Elisabeth Sladen

Leave a reply

I’m grotesquely behind in my reviews and really should write another today, but sadly all thought of that went out of my head last night when I got home to find Lis Sladen had died. Lis was, as part of Doctor Who, a large part of my defining childhood years. As such, I wanted to write a bit about her.

Sarah Jane wasn’t my absolute first Who companion: that was either Jo Grant or Romana, depending on which set of memories I believe. But as time went on and companions and Doctors came and went, she tended to become the ‘default’ companion in my mind. When a new companion arrived on the show, or in the books and audio CDs, inevitably I held them up to Sarah to see how they measured up. It probably started with The Five Doctors, but certainly by the time of the New Adventures in the 1990s she had transcended most companions to become iconic, something I’d argue has only been done with two other companions: Susan and Jamie. (Rose isn’t old enough to be iconic yet.)

There was a joke in fandom about how Sarah was actually two companions: the staunch feminist we saw in Jon Pertwee’s last season, and the softer and more vulnerable one we saw with Tom Baker. I think someone actually joked that she regenerated when Jon did. Certainly I do think Sarah got softer, but I don’t think she got less tough – I can think of at least half a dozen Tom Baker stories that feature her taking on things that would have sent me curling into a little ball.

One of my favorite scenes of all of Doctor Who is in Tom Baker’s 2nd story, The Ark In Space, where Sarah is the only one small enough to fit into an air duct and drag a wire that will help stop the villain. Except she gets stuck, and starts to freak out (as would we all). The Doctor, knowing Sarah well even now, goads her into getting unstuck and moving forward again by calling her useless. She gets to mad she manages the rest of the crawl in record time, and once she emerges he grins and says “I knew you could do it.”

Everyone joked about Sarah getting abducted or hypnotized, so much so that the show eventually had her grousing about it herself, in what proved to be her last episode, The Hand of Fear. But we kid because we love, and while fans may argue about how feminist she really was, no one I’ve met in Who fandom has ever disliked Sarah Jane Smith. As the show moved on and I watched more, I had other companions that I focused on – Nyssa, Ace, Benny, Donna – but if I ever had to make a Top 5 Companions list, she was always on it. And, of course, she was able to inspire The Sarah Jane Adventures, and have it be a triumphant success, taking Sarah Jane into the 21st century and showing us that she was just as awesome in her 60s as she was in her 20s.

And now she’s gone, so soon after the death of Nicholas Courtney. Death is a part of life, and she had been fighting cancer, but it still seems like this was far too soon. Lis Sladen had so much to tell us, both as herself and as Sarah, and now the worst won’t get to see it. Luckily, we have her past work to cherish. I think I’ll pop in Pyramids of Mars tonight. Or maybe The Brain of Morbius. Or hrm, there’s always The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith… or I could listen to The Ghosts of N-Space! OK, perhaps not the Ghosts of N-Space…

Cross Game Volume 3

Leave a reply

By Mitsuru Adachi. Released in Japan in 2 separate volumes by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

I have trouble starting out this review of Cross Game. It’s hard to know what to write. Like a volume of the manga itself, you just want to drink it all in, or simply wordlessly hand it to someone. Writing it all down seems superfluous somehow.

Things I liked in this volume (which is Vol. 6 & 7 in Japan)? I liked the introduction of Azuma’s brother Junpei, which at first seems like it will be another in the vein of goofball sadsacks such as Senda. But Junpei not only has a more serious connection to Azuma than we’d thought, but also turns out to have hidden depths. We don’t see as much of that here, but the fact that Ichiyo is warming to him fast says a lot – we know she doesn’t normally suffer fools gladly, ergo there is more to him than it would seem. (Crafty Junpei is also likely correct – staying with Ko and his family is probably the best thing that could happen to Azuma at the moment.)

The plotline where the filthy old man watching from the sidelines turns out to secretly be the company president checking up on things is older than I am, but Adachi carries it off with panache, making the board chairman lovable despite the obvious premise that he’s the one that left power in the hands of the interim principal and the coach in the first place. Speaking of their coach, he remains stubborn till the end, but I enjoyed seeing his placidity destroyed by Azuma the night before the big game.

There’s a few ‘filler’ chapters near the end of the volume, which help to provide some relief after the tense ballgame that takes up much of the middle. I was surprised to see the team’s manager, previously shown to be a bit of a Libby, get some needed character depth… only for it to be undercut on the last page in a hilarious final gag. I also greatly enjoyed Aoba’s solution to the guys who are constantly asking her out. The only chapter that didn’t work for me was Senda’s New Year, mostly because, much as I try to get sympathy for him, he’s just such an idiot.

The outcome of the ballgame is not particularly in doubt, so instead you spend a lot of it watching Ko and Aoba. Ko in particular is now totally driven to get to Koshien, though once again it mostly seems to be driven by Wakaba’s death. Azuma, perceptive as he is, is quick to note how hard this is on both Ko *and* Aoba once he discovers that there was another sister who passed away. The saddest part of the volume for me was when Ko, somewhat flippantly, notes “You don’t have to believe me, but she was crazy about me!”, to which Azuma replies, “And you were crazy about her?” Ko’s response is more muted. “Yeah…”

Of course, Ko and Aoba are destined for each other, and the more that we see them interact, the more we get Wakaba’s quick note to Aoba, “Don’t take him from me”, in Volume 1. They react exactly the same way to situations, they’re both stubborn as mules (“Don’t let those two throw to each other”), and once again we see how they like to imagine their interaction as a web of deceit. The high point of the whole volume for me occurs when Aoba runs like hell to get home and score the first run of the game, with Ko in the batter’s box. Ko notes he would have brought her home (this is after she holds up her hand for a high-five and then yanks it away – so immature!), and Aoba responds, “You’ve betrayed me so many times, since way back.” Ko notes “That’s because you’ve never relied on me.” It’s fantastic how well these two know each other (I didn’t even mention Ko’s dead-on impression of her stubbornness earlier), and how denial and lies have become a comforting blanket.

The volume ends by introducing Aoba’s cousin, who seems to be set up to be a romantic rival for Ko. Even remembering that cousins don’t have the same taboo in Japan that they do here, I still don’t give him much of a chance. Not that he’s needed. There’s a much bigger romantic rival that’s killing any chance of a relationship with others that Ko and Aoba may have. And she’s dead.

Really, you should be reading this simply because it is good. Crafted well, great characters, a sports manga that is about the people rather than the sport, and has some great doses of humor (hey, he didn’t even break the fourth wall this time!). Highly recommended.

Tokyopop addendum/NYC trip

3 Replies

First off, a quick update to my Tokyopop post: the news doesn’t get better. The books scheduled for 5/31 apparently are not shipping. This includes Hetalia 3 and Maid-sama 9, as well as the conclusion of Hanako and the Terror of Allegory and Clean Freak Fully Equipped. Obviously, this sucks even more, and I imagine Hetalia fans will be particularly… angry about it on the Internets. ^^;;

Secondly, I took today off to go buy Japanese manga in the city. I do this about 3-4 times a year, usually in a combination of ‘I need to get this volume of series I support by collecting it in Japanese’ and ‘I try to see what stuff Japan reads that will never, ever come out over here. Ever.’ types. This trip was no different. In addition, I also categorize stuff into ‘worthy’ (things I like and enjoy) vs. ‘trash’ (things I buy to see how truly stupid they can be, or am morbidly fascinated by for some odd reason). Previous trips have led me to such things as Soap Girl Moko (which I blogged about here), as well as even stranger things. Though not as strange as Gantz.

Speaking of which, I got 4 manga magazines at Kinokuniya.

One, Hana to Yume Vol. 8 (2011), I got as I’m a Banri Hidaka fanboy and this had her series returning after she took a short break. It had Akiyoshis! OK, yes, Sugimotos, but it’s all part of the Akiyoshi cluster. Definitely worthy.

Another, Monthly Comics @ Bunch (April) I got as I’d never got it before, and was interested. It used to be Comic Bunch, but that got folded and split into two spinoffs. For those looking for Angel Heart, the TOTALLY NON-CANON RYO AND KAORI 4EVAH City Hunter spinoff, it’s in Comic Zenon, the other Coamix title. Comics @ Bunch actually has a licensed title, by the way! No Longer Human is still running in it. It also has BTOOOM!, one of the best titled manga out there. A tentative worthy here.

In addition to those, I got issues of Big Comic Spirits and Weekly Young Jump, both magazines for young college age men, one from Shogakukan and one from Shueisha. Spirits manages to be slightly skeezier this time around, despite lacking a chapter of Kono S o, Mi yo!, which must be on break. (I may go over that manga at a later date. It’s definitely in the ‘trash’ category.) Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit also runs in Spirits, as does Oishinbo (albeit irregularly).

As for Young Jump, it’s filled with manly manga for men, with surprisingly little cute girl romance. It has Gantz, which this issue had a chapter that was particularly screwed up EVEN BY GANTZ STANDARDS. Yikes. It also has Tough, a 71+ volume martial arts manga that is Shueisha’s answer to Grappler Baki when people ask “What can you never license to North America?), and Addicted to Curry, which *is* a romantic comedy with cute girls (and a food manga), but this issue seems to be in ‘gripping tragic drama’ mode. Both of these are highly variable, but I’d say they’re more trash than worthy. But fun trash, with some hidden gems.

From Kinokuniya, I got the penultimate volume of Excel Saga, because EXCEL SAGA. This one seems to be giving us some answers at last. Some.

I also got Vol. 2 of Koi Dano Ai Dano, the sequel to The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko currently running in LaLa DX. It features the adventures of Kanoko and Tsubaki in high school. Both I regard as very worthy.

From Book-Off, I got four used manga. Two worthy, two trash.

In the worthy column, I got Vol. 1 of Shimane no Bengoshi, a Business Jump title that’s been running since 2004, dealing with the adventures of a young female lawyer out in the boondocks of Japan, helping folks out. Despite being in Business Jump (a title I associate with Amai Seikatsu, which is 39 volumes of comedy about an underwear company), it’s actually clean, and rather sweet and slice-of-life drama.

I also got a volume of short stories by Nakamura Ching, the author of GUNJO, which you may be familiar with from Erica Friedman’s reviews at Okazu. These are one-shots she’d done a few years earlier, mostly from Weekly Young Jump. As you might expect from this author, they are quite striking, and I look forward to reading the volume in more detail. (Well, OK, looking at the art and pretending I read Japanese.)

Then we get the trash. One I got for the title, Detective Idol Unit Tricolore (yes, there’s an e at the end there). It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like, a mystery manga about an idol group who are also crime solvers. It ran in Young Sunday (which is now defunct) for 18 volumes from 2000-2004, and is by Kitazaki Taku, the author of the Kono S o, Mi yo manga I’d mentioned from Spirits.It’s filled with cute young women showering a lot, and is pure light and frothy trash.

Then there’s Seishokusha 1, which I grabbed at the last minute without really looking. It’s by Morinaga Mayu, who is hopefully no relation to the yuri mangaka Morinaga Milk. It had a silver cover, and looked trashy. Hey, its label was Young Jump, so how bad could it be? Bad. This goes beyond trash into porn, and isn’t recommended at all for anyone. On the other hand, it does remind me that the stuff from the ‘Young _____’ magazines (fill in the blank) in the late 90s seemed to be a lot more ecchi than what we see today. But I may just be reading the wrong ones. Which I suspect is quite fortunate.

I then got home to find an Amazon.jp order had arrived. It contained the 25th volume of Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei (the cover features Nami, doing a pose one could only describe as ‘normal’); The 6th volume of Kono S o, Mi yo, which I’ve now mentioned 3 times, far too many; and the 3rd ‘bunkoban’ collection of What’s Michael?. Worthy, trash, and worthy, respectively.

Now I wait another 4 months or so before I do this again. :)