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Fujisaki Ryu: Sakuratetsu Taiwahen vol. 1-2
I don't really like Fujisaki Ryu. I formed this opinion after reading the first half of Hôshin Engi (which went nowhere) and a few chapters of Waqwaq (which art was difficult to follow), but a few people kept recommending Sakuratetsu, so I succumbed. Actually I just wanted to know what the meta deal with the God of Manga was all about.
The hero Sakura Tetsu is a high school student obsessed with money who works so many jobs that he only sleeps three hours a day. He became that way because his family owns and lives in a house in the middle of downtown random megalopolis, and he has to make money to keep this house. One day, while Tetsu is at school, a huge tree appears in the air above his house and begins to attack it. It turns out the tree is Sekaiju (Yggdrasil), the palace of Future Queen Aris who has escaped to the past because in the age she comes from, the universe is just about to die of old age (it got wrinkles). She claims she owns the future rights to the property on which Tetsu's house is built, but of course Tetsu's grandfather has the right to the property at present. They're just about to settle this dispute peacefully (with a lot of money exchanging hands) when Space Pirate Feyerabend comes flying in on his spaceship Principia Mathematica and says he will be taking over the Sakura estate and building his castle there, seeing as he has been meaning to invade Earth for three years (it took him three years to decide where to build the castle because he couldn't get the darts he threw at a globe to actually stick). Just as Aris and Feyerabend are about to engage in a huge battle, Emperor Sigmund of the Land Beneith the Earth comes up from the ground under Tetsu's house and says he can't let the others have a war over the property directly under which his land resides. So they have a huge three-way battle that is about to ruin the entire city.
Have I lost you yet?
Basically, Sakuratetsu Taiwahen features a series of fairly unrelated events in which some new weird entity tries to invade Tetsu's house and property and Tetsu fights back more or less sucessfully, while his "friend" Idea Furato (lover of all things weird and unusual who only worsens every bad situation) records everything. It is quite hilarious. I loved how the evil scheme of Prince Nietzsche of the Demon World was so easily ruined and how he's reduced to a sorry hobo for the rest of the series. Hahaha.
However, it doesn't seem like the readers of Weekly Jump liked this series very much, and it only had two volumes and the last half of the second volume is a self-parody of how it's being cancelled. This is where the meta comes in, with the God of Manga sending a reader of WJ into the world of this manga, but sadly, I didn't like this part as much as I had expected. I'm generally not very fond of this self-torturing kind of humour, so when the reader commented about how he remembered this manga being "all the way back in the magazine" and how he "remembered reading the first chapter sometime" ... eugh. Not funny.
But why was this manga not popular? If it had continued for some more volumes and not ended so masochistically, I'd really have liked it. The format (new "enemies" appearing at the hero's doorstep every week) is pretty standard shonen manga, and the wacky comedy and cute art reminded me of Magical Taruruuto-kun* which was a fairly big hit in WJ ... Well, okay, I know why it wasn't a hit: not enough porny shots of pretty girls. Idea is cute, and there were a few risky shots of her at the end, but I guess that was too late. Tsk.
Also, I'll accept "Sakura Tetsu" as the name of a Japanese person, but "Idea Furato" is pushing it.
* Second Egawa Tatsuya reference in one day! I don't even like the man.
Category: Shonen/seinen | Posted by Alicia at December 22, 2004 07:04 PM
Comments
I find his stories hard to follow. At the least.
Posted by: Atazure at January 3, 2005 11:49 PM
Wait, I'm really slow and hadn't noticed until now, but didn't you once send me an invitation to join AIM along with your handle? I did actually add you to my buddy list, wondering if you wanted to talk to me about something, but you were never online so I forgot all about it again, ahaha.
But yeah. Difficult to follow. I thought this was the best of his works that I've read, but it's still pretty confusing.
Posted by: Alicia at January 3, 2005 11:59 PM
Ha ha ha, yea I did. Since I read yer livejournal. Duh. But...hm..I kind of deleted aim from meh pretty comp since it was, like, slowing it down. Like REALLY REALLY. emo tears once again. ;_'
Well Sakura Tetsu was one of those gag manga I read, and laughed and read and laughed and then pondered just WHY i was laughing(ofcourse there was all those wickedly ridiculous scenes, dialogues that cracked me up but...I wanted to get to that, y'know SECOND BOTTOM. like there was any -_- *kira* *kira* *kira* )
Posted by: Atazure at January 4, 2005 09:02 PM