The Old School Otaku Lounge

At one point I thought ONLY YOU was my favorite Urusei Yatsura movie, but on reflection I think BEAUTIFUL DREAMER actually takes the prize. (my review) http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2012/11/u ... fully.html

I do like her work, favorites are Maison Ikkoku and UY; I found my returns diminished quickly with Ranma 1/2 and I never was interested in Inu-Yasha.

The cool thing about Inu-Yasha, to me anyways, is that it's like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign set in ancient Japan. The premise gets stretched a bit too thin, however, because that small jewel gets broken into so many shards that they must search for. There is no way there could be that many shards, because the series went on for too long.

I think the justified nerdrage directed at Takahashi is due to her works since the UY/MI days and her bizarre reluctance for any closure in her series. A wedding between Ranma and Akane is implied, from what I understand (I never got that far in the manga), but it never happens. Apparently in Inu Yasha, they never do accumulate all of the shards of that jewel, even though the sum of its parts must be greater than the original somehow. I mean, if you're going to finish the series, just finish it already! Quit stringing us along with no closure!

Apparently, this year marks the 35th anniversary of Takahashi-san's work.
Animax is celebrating as such --- http://iei.jp/goods_html/9089_animax.html?animax

greg wrote:Alex, I have the UY movie "Beautiful Dreamer" on LaserDisc.

That's so funny --- Beautiful Dreamer was the only UY movie I couldn't finish watching 'cause the disc from GEO was scratched (grrrrr!!)

Net-Lex wrote:By the way, which of Takahashi-san's character designs is everyone's favorite?

I'll have to go with Lum --- which, being a heterosexual male, requires little to no explanation.

My favorite character is yusaku godai from maison ikkoku. You probably can tell from my handle i am big fan of MI. Yusaku reminded me so much of me that I feel in love with the character. I have been looking for my kyoko for a long time.

llj wrote:Takahashi is a great manga artist to study if you are a budding comic artist. Clear, concise layouts--you never have trouble trying to figure out what's going on visually.

llj I agree. I am in the process of learning to draw this year; and, I want to reacquire Maison Ikkoku trades sometime later this year. I am using the youtuber "Sycra" drawing method to aid my learning path.

greg wrote: I think the justified nerdrage directed at Takahashi is due to her works since the UY/MI days and her bizarre reluctance for any closure in her series. A wedding between Ranma and Akane is implied, from what I understand (I never got that far in the manga), but it never happens. Apparently in Inu Yasha, they never do accumulate all of the shards of that jewel, even though the sum of its parts must be greater than the original somehow. I mean, if you're going to finish the series, just finish it already! Quit stringing us along with no closure!

Say what you want about Tomino and his endings, he gives you all the closure you can handle. I actually do like the open ended nature of her work though, in a weird way comparing her to someone like Tomino is fitting, I think. A Tomino series is incredibly well planned and paced, with a definite story structure and ending. Takahashi's series are very free form and sporadic, it could end next week or it could end ten years from now, and even when it ends it's never over. I can only handle so much Takahashi at a time, same thing with Tomino, it's nice to have variety, I don't think one is inherently a better way of telling a story. But, some people just need closure, darn it all.

Takahashi's work is like The Simpsons or Archie comics. They are sitcoms and you probably shouldn't be looking for an end to them. Since the sitcom format is the antithesis to what anime/manga fans expect out of anime/manga (grandiose serials that end grandiosely), it's no surprise why she's more popular with casual fans and non-otaku than the nerd brigade.

You are right, and I am perfectly fine with that. It's just that if she ends the series, shouldn't there just be an actual ending? Inu Yasha had its ending set forth in the first episode or so: their objective was to collect all of the shards of that jewel thingy. With Ranma, will they get married or not? With the Simpsons, there really is no objective implied whatsoever. (I don't even know if that show is still going on. the Simpsons movie was great, but they'd jumped the shark by then and they've drug it out for far too long.) So there's no set premise looming over the Simpsons' narrative. But when a series is given a premise, drag it out as long as you'd like, but please give us some closure. With Battlestar Galactica, will they ever reach earth? With Quantum Leap, will Sam ever return to his own self again? With Sliders, will they ever return to their own dimension again? (Come to think of it, maybe that show never really gave any closure...) I haven't seen the endings to UY or MI, but from what I know (correct me if I am wrong), when those series ended, fans were given an actual ending. I understand that Ranma had some sort of pseudo-ending, but none was given with Inu Yasha.

Don't get me wrong; I do enjoy Takahashi's stuff. It's just the lack of closure when she does retire a series is just a minor gripe of mine, and a huge pet peeve for others.

The Simpsons just goes on and on and I can't imagine anyone caring about it anymore. I didn't care about the directions they started taking that show, so I lost interest. To be fair, American comics just keep going and going. It's hard to really get into the newer stuff for me. Titles like X-Men and such keep going on, but they don't have the appeal of the older stories. I guess I'm guilty of being partial in this regard. I expect a Japanese comic series to eventually end, while I don't mind much if American comics keep going. I guess it's not fair, but that is how the two different comics genres tend to be like.

I totally get where you're coming from Greg, in my case I think something like Castle of Cagliostro would have worked better for her later stuff. Obviously Lupin III is never coming to an end, but that movie basically skipped ahead and showed us an older Lupin and resolved enough of his character that I think it works well as a bookend. It still left enough of a gap for another 30 years of content to produced and is a nice middle ground between no closure and a definitive ending. I don't want to get going on this too much, as a long suffering Bastard!! fan I think Hagiwara just decided to abandon his series, so it could still be worse!