Basara 16
Posted: March 4, 2009 Filed under: Basara 8 Comments »One of my favorite lines so far was delivered in this volume. Asagi says something like “Yes, Shuri, I hate you. I’ve always hated you. You live your life by kicking people down. And then you don’t even remember the faces of those you kicked.” Truer words have never been spoken in a manga, I think, given the fact that this whole situation would have been avoided if Shuri had bothered to look at Tatara’s face when he was in Byakko Villiage.
Tatara deals with a lot of rage in this volume. It sort of comes from nowhere, and I had a hard time grasping the whole metaphorical thrust of what was happening here. A white tiger appears in such-and-such region, the white tiger is Byakko, acting through Tatara? Except this is a bad thing, because it means that Tatara is acting in violence without thinking, which is not what she wants to be doing. A situation brought about by a broken heart, I guess. It just seems… weird that being possessed by Byakko, presumably the spirit of the weapon you wield and the villiage you grew up in, could be a bad thing.
But a few new characters pop in, including the rather fun Kasane/Kikune from last volume and the Purple Lady, wife of the Black King. She doesn’t seem like a bad person, but you never can tell in this series, since people seem very likely to stab you in the back. Tatara is trying to work out a truce with her in order to get the Black King to stop assaulting the northern region she just allied with, but she’s not really having it since Tatara’s got that whole Byakko/rage thing this time around.
I knew immediately when I saw Tamon again. I didn’t know what his name was, but I remembered him from before. I was confused when nobody else in the story seemed to recognize him, since it literally clicked right away. He’s pretty cool, actually, and I like that his sword has better uses than, say, the Byakko sword.
Another character reappeared at the end of the volume, too. I was wondering what happened to her, since it seemed weird that she literlly vanished without a trace after all that hoopla.
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“and I had a hard time grasping the whole metaphorical thrust of what was happening here”
Basara is so awesome that it has earned a great deal of suspesion of disbelief from me. Actually, I am extremely fond of strong metaphors, so the fact that the metaphor is almost, but not quite, physically tangible is very much to my tastes.
I don’t think it’s so much the inherent nature of the byakko sword which makes Sarasa violent, but meaning she herself attaches to it. The whole point about the Genbu sword is that it’s very difficult for someone to attach a violent meaning to it.
Oh, and I love any scene between Asagi and Shuri (naturally, since they are my two favorite characters). I actually looked at the scanlation of that scene just to compare translations. The scanlation of that scene is pretty bad – some of what they say is incomprehensible, and sometimes they say the opposite of what they say in the Viz translation. The only part of the scanlation which might be better was Asagi’s final words, which IIRC went like “It’s no fun! I want to toy with you, Shuri”, which I suspect might actually be closer to Yumi Tamura’s original words. It does lack the melodramatic ring of “Your eternal torment is my joy.”
Oh, I don’t know if you’re this far yet, but Tamon’s ancestor used the Genbu sword to commit a violent act he really, really regretted, which is why Genbu sword is way it is now.
Haha, now I’m not sure which of those two Asagi likes I like better. Both are fantastic and in character, and both fit so well with the situation. I can imagine the “I want to toy with you line” being a slight mood-breaker, though. It is a little more sinister in its way, but that’s already kind of a disturbing set-up.
And yeah, I can forgive this series for almost everything. I think it was just the fact that the story labored so hard over the Byakko-white tiger parallel that I got a little tired of it before the end of the volume. It would have actually been nice if Tamon had appeared a little earlier, but I guess he would have only stopped the violence, which is not the part I had a problem with.
Looking back, it is a little funny that her mother is the one that works the violence out of her, if only because who else would have done it. Of course her mother was going to show up right then after not appearing for so long.
I personally prefer mixing the two versions “It’s no fun! It’s no fun! Your eternal torment is my joy!” since “You make me sick” doesn’t ring quite right with me.
Of course, the bad parts of the online translation were amusing to see too. For example, the line you enjoy so much is rendered as “You … lived to kick people away, Shuri. However, you don’t remember the face… of your partner in that.”
“Of course her mother was going to show up right then after not appearing for so long.”
It’s *FATE*. Unless it’s something which is really, really forced, I give fiction a lot of leeway with coincidences, so much so that it never occurred to me before that this situation was a coincidence.
Haha. It makes me think of XxXholic. There is no coincidence, only fate.
And that line “You don’t remember the face of your partner in that.” I don’t even know what that means, but I like it.
I seriously think this manga is getting better and better. So many memorable scenes. I like the scene with Sarasa and her mother the most. When she tells her not to hate but love… no further words needed. This series is even better than I expected. And I love the new characters, especially Kikune. She’s just lovely.
Kikune was a really cool character. She could have gone a lot of different ways too, and I kept waiting for something terrible to happen involving her, but I loved her role in the story.