empathy and sympathy; initial reaction to Saiyuki

[edenfalling]

I have nothing to say about the shooting at Virginia Tech, not really. It was terrible, of course, and unfair, and tragic, and yet... and yet things like that happen every day, somewhere, to someone. Life isn't fair. Life isn't safe. There are no guarantees. We all die sooner or later, and nobody can predict who'll fall into which category.

...

Empathy and sympathy are not the same thing at all, you know? I'm good at empathy, but sympathy is a lot harder for me to engage. I tend to need a direct connection to make it past the mind and into the gut.

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On a completely different topic, there was a big storm in the northeast, starting on Sunday night. Monday was gray and snowy-sleety-icky all day long up here, and the public library finked out and closed early. This left me with nothing to do in the evening, so, in a brilliant chain of logic, I went to the mall and bought vols. 2-9 of Saiyuki. I'm currently in the middle of vol. 7.

I like this story.

I'd kind of subconsciously avoided reading Saiyuki for years because Cat showed me a few episodes of the anime way back in... 2001, I think? Anyway, the anime is awful -- hysterically awful, Bad Action Movie Night awful -- which kind of put me off the whole thing. Fortunately, fanfiction and some scanned artwork (I particularly remember one picture of Hakkai holding an orange...) changed my mind. :-)

Comments

[doire]

And it isn't even awful in the same way, though it is all pretty much awful.

Doesn't stop me buying Hong Kong bootlegs though. Not watching them, just buying them.

Do you know radiofreebanri? It's a great way to keep up-to-date.

[edenfalling]

How exactly does radiofreebanri work? Do you have to add the lj interest and friend them in order to get the images behind the links they post, or am I just on a bad computer right now?

[doire]

That's it. You need to leave a comment asking Banri to friend you back as well. That's not automatic, and there may be delays, but asking is the way to start.

There have been technical problems, but I think that was to do with hitting LJ limits, which have been increased since, so things should be better now.

[yuenoclow.livejournal.com]

I can understand not being able to feel sympathy when you don't have a connection to something. I'm kinda like that too. Unfortunately, I have friends who go to Tech, so that was really scary... They're all okay, though, thankfully.

I know what you mean about the anime! I'd read the manga first, which I loved, so I went and checked out the anime... I couldn't even make it through the first episode, I was all "Make it stop, make it *stop*!" I'm not sure what annoys me more, Sanzo's "magic bullets" or the Buffy the Vampire Slayer-style vampire dusting effect for the youkai when they die. Ugh...

[edenfalling]

I'm glad your friends are okay.

Re the Saiyuki anime: Cat somehow managed to find the story under the crap, and made me watch the episode (episodes?) with Rikudo/Shuei and Sanzo's Tragic Past (TM) as an attempt to convince me there really was something worth caring about, and I think she also showed me the beginning of the Chin Yisou arc, but... I just couldn't get past the terrible animation. And none of the characters came off well at all -- they were kind of caricatures of themselves, and very irritating caricatures at that. *shrug*

The manga is worlds better.

[ibr-remote.livejournal.com]

So glad you changed your mind about Saiyuki, the manga series. I agree that a lot of the TV studio's episodes (material not found in Minekura's manga version), plus the TV series' overall quality control, really disaapoints. It can be obvious that different teams of animators were involved, because the characters would look different. Which really doesn't do Minekura's art nor story-telling any justice. Please enjoy Saiyuki Reload series next !

[edenfalling]

The action scenes were particularly badly done, IIRC, which is weird since action scenes are one of the things that often improves in the transition from still image to moving pictures.