else -- that this character, or these characters, are what you're seeing. You get a glimpse of Naruto's distinctive jacket, or the way he rolls up the bottom of his pants, or a flash of Sakura's skirt, or the jagged edge of Ichigo's hakama. Something that signals, it's this character.
Hoshino doesn't even do that -- it's like she figures, well, everyone in the Black Order wears this basic uniform (which curiously, she adapts and updates over the course of the series, in a way that reminds me of the Gundam franchise mid-series update as a way to push more toys). And then she draws just that basic uniform, and gives you a bit of hair, and some swirling motions. When I'm turning on the loupe just to see if there's a squiggle on the face of Allen's scar, it's pretty bad. (Especially since she, or her assistants, frequently leave off the scar in the fight scenes, as well as the large-enough-to-be-seen, even just partially, of the inverted star on his forehead.)
At least I'm not alone, in that. I dug up the wikia for D.Gray-man, hoping the chapter summaries would tell me what's going on. I mean, if I don't know who's winning or losing, how do I know whether to be upset, worried, scared, or hopeful? Unfortunately, the way the wikia's summaries are written... I'd say it's pretty clear their authors don't know, either. They seem to be guessing just as much as I am. Cripes.
Next: Amatsuki.
I wanted to get into this anime, I really did, but I couldn't. Too much adaptation decay with the female character. Most obvious instance: her breasts go from normal-sized to larger-than-normal. Okay, not quite GetBacker's double-D, but still. The manga, I'd read some of, set aside for watching the anime, and then never returned to. Trying again. Still not sure of it, but there are some parts that are just so unusual that I can only hope the mangaka has more waiting for me in the story, down the line. And I mean historically, sociologically, culturally unusual, like the notion of how modern people think versus how people thought before those modern categories and compartments were created.
Last: Di(e)ce.
Look, it's bromance done right. Or maybe I should say, it's bromance without GetBacker's kneejerk need to dismiss, ignore, gloss, or evade with no-really-we're-all-straight antics. Diece doesn't make apologies for its two main characters being two opposites who are still firmly each other's best friend. They rely on each other, and are attuned to each other, as much as any other pair of best friends, and while they don't go quite as far as GetBacker's "I can feel it when he hurts" text, the story dances close.
But it makes no apologies; instead, it acts as though this is the natural state of affairs for a truly strong friendship. In a way, that makes the unbelievable (another quasi Lord of the Flies or Battle Royale notion of games to the death with two friends forced to fight) more accessible, because it creates a solid emotional grounding. And, unlike GetBackers, the author/artist doesn't dismiss or deny this emotional grounding, let alone mock it. Diece's mangaka respects it, as the pivotal friendship we must accept, as readers, to believe the pain the two characters face at being forced to oppose each other.
...and that should be enough for now. Back to catching up on Amatsuki, and at some point, I really will finally finish Kekkaishi, and catch up on Nurarihyon no Mago. Well, once I finish two other major projects on my plate, and there's always the kitchen...
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 08:13 am (UTC)Vampire Knight is one of my guilty pleasures too.
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 05:53 pm (UTC)Also, the cast of Amatsuki is quite large, and given a lot of the historical references (this being possibly the first manga I'd ever read that comes with a bibliography!), it really needs a translation-team willing to take the time to provide several pages of footnotes. The team that did the first few chapters are fairly good (not quite SGK-levels of footnotes, but more than average), but there are times when I do wish I could get a reminder of who's who. The cast is just that big, and the plot is clearly that thick.
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Jan 2012 06:00 pm (UTC)As for Ruka and Cain, I thought Ruka's motivation is that she's totally in love with Kaname and Cain's is that he's totally in love with Ruka...and wants to make sure she doesn't get screwed over by her devotion to Kaname. But like I said, I've missed out on the last handful of chapters, so maybe something happened to change that. :|b
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Date: 28 Jan 2012 05:23 am (UTC)And then the manga happens and, post-releasing Yuuki's memories and living with her, he's come to the conclusion that his pureblood endgame needs to get back on track, because all purebloods are universally unsafe and manipulative assholes -- a realization brought on by Sara killing Ouri-sama as well as Kaname's own, uh, not entirely safe intentions towards Yuuki.
In the process of getting rid of purebloods he intends to pave the way for Yuuki's rise to power by both destroying the worst resistance and setting himself up as a villain for all vampires to unite against. Hence taking credit for Sara's kills in order to be the greater villain and simultaneously attempt to drive Yuuki away from him. Though he's not above manipulating other people into doing the dirty work for him (re: setting up that Touma kid to be killed by Kaien); doesn't matter how the purebloods die, just that they do.
I think it's also possible though that setting Yuuki up as leader is meant to be a temporary measure to ensure her safety and Kaname's actual ultimate goal with regards to her is to commit suicide by sealing away her purebloodedness again. Or something.
So yes that is my theory... A bit light on the details but I haven't actually spent much time figuring this out so I was also trying to fit together Kaname's entire plan, not just his past few chapters plans. Hopefully it hangs together anyway. :Db
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 05:01 pm (UTC)But really, I think what defeated me in the end about GetBackers was the fighting. All right, it might also be that I failed to love Ban and Gingi. Still, there were background characters I might have become sufficiently interested in to go forward with if it hadn't been for all the time when, from my admittedly ignorant perspective, nothing was happening on the screen/page. I sometimes think that there must be a set of aesthetic conventions, or cultural background, that's a basic toolkit for understanding what's really going on in these sequences, and that I'm bored by them purely because I don't have that knowledge: in effect, what I get is long sequences in a language I don't understand and for which I can't get useful subtitles. But I don't know where to look for that background, or how to even phrase an intelligible question about it, so I continue to be lost.
Which I whine about here only because I've seen references to D.Grey-man all over, and in many ways it sounds like something I'd like. Only, if you can't follow the fighting, and there's a sufficient amount of it for ability to read and appreciate it is important, what hope is there for me?
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 06:15 pm (UTC)There's probably an entire discussion buried in there, about how the only way to get to see a feminine-like character win a battle, in the average shonen, is if it's a man with feminine qualities. That a feminine woman, or even a masculine woman, will still be set up as the losing and/or rescuee character. So if you want anything that codes feminine, your only choice is the feminine-male, because boy automatically equals "will win fights" and the trappings are just for show.
As for the fights... eh, GetBackers fights are standard shonen-fare. They're about par with Watsuki (Rurouni Kenshin); of the various shonen stories, I'd say Bleach and Naruto are two of the best for giving you a fairly good idea of what's going on, in just one explosive image. For artistic flair that can overshadow the fight, look no farther than Blade of the Immortal, but that guy's gotten a little better. GetBackers, though, is neither the best nor the worst for its fights, just whaddaya call it, workable. I think dealing with illustrated fights is a matter of practice: you learn what to look for, in a quick skim, to get the impression intended, extract the information needed, and you flip the page. In a series like Naruto, or Kenshin, or their ilk, a chapter that consists of a fight is a chapter I can read in about
fiveten minutes (adjusting for not reading at my admittedly inhuman speed). You're not meant to slow down; you're meant to zip past it, only getting a bare impression.With the exception of Blade of the Immortal (and I suspect D.Grayman) most fights aren't drawn to be gorgeous centerpieces of artwork. And I think BotI does it better because it keeps the movement in there, so you're looking at a kind of modern brushwork. D.Grayman's fight scenes are definitely illustrated meticulously (if in a lot of the wrong ways), but still static compared to the average shonen scene, which really does rely more on blurred movement, swirls, and just enough information to let you know who's who and what's what.
Or maybe I should say: the best shonen fight-choreography shows you the steps between the movements, while the worst shows you the stopping points. Hmm. Think of it like this: you know that scene in the Matrix, when Trinity does that (now-parodied everywhere) leap kick at the police officers? The part that got the slow-motion camera-whatever CGI effect? A good shonen fight scene will show you her kick -- either the moment of her being poised in mid-air (where it's obvious already what'll happen in the next second) OR it'll show you the split-second after that, just as her foot touches the chest of a cop. So she's still "in kick", but you're getting a bit more of the result. Next frame: showing the cop against the wall. You saw the kick (cause) and then the knocked-out cop (result), and you can immediately conclude that Trinity kicked this guy out. Alright, next page, next cause/effect.
Hoshino (D.Gray-man) really is a gorgeous illustrator, but she just can't seem to get what it is about a fight that needs to be illustrated. I don't get why, although I've heard she hates to illustrate fight scenes, and at times, it really does feel like she's just being recalcitrant for the sake of, I don't know, ego, whatever. Because to describe her fight scenes in contrast with the Matrix example... maybe this'll make sense. Who I'd expect to illustrate is in paren.
1. Cops burst down door (Naruto, Bleach)
2. Trinity stands up, facing cops (D. Gray-man)
3. Trinity launches into kick (Bleach)
4. Trinity's foot lands on cop's chest (Naruto)
5. Cop goes down, Trinity lands on top of him (D. Gray-man)
6. Cop is seen laying down, knocked-out (Bleach, Naruto)
7. Trinity turns to face cops (if she says anything, then we're in Bleach)
8. Other cops leap on top of Trinity (Naruto)
9. Major pileon like bad 40s cartoons (D. Gray-man)
10. Trinity throws off all the cops (Bleach, Naruto)
11. Trinity runs (D.Gray-man)
See what I mean? It's like you've got to read between the lines, but that's awfully hard when the lines you do get aren't always illustrated so clearly. It's a real pity, because D.Grayman -- outside its pathetic, if gorgeous, fight scenes -- has some really phenomenal aspects. It does a few twists and turns right up there with Kuroshitsuji, in terms of playing with the darkness.
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 07:39 pm (UTC)Even though I'm still not very far in D. Gray-Man, that is my number one favorite thing about it. Lenalee gets to save people.
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Date: 26 Jan 2012 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 26 Jan 2012 08:00 pm (UTC)And this is the part that I think goes to the very heart of my bafflement. I can wrap my mind around that much (and it's why I don't mind manga fight scenes as much as I mind the anime counterparts), and usually I can at least work out enough of what's going on to be able to follow the plot. But where I'm often baffled is, what am I supposed to be getting out of these scenes, emotionally or aesthetically?
It's the same narrative issue I often have with sex scenes, in a way. It's like, sometimes they illustrate something about the nature of a relationship, or the characters themselves, that's best shown in this particular context. They're not just there for the porn; if they also manage to be hot that's a good thing (usually), but it's not the only thing. Where it is the only thing, I (and I suspect many others) tend to get bored and skip forward to where things start happening again. And for me at least, it's pretty much the same with fight scenes. Sometimes they can be so beautiful that I don't mind watching them for themselves alone, but I find that's pretty rare. Things like the big fight between Sebastian and Grell in the Kuro Jack the Ripper arc work for me because there's so much more going on in that sequence than the chainsaw-versus-fists and tailcoat routine. There's all the character development, for both characters; there are the hints about backstory; there's the whole Romeo and Juliet riff. There's story, and plenty of it. I know why I'm being shown all of this, and I'm not wondering when it's going to be over so that we can get back to the story. The part where I wonder when it will be over so we can get back to something interesting is all Viscount Druitt. Which may say something right there about my usual reaction to fight sequences -- as I write this I realize that my feelings about Druitt are identical to my feelings about the GetBackers fights.
But usually, when I see anime or manga fight scenes, I'm looking at something that feels to me more like a gratuitous porn scene. GetBackers was a good example because it was filled with them. There would be whole episodes that seemed to be, basically, Kazuki walks through that fortress place, being randomly challenged by enemies. When one appears a fight ensues; the fight seems to consist of the display of exotic magical weapons coupled with dialogue that goes, "Colorful name: Attack!" "Just as colorful name: defense and counterattack!" "Second level specialty of my family attack!"
And so on, and on, for half or more of each episode. There might have been some narrative information embedded in all of this, but I missed just about all of it if there was, and there certainly wasn't the kind of narrative value that you see in the Kuro fight sequences. Or in things like most of the fights in the original FMA anime (I can't speak to Brotherhood, having bounced off it, and I'm still reading the manga). FMA could give us entire episodes that were fights, like the early one on the train, or episodes that centered around them, like the duel between Ed and Roy, but in each and every one of them the fighting was there for something. Getbackers, and other things I've tried to watch, though . . .
But the fact that these scenes get written and drawn or animated argues that they do in fact serve some storytelling function, and that people are enjoying them rather than skipping past them, skimming them to find out who won, or getting bored and wandering off. Which in turn suggests to me that the issue is me not them, and that I'm missing something here. I just don't know what, or where to look for it.
On the other hand, if you're skimming through these chapters as they come by, maybe I'm not doing it wrong after all. Maybe it really is just like porn, and I turn out not to be wired for loving action scenes for themselves alone.
no subject
Date: 26 Jan 2012 10:35 pm (UTC)In Naruto, like in Bleach, and most of the fairly reliable shonen series, the fight scenes cover several developments at once. First, they're a status check -- they show where the character (or antagonist) is, skill-wise. That's usually the first few moves of the fight, showing us that the hero only has X and is simultaneously (often) making the assumption that the antag has Y. Second, you get the revelation (done well and done badly), which is, "ahah, you didn't know I'm actually left-handed!" kind of reveal. Antags get this most often, like an ace up the sleeve. If the hero gets this moment, it's usually a moment of awesome (Edward gets this a fair bit, in FMA).
The shorter fights may only cover the first two steps, especially if the fight's really just a ramp-up to a bigger one. And is almost always the pattern of a fight where the hero loses, since this leaves him to rise to it and win, next time. What you get in the meantime, then, is the hero asking why his opponent is fighting. The message is that you can't really beat someone until you know what they really want (so you can deny it, or find another way to grant it, or whatever). It's the strategy part.
And in a longer, pivotal fight, that strategy happens mid-fight, which is where you get the revelations about motivation -- why the guy fights. In mediocre shonen, it's repetitious -- "I fight to protect those precious to me" blah blah blah. Or from the antag: "I fight for revenge!" or whatever. Better-quality shonen tries to vary that up, or to have the hero recognize a greater/alternate motivation. D Grayman does this, by having Allen's motivation expand in certain pivotal fights -- that he's not just protecting people, but wanting to save them, and then wanting to save his opponents, and then protecting his opponents. Allen's motivations (his overall scope, you could say) expand, little by little, through each fight.
Sometimes it's the best opportunity to gray up the opponent, too, when the antag expresses a reason that quite valid. The really good fight scenes in shonen series -- and Naruto's been fairly decent at this one -- present antag-motivations that the hero actually agrees with, or at least can empathize with. (I'm thinking in particular of the main finale fight with Pain, in which the antag reveals his family were bystanders slaughtered in a war engineered by Naruto's own village.)
Basically, a fight amounts to: A wants this, B wants that, and only one will get their way. The "fight" aspect is just a lot of eyecandy and exciting illustration, on what is fundamentally (at least, in well-written fights) a conflict like any others. A fight that resolves without a resolution of the motivations is a hollow fight -- and on this score, D.Grayman does really, really well, because it doesn't leave stuff unresolved. Or, at least, if it does, it amps it up with higher stakes for what it'll take to resolve the situation in the next go-round. Ah, and D.Gray-man also ranks quite high in this "raising stakes" because Hoshino is unafraid to slaughter a fair number of the secondary characters.
Bleach, Naruto, GetBackers, and many others I've watched aren't quite so brutal; anyone who 'appears' to be dead probably isn't. They may be damaged, but they'll pull through. (If they don't rise mid-fight to show they were just, idk, faking it.) That reduces the stakes considerably -- but Naruto, at least, makes up for it by giving the opponents valid and believeable reasons for fighting (well, usually) -- outside the "because I'm evil that's why" nonsense. GetBackers... well, it seemed like a lot of antags amounted to something even less: "because I'm being paid!" ...and that's not even evil, so much as mercenary. It doesn't feel quite as personal, so there's rarely a personal revelation, because the opponents are just getting a paycheck. They don't have anything on the line, to reveal.
I skim because I read very, very, very fast. (I think my last count was around 800wpm.) So you might not want to take me as a good example, but I can say that most of what I'm reading for in fight scenes are three things: dialogue to tell me who's revealing what, quick side-flashes (who else, around, is doing what, which is where you can get foreshadowing of one side's rallying or setting up a trap), and then a quick skim across the main panel, just to make sure I know who still has the upper hand.
Obviously, Hoshino's D.Gray-man is mediocre on the second (because it's damn hard to tell, sometimes, how these side characters are related to and/or placed respective to, the main fight) and she pretty consistently falls down on the third one. So I have to rely on dialogue, and lean heavily on the aftermath to figure out what just happened. It annoys me, sometimes, but the story keeps drawing me back in, so I put up with it. Doesn't mean I won't complain, though.