Posts
Plot Events: the National Tournament begins; Higa defeat Rokkaku; Seigaku vs. Higa matches begin
--------1----Kelfin----1--------
Wow… Has it really been nearly a month since last I posted? D:
The first week I skipped, I had a legitimate excuse—there was a huge performance of medieval music that I was preparing for, and Taylo came up, and we played together; people loved hearing us, and it was a lot of fun! (And I’ve fallen in love with “Palästinalied”.) But after that I just got distracted by BL… I’ve been playing Gakuen Heaven like constantly for two weeks, you guys. D: Okay, not constantly… Some of that time was spent simultaneously reading Descendants of Darkness (I finally own all the volumes!), angsting (it was epic), and trying to get drunk on champagne (with minimal success).
Speaking of manga that I now own, my husband and I went to a used bookstore this week, and as of Wednesday, I have my very own copies of The Prince of Tennis, volumes 2-6, 10-12, 14-15, and 17. (You get limited selection when you are at used bookstores…) So yay for me! I feel all responsible, actually purchasing things instead of downloading them illegally off the internet! :D
My other Prince of Tennis news is that recently I’ve been put in charge of writing posts for the official releases for Gekidasa, Inc. We’re getting ready to release our 11th scanlation, and we have done a damn fine job on all of them, if I may say so humbly. I think it is about time we made ourselves a fancier website where we can self-promote, and the downloads will be permanently there. Hmm…
Anyway, to make up for slacking, I’ll do three volumes today. You'll just have to be patient a little longer. ♥
~*~
Right, so… where were we? Ah, of course, with Kintarō and “Pei-chan”. The volume opens with them skinny-dipping at night under a bridge. Brilliant, kids. I suppose this is what happens when you let children wander halfway across the damn nation by themselves. It’s a wonder they don’t die of exposure or get kidnapped by crazy serial murderers or something.
Kintarō is single-mindedly slavering over visions of “Koshimae” (Echizen). I told you he was the most in-your-face example of makoto, didn’t I? Junpei teases him a bit about it. He’s a nice guy—all big brothery and stuff. It’s so cute how he helps him get on the bus when they get to Tokyo~~~
Of course, since I’ve been playing BL games, I’ve gotten in the habit of distrusting the big brother types. Just because they’re not kiss-rapists doesn’t mean they’re not still trying to seduce you.
 |
| OMG, I finally realized who it is that Kintarō keeps reminding me of! |
Kintarō, because he is a “retard” as the scanlators so candidly say, misses the bus and then has to chase it across the city. You know, in my town, if they see you chasing the bus, they’ll stop for you and let you get on. We have pretty nice bus drivers here.
Meanwhile, Ryōma visits the stadium as per Momo’s orders, and… wait. That’s the whole chapter? Basically nothing happened! I mean, the art was nice, but if I had to wait a whole month between chapters, and then that was what I finally got, I’d be annoyed.
Anyway, moving on to Chapter 248, the rest of Shitenhōji shows up at the same time that Ryōma and Kintarō do. Never mind that the chances of that happening naturally are pretty low. Shitenhōji seem really buddy-buddy, but perhaps it’s because they’re all in a strange city together and have to go around in a big group, like on a field trip. That makes sense to me… although it doesn’t really match the laissez-faire way they’re letting Kintarō prance around the countryside… So far, the team’s characteristics seem to be: group-oriented, a bit weird and uncomfortable-making, and strangely over-excited about Ryōma. Chitose has his chin permanently tilted up; I wonder if he’s supposed to seem like a lofty-thinker or something. And… how do those two WALK with their arms entwined like that?! You know the two I mean. Koharu and… the other one. Shame on me for not remembering his name. I’ll go look it up. ……….Yūji. Koharu and Yūji. How do they WALK like that?!?!
Right, so, the drawing for who’s going to play whom is being held at Rikkai. Wait, why is it a drawing? Don’t sports teams usually get ranked or something? Oh well, I suppose this way is fair, too. Anyway, everyone who is anyone is there.I really hate Rikkai’s ties; they all look like old men. :/
Oh, hey, Higa! You've arrived in this manga just in time to make fun of Sanada’s srsface, I see.
Kite: Stop it, Kai-kun. Or I’ll make you eat gōya.
BECAUSE THEY’RE FROM OKINAWA, GET IT??? GET IT?!?!?!?!?!?!!
Lame. I’m already offended on their behalf. (If you’re wondering what gōya is, I did not know, either, so I looked it up. Check out this episode of Cooking with Dog, which, based on this one video, is now my favorite cooking show of all time. With the possible exception of that one with Kimeru.)
Anyway, Higa is basically made up entirely of assholes. ...Yeah, Sanada has a hard-on for Kite already.
Ōishi, you putz. ♥
Ōishi’s putziness is completely overshadowed by the most dramatic entrance ever. It’s Tezuka… I’m starting to think he is more of a drama queen than meets the eye. Omg, the wind is blowing his hair. Indoors. All the captains of all the teams have swivel-neck as he walks into the room. Well, not Sanada and Atobe—they just glance at him out of the corners of their eyes, but that’s because they’re so obsessed with him that they don’t dare look straight at him. If he made eye contact with them, they’d probably implode.
Meanwhile, in the mountains, Momoshiro is “training”. Apparently “training” means camping or something. Evidently if you do it long enough, you get magical weather-foretelling powers, which could be pretty useful, so I recommend it.
Why is Inui sitting under a bridge? He might be spying on Pei-chan and Kintarō skinny-dipping, but I’m willing to wager that he’s stalking Kaidō again. I get bonus points if Kaidō is shirtless.Ahaha! He is stalking Kaidō, and Kaidō is shirtless! I WIN ALL THE POINTS!!!
I guess we’re just seeing everyone have his own training montage/powerup. Here’s Eiji working out with low oxygen or something like that… And here’s Fuji…
Bystander: Please stop already!! It’s too dangerous! This time you’re doing three at once?!
He’s only talking about tennis balls. Not what you were thinking. ♥
I’m not really sure how that is dangerous, though; tennis balls are made out of felt or something, I’m pretty sure, and I don’t think they can actually hurt you, although they could theoretically bruise you, I guess, especially if they are really going at 200 kph or whatever ridiculous speeds they supposedly go at in this manga. They probably don't go that fast IRL. I’m looking it up. …Well, I’ll be damned. They do go that fast. At least, if you are a professional.
Fuji: If there is a higher level… I must reach it!!
He’s become so much more compelling since he decided to see what it’s like to try.
Wow, Tezuka is giving the team an actual pep talk/speech! Apparently being away has improved more than his arm! :DD
Ōishi, when I said you were a putz, I didn’t mean that you should… *sigh*. I have a bad feeling about this. I mean… ch', sure, I know exactly what’s going to happen, but that doesn’t change the fact that even if I didn’t know what was going to happen, I would have a bad feeling about this. Yeah, it does totally suck for Momo that he doesn’t get to play because Tezuka is back… and Momo is being a dear about it, but…. D:
Ōishi: The reason is that I won’t allow anyone whose injuries have not yet completely healed to be recognized as a regular on this team!
LIKE WE DON’T KNOW YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT YOURSELF
I have no idea what his thought process could possibly be here. I think he is just being a martyr. If he really wanted to do what was best for the team, he’d let them just do their regular ranking matches so that the top 8 would get spots on the team for Nationals. I’m gonna say that this is all because he is feeling guilty and full of self-hatred or something, and he wants an excuse to make himself suffer. At least that would make sense.
Everyone thinks Tezuka will win, but Echizen puts his money on Ōishi, which actually does accomplish its intended story purpose in making me pause and think, wait a minute, could he really— ?
Every time opponents make the narrow-eyed grin-stare at each other, I feel like a sitcom character who’s hiding under the bed for some reason, and then two other characters come in and start making out :/ …Awkward.
Echizen has been practicing hitting tree leaves. He has such a crush.
Ōishi shouldn’t taunt Tezuka… he really really really wants to lose here, doesn’t he? (Not that that means he isn’t playing his best, of course; he’s a decent person, after all.) Oh god, that picture of his wrist snapping made me actually flinch. DDD:
~ZOMG Tezuka/Ōishi Love Collage of Doom~
Ōishi: Sorry, Tezuka. This was the only way to…
Tezuka: …I understand.
And what does Tezuka understand? That Ōishi thinks that Momoshiro is better to have on the team than himself. But hey… at least all this makes way more sense than what happened in the anime did.
The National Championship begins! Dates: August 17 (Sunday) to August 20 (Wednesday). Let’s see if that matches the real dates for 2008… yup, it does. :D
This scene of the opening of the tournament is really nice. The art is well done and very detailed, and it does a good job of telling a story with just images. I like seeing the banners and the people cheering for the teams we don’t know; it adds to the feeling of epicness, and it reminds us that there are other people whom we don’t know about but who are having just as important an experience as are our protagonists.
Awww, Momo went and got Ryōma up so he didn’t oversleep. ♥
Seigaku has a bye, so the first match we get to see is Rokkaku vs. Higa. (In other words, an introduction to Higa so that we already have strong feelings about them by the time Seigaku plays them.) WTF Higa… It seems that The Prince of Tennis now has so many characters that Konomi-sensei was forced to start making people look like freaks in order to visually distinguish them from one another. I swear, it’s like these guys came directly from their night jobs at the haunted house. Chinen especially—he looks like Skeletor. (And, strangely enough, like Cher.) Also, he’s a jerk. I mean, Aoi annoys me, but you don’t have to be evil to him.
WHAT. They are all martial artists? Bullshit! Oh, of course, it’s because they are from Okinawa! Duh!
Yanagi: That’s why these guys can reach the net from the service line in just one step.
This is shukuchihō, and it is BULLSHIT, which is lame.
OMG, did Kai just hit Ojii on purpose? Well, Ojii did just explain the secrets of his best move…
Psh, Kai, like Saeki is going to leave in the middle of the match! He has his honor, after all! The others can take Ojii to the hospital. It’s fine. Even though they have now won—wait. Wait, five straight wins? Are they playing all five—? They must be… Oh yeah, I guess I remember…they said that already. XD.
I’m baffled by Higa’s spectators being actually indignant about Seigaku cheering for Rokkaku. Is it that weird to cheer for someone who’s not on your team? Is there a team spirit award that Higa thinks they might lose? Because they have probably already lost it at this point…
Kai is wearing some kind of ring on a chain around his neck. I keep looking at it and wondering what it means. Is it a class ring? You know, like how people used to wear their boyfriends’ or girlfriends’ class rings. Now I have that song from Bye Bye Birdie in my head.
Well, we’re not even going to wonder if Higa will beat Seigaku. Clearly, they are mean and don’t care about the pure spirit of tennis or anything, so they’ll definitely lose.
*sigh* Konomi-sensei… What did I say earlier about being racist about Okinawans? Fans are writing him letters scolding him for making Okinawa look so bad (and in such an inaccurate way, too!), and he defends himself by saying, “I’m actually a big fan of Okinawa!” Right, so I can call black people “boy” because I’m friends with Amaya. That totally logics.
Onto Seigaku’s first match in the tournament—it’s against Higa. (I wonder why they had a bye? I suppose it would have been tedious to add yet another team to this story, wouldn’t it?)
Obviously, we begin with Singles 3. Ryōma is being a bitch to Kei, calling him fat, but then… the guy did call him a shrimp first, so maybe fair’s fair. WTF, did he just pick Ryōma up by the face?!
Ref: Stop that at once!!
ALSO YOU’RE KICKED OUT OF THE TOURNAMENT FOR THAT SORT OF THING… right? Right? D:
Momo, do NOT drag Kaidō into your antisocial brawling.
Rawr, if I were doing this scanlation, I would have translated all the SFX… Granted, there are lots of them, but, I mean, it’s part of doing a quality job. Well, I guess they do have a note at the end of the chapter saying that since they’re trying to keep up with the releases, they’re doing a slapdash translation.
Oooh, let’s get out the new manga I own and see if they translated the SFX in the English translation published by Shōnen Jump… Yes. They did. It looks goo—Wait, WTF?! Are they seriously using everyone’s given name instead of surname? DDDD: Why????? This is like when they changed the rice balls in Sailor Moon to doughnuts or whatever… because Americans will self-destruct if they see rice balls. Or, apparently, hear boys call each other by their surnames. Somehow surnames are supposed to be confusing? So much for learning about other cultures! WTF America. WHAT. THE FUCK.
Blah blah Ryōma is mouthing off again. I can’t be morally outraged, since Kei is a dickface, but I am bored. Also boring—yet another discovery that Echizen is a lefty. How does Higa not know this already? Don’t they have a datawhore? Well, that’s what happens when you recruit all your members for their martial arts ability instead of trying to have a balanced team.
Kei serves Big Bang at Ryōma, which leaves him flat on his back with an aching hand. Ryōma tries to adapt to the situation, but… WILL HE?!?!!?
Psh, of course he will. T______________________T
 |
| Momo always tells it like it is. :D |
0 comments:
Post a Comment