Books

A Kirin's Life

Nick — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 02:06:38 -0500

Demon ChildI had finished The Twelve Kingdoms Volume Two: Sea of Wind novel a while back, and I have to say that I've enjoyed it1. Like most books, it goes further into Taiki's thoughts and experiences than the anime does. Too bad it doesn't have Takasato's experiences in modern Japan, which is told in Demon Child, the actual first book by Fuyumi Ono in the Twelve Kingdoms world before Ono was encouraged to build a fantasy world. Unfortunately, it looks like Demon Child was released by a different publisher than her other Twelve Kingdom novels, so it's likely Tokyopop was unable to license it. Fortunately, there are always fan translations 2.

In other news, I did stumble on what would be a very good t-shirt...

1. As expected
2. Hey! That Prologue is very familiar after reading Sea of Wind.

New Twelve Kingdoms News: Book 2 and a Surprise!

Nick — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:29:27 -0600

Well, I've been holding on to some good news when it came to this franchise, but I'll get to that later...

For now, look at this:

The second volume of the Twelve Kingdoms novel, titled "Sea of Wind", is due on March 11, 2008, only a few weeks away!

Here's some links on where to get it:

This is going to be about Taiki's journey in the land of Tai. Should be interesting to read, as his story didn't get a big chunk of the anime series to get told.

Now for the big news, it's this blurb on that I found on livejournal:

New 12K story on the way
Big news via the Juuni Kokki Database:

A new Juuni Kokki story by Ono Fuyumi is scheduled to appear in the upcoming (2/27) issue of yom yom, a Japanese fiction magazine.

Title:「丕緒の鳥」 (Hisho no Tori)
Length: 90 pages

~~No further info as yet.~~ Edit: Mainichi News reports that the story will be set in Kei. (Thanks, nachte.)

Very good news! It's sounding like Fuyumi Ono might be starting to write again in the Twelve Kingdoms universe! Hopefully, she is able to complete the main story and the anime can be finally completed (with a real budget would be nice...). Granted, the story that came out in yom yom sounded like a one-off story that doesn't continue the current cannon, but it is still good news for fans of the Twelve Kingdoms novels and anime!

Anime News Network holds an interview with Fuyumi Ono, author of The Twelve Kingdoms!

Nick — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:09:48 -0500

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2007-03-18/fuyumi-ono-author-of-the-twelve-kingdoms

I haven't read all the way through it yet, and I'm still shaking with excitement. Here's a teaser that should make waves, though:

The last novel, so far, was released in 2001. Do you plan to revisit the world of The Twelve Kingdoms and write more stories for it?

Yes, I do.

I'll do an update later once I'm able to digest it all!

Courtesy of a tip from 12K-TP The Twelve Kingdoms Fansite forums!

The Twelve Kingdoms - Initial observations

Nick — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:50:26 -0500

I was originally going to wait until I get an afternoon where I'm not so tired, but I was reading through chapter 3 of The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow when I stumbled on a passage in there that made me get up an immediately want to post on it. I've actually already read the fan-translation of this book a while ago, but I never really read it carefully since it was on screen rather than the book form that I'd prefer to read novels in. But first, my initial observations and impressions (warning, spoilers of the anime version ahead, too!).

First, a few differences in the translation of the novel compared to the anime. One of the very first things I noticed is the name of main protagonist in the book is spelled "Yoko", while in the official DVDs of the anime, it's spelled "Youko". Truthfully, I really care little about this difference, but it is one (Interestingly, the original fansubs of the anime spelled her name as "Yoko". In terms of consistency, I'll refer to her as "Yoko". Other names will have the same treatment too, where I'll use the spelling in the book). There's several other names that are spelled differently, such as "Takkee" (in the anime, that was spelled Takki). Also, I do notice that proofreading of the book could have been better, as I've noticed several grammar errors or plain typos reading through the first 2.5 chapters.

Second of all, the novel is much more violent than the anime. Extremely violent; in the first two chapters alone, there's already rather detailed scenes of dismemberment and decapitations. In fact, the Kochou that attacks Yoko in Japan, the one that she dispatches in a single stroke in the anime, in the book she defeats it by cutting off its foot, running it through with her sword at least once, completely severing one of its wings, and, finally, by decapitating it, in the process covering Yoko in blood and gore. She reacts to this the way I'd expect any average teenager girl would react to such a scene: she vomits into the ocean.

As for the actual storyline difference between the book and the anime, the most obvious is that in the book, Sugimoto only has a very minor part in the first chapter and does not come with Yoko to the other world, and Asano does not exist at all. In fact, in the book, Yoko goes to an all-girls school, while it's apparent the anime has her going to a co-ed school. I find this to be an important distinction; Yoko in the book was actually split out into the three characters, Yoko, Sugimoto, and Asano, in the anime. This is partly to externalize Yoko's thoughts to survive (In the book, she actually has to make the choice to steal from Takkee for survival, while in the anime, it was Sugimoto's insistence). The result, though, is that Yoko is much more passive in the anime than in the book.

The final observation, the one that pushed me to post something about the book, was about the technological development of the Twelve Kingdoms. On the 12K-TP The Twelve Kingdoms Fansite forums in the past, I and others have made the observation that the Twelve Kingdom's technological level is quite behind our world is partly because of the lack of resources, such as oil. Imagine the grin I had when I read the following passage in Chapter 3 of The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow:

The land of Kou was also much poorer than the world Yoko knew. There were no automobiles, of course, and no gas or electricity. She hadn't even seen any plumbing or waterworks of any kind. She had initially though it was because the civilization here was lagging behind that of her own, but from speaking with Takkee, she had realized this was not the case. It seemed that they simply lacked ready resources like oil and coal that had made industrialization possible in Yoko's world.

I also would think the lack of offensive wars would also retard technological advances in many ways. These would basically be wars that would expand a country's territory at the expense of another. In the world of the Twelve Kingdoms, emperors are expressly prohibited from doing this and may suffer the wrath of the heavens for attempting to do this. Hence, there's little need for navies to conquer and maintain foreign colonies (and the nautical and shipbuilding improvements that would filter down for merchant ships).

Well, back to reading. I'm actually finding the book is indeed much more detailed than the anime!

Jinto's ego

Nick — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:17:42 -0500

I've been reading alot more books these days. I guess that's a good thing, even if these novels are actually official translations of Japanese books of which the anime adaptations rank among my favorites. Some of the stuff I've been reading lately include the Berserk graphic novel, The Twelve Kingdom novel (which I have more to say about in another post), and I'm awaiting for the next Kino no Tabi book scheduled to be released in June. But what I want to mention was some things I've observed in Crest of the Stars 2: A Modest War.

Will at Criminally Weird has already touched on some of the observations I had, especially in the attitudes of the characters. And especially with Lafiel and Jinto being forced into anime cliche early on in the animated series. I guess it's because it's much easier to develop a unique character in print form than in animated or even live-action form, there's seem to be a loss of this element during the adaptation to the screen.

What I really noticed after reading the first three chapters (about a quarter of the way through) of Crest of the Stars 2 is Jinto's ego; essentially, the punishment it endures to be saved by someone who is younger, female, and seemingly unflappable in battle! Never mind that he apparently likes this Lafiel, but would probably, at this point, not admit to that. This is a side of Jinto that never existed in the anime, and it results in some irrational outbursts from him and some back-and-forth bickering between Jinto and Lafiel in the novel. Truthfully, I prefer this Jinto over the "nice-guy" anime Jinto. He's really experiencing a culture shock, and produces one of my favorite scenes that I don't remember ever making it into the anime:

"How are you not freaking out over this?" Jinto demanded. "I mean, you blow a fuse at every little thing I say."

The outer edges of Lafiel's eyebrows rose in perfect unison.

"See? I speak and you get mad!"

"Does my composure really bother you that much?"

"No."

"Then what's your problem?"

"Well, it's . . ." Jinto wasn't really sure. Why did Lafiel's calmness unnerve him so completely? The more he thought about it, the more he realized it was his problem, not hers.

Not only did Lafiel's reaction create an amusing situation where Jinto's statement came true, we are also able to peer into Jinto's thoughts about why he's so agitated. The paragraph after this exchange that I didn't include actually reveals why he is this way.

One other observation was how much a certain scene in the anime was played out. It was the scene where Jinto, after just being forced through the vacuum of space when he and the Lyuk Raika (the old man who was Baron Febdash's lander father) escaped from their prison into Lafiel's shuttle. Here, in the anime, Jinto imagines Lafiel running from the cockpit to embrace him in a rather memorable scene, while in the novel, it only got a single sentence to signify it! I always thought that scene in the anime seemed a bit, sudden and dramatic for a dream sequence, but I realize that Jinto's feelings for Lafiel aren't often played out in the early part of the anime, where as in the novel, since much of it is from the perspective of Jinto, this is expressed in much more smaller and subtler ways throughout the first novel and so far in the second novel (up to chapter 3).

Well, I guess the phrase "the book is better" is indeed true in this case. I guess it shouldn't be so much of a surprise, really.

"We have your preorder"

Nick — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:45:02 -0600

That's what I heard this morning from an unexpected phone call from the local Barnes & Noble bookstore. But when I heard what they were holding for me, it seemed that nothing else mattered at the time.

I know what you're thinking, "What the heck are you talking about, Nick?"

I'm talking about this book, which is sitting on the desk right next to me:

More will come later, but I have to head out!

UPDATE: More pics!

Hopefully I can find some time to read this book soon!

UPDATE: It seems that many people think that the book looks big. I guess that's because I don't have anything to compare to for perspective. Hopefully, the following picture will give a better idea of the size of this book:

In terms of height and width, the book isn't any bigger than the normal manga book size. If you have one of the Twelve Kingdoms DVD Boxsets, one of those boxsets is about the size of the book.

The One Month Countdown

Nick — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Only another month until the first volume of Fuyumi Ono's novel The Twelve Kingdoms is released in English in the U.S.. This series of young-adult novels seemed to be widely popular in Japan and spawned a rather popular anime series (I've heard it got several re-runs in Japan. Re-runs are not something that Japanese television does all that often from what I understand...).

The novel will be available on Amazon.com, Right Stuf, Barnes & Noble, and Booksamillion.com.

A pre-release review of The Twelve Kingdoms novel

Nick — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 18:56:08 -0600

A review by Kimberly Pauley of "The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow" shows an extremely favorable response to the first novel:

Okay, this has already turned into quite a long review and I know that I have left out huge gobs of information. I haven’t talked about the mythology of the lands or the battles that Yoko has to face, or what the journey is really like. I haven’t described to you the grueling tasks that Yoko has to face or any of the history of other “foreigners” that have arrived. But, I have to leave some things for you to discover on your own.

And this book is an excellent discovery. Yoko is an admirable heroine: conflicted, confused, and honest. She is both weak and strong at the same time. The lands of the Twelve Kingdoms create an interesting and well-developed fantasy-world that readers (if you’re anything like me) will eat up. This is not your typical sword & sorcery fantasy by any means.

Long live the King!

Nick — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:01:26 -0600

After a long period of time, I've finally finished Kino no Tabi. What a nice read, and it ends well with "Coliseum", which in the anime was the only multi-episode story. Indeed, it is the longest in the book, and works well as a stopping point for this book. I can't wait for the next one!

Coliseum

This story was rather heavily changed when it is adapted into the anime. In the book, the guards of the city are much more ruthless and much less respectful of Kino. In addition, we don't see much of the King in the book; he's left to be solely to be a character in a bullet-proof glass chamber in the stands. Still, the theme of revenge and justice plays out. Essentially, because Kino was trapped, she was forced to interfere with the affairs of the kingdom to get out. Not that she exactly minded this, though.

Shizu, the exiled prince who came to take revenge on his father, gets much less exposure in the book. And the most amazing thing was shown at the end: a talking dog! Hermes, the talking motorbike, is amazed by this! Though he apparently doesn't like the outspoken canine...

Epilogue

I found it quite amusing when Hermes inferred that he's unhappy because he's not moving, when in the previous chapter, he was complaining that Kino was driving much too fast! This 3-page epilogue makes a bit of a circle with the prologue, though instead of Kino asking herself why she travels, it's Hermes that asks her.

Nick's Impressions

I really liked reading through these stories. They were fun, dark, lighthearted, disturbing, and thought-provoking. I'm really looking forward to the next volume of the novel which is set to be released on February 13, 2007. I did find it interesting that TOKYOPOP had changed the order of the stories in the English release. I don't know if it's any better or worse than the original order, or that it even really matters. Either "Coliseum" or "The Land of Peace" are both powerful enough stories to be a good stopping point for the book, in my eyes. Besides, since each story is largely self-contained (other than the two protagonists), it really isn't a big deal.

I can't wait for the next book to come out!

A Lifetime of Working and Peace Through Sacrifice

Nick — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:33:05 -0600

Next up are two rather different stories. The first one is a extremely short tale about Kino and Hermes meeting three men working on a rail line. The second is perhaps one of the more disturbing episodes featured in the anime. Both were far too quick reads.

Three Men on the Rails

This very short story is apparently about three guys that work for fifty years to end up cleaning a rail. Ok, more accurately, the first guy cleans the rails, the second guy dismantles the rail, and the third guy reassembles it. All three do this without knowing about the other three. All three work because they "have" to support their families. And forget stuff like the fact that they somehow have enough food to last all those years without leaving their jobs (I assume they sleep at night). Ironically enough, they all ask Kino where she's going as she leaves them. This story really seems to bring out the pointlessness of working just for work's sake.

The Land of Peace

Out of all the stories in the anime, the one that came from this story is probably the most disturbing of them all. It is about a very peaceful city. A city that up until 15 years ago was in a long-running continuous war with a nearby city. How they did achieve and maintain that peace? Well, the answer isn't truthfully anything mysterious, but I'll let the anime or book answer that for the reader.

What I will say is this tale really brings out the need of a scapegoat for people. Something where people's competitive spirit, animosity, and brutality can all be released, to paraphrase from the museum curator in the story. And this is something that is no less true in the real world today, it seems, than it does in the fiction of the book.

One last note, this story is one of the few times I've seen Kino get close to angry so far. She is human, after all.