Fushigi Yugi 1 (Big ed.)
November 3, 2009
Yuu Watase – Viz – 2009 – 18 volumes (this Big edition is volumes 1-3)
Ooh, I never, ever thought I would be reading Fushigi Yugi, or any other series by Yuu Watase. As I’ve mentioned before, I read quite a bit of it while it was serialized in Animerica Extra and hated it. But it’s such a classic, and I’m quite fond of what I’ve read of Genbu Kaiden, and the VizBig volumes are really awesome, so FY wound up having a lot going for it. Plus I bought this on sale, yet another bonus.
I quickly remembered what I disliked about the series. One word: Tamahome. Or maybe, “Tamahome!” The crying out to be saved happens pretty frequently. I was hoping I was just remembering wrong, and that the cries for Tamahome had been greatly exaggerated over the years, but no. Miaka cries out to Tamahome to save her and to be with her quite a bit. It’s annoying, but it’d be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Though the lengths Tamahome and Hotohori go to in order to save Miaka border on ridiculous. My favorite so far is where they both stab each other in an effort to give Miaka their blood when she is bleeding. This serves absolutely no purpose since they are in the middle of the forest, and they both know this, but they go ahead and stab themselves anyway. Through the power of magic, they wind up giving her their blood later anyway. She claims it is very hot.
Miaka herself, other than the constant damsel in distress routine, is far less annoying than I remember. Perhaps it was because I was closer in age to her when I first read it, but I can write off most of her antics as childish and appropriate now, or at the very least, in line with how heroines in manga frequently act. She’s a lot braver than the constant rescues cast her in my memory, and she usually winds up in trouble because she’s trying to do something good, like find Yui or stab herself to save the others from a mirror image of herself. She’s not terribly likable or unique, but for a main character, she’s all right. Maybe I’ll grow to like her more as I keep reading.
Hotohori was a complete enigma to me. I have absolutely no recollection of him, which was a little frightening to me since he’s the king and all. It may be that he’s not featured as prominently after these first few chapters and that’s why I don’t remember him well, but I remember most of the other Suzaku warriors, and even one or two of the Seriyuu warriors. Just not Hotohori. He’s all right, another okay-but-not-great character, but he has the royal “We” going for him, which I still don’t remember and probably should.
So far, my favorite characters are Tamahome and Yui. Both have interesting roles, though Tamahome is quickly falling into the cookie-cutter love interest hero-type role. I liked that he was so greedy, though, and I liked that he didn’t fall immediately for Miaka, and I still like his cute little sister. Yui has always been one of my favorites, though I think she was a little scary when I was going through this for the first time. She’s a good friend, and she’s also got good reasons to be mad at Miaka by the end of the volume here.
Mostly, I’m enjoying the shoujo fantasy atmosphere. It’s hard to argue with a solid plot like a junior high girl getting sucked into a book and being forced to gather warriors in order to summon a magical being and make a wish. There’s lots of opportunities for fun stuff to happen, both in finding the characters, being introduced to the characters, and in the summoning itself. Add in the rival kingdom, and you’ve got a decent story in the hands of any writer that could go on forever, and Watase is admittedly doing wonderful things with it. She’s using a lot of common shoujo plot devices, but they probably seem a lot more trite today than they did when she used them (well… maybe not), and to be fair, I like it a lot because of the cheesy romance and all that.
The beginning of the story was new to me, I picked up the story in the chapter when Yui is introduced. The chapter after that I know word for word, probably because I read that issue one thousand times when I first got it. It’s a little weird I remember it so clearly ten years later, though. Reading it again now was surreal, because I remember how baffled I was by the visual gags, the sense of humor, and the references to people and places that went completely over my head at the time since I hadn’t read the rest of the story.
I like it. Not as much as Basara, but I like it a lot more than I remember, and it’s easy to see how it secured its status as a classic. I’ve got another big volume to read, but I’m definitely going to breeze through the entire series with no problems.
November 3, 2009 at 3:49 am
Ah… Fushigi Yuugi… I read the whole series but it was one of the worst series I ever read. It’s so childish. Basara is on a totally different level.
November 3, 2009 at 10:51 am
Aw, an awesome review!
I’m glad you found it less annoying. And that you are enjoying it.
About Hotohori, he’s not as prominent being featured as Miaka, and Tamahome in the first couple volumes. Heck in my opinion he doesn’t have much appearance overall with the story.. But he’s somewhat entertaining in his own weird way.
So you’re fave characters are Tamahome and Yui. Personally Tamahome is alright, I like the fact he was greedy at first. Yui in the other hand she’s alright, I sympathized to her story..
You know I never compared Basara to Fushigi Yugi, both have their epicness but Basara certaintly with no doubt have much greater plot than Fushigi Yugi. I like both of them but Fushigi Yugi is definitely my fave out of the two..
Lol I’m here again! I check out your review every now and then!
Seriously your review and thoughts about Fushigi Yugi makes me want to get suck inside the series again! I might go and start reading the series.
Thanks for the awesome review!
November 5, 2009 at 4:36 am
Pirkaf: I can sympathize, it does have pretty simple characters and I hated it the first time I read it. I think it probably seems even more so to me now since I just read Basara a few months ago. Basara is definitely the better series, but I like Fushigi Yugi’s plot now that I have more of an idea of what’s going on. I think I’m really easy to please when it comes to really girly fantasy series like this, though.
November 5, 2009 at 4:41 am
chichirinNoDa: I was surprised that Fushigi Yugi and Basara came out so close together. I thought that Fushigi Yugi had started in the mid-to-late 90s and may have been a product of Basara’s popularity (same publisher, but for a younger audience). But Basara started in 1990, only two years before FY. Basara’s definitely way above FY in my mind, but I have to give FY a lot of leeway since it was written for younger girls.
I’m glad to hear that Hotohori doesn’t play a major role. I was afraid my memory had completely failed me. It was strange that I had just completely forgotten him, but remembered everyone else. Since he’d already been introduced when I started, I probably just remember everyone else since I saw their introductions and everything, though.
I’m glad you liked the review!
November 5, 2009 at 12:18 pm
You know I wondered about which came first, Basara or Fushigi Yugi so I did some researched and found out that Basara indeed got published first.. I was so curious cause I thought that Yuu Watase had created Fushigi Yugi as a product of Basara’s popularity etc.. But I think she had the concept of Fushigi Yugi for a quite sometime before really creating the series. I remember reading it in her side comments from her unpublished series that she has the ideas etc.. Also before Fushigi Yugi was released as a manga Basara had released its 5th or was it the 4th volume..
Anyways I definitely don’t deny the fact that some parts of the plot resembles and that Basara is a better series.. I consider Basara as an epic series.
But definitely both are classic shoujo titles..
Btw I also owned most of Basara’s volumes except for volume 19! My god, I can’t find it anywhere, as I am a little to late..
Well Hotohori might be minor for me but alot of fans liked him since he was Tamahome’s rival for Miaka for a short time.. He did have his moments though, I would say he is not prominent.. But you’ll see. Hopefully you remember him once you read through it. He’s very kind to almost not noticeable I guess.. But he’s definitely funny as well.
Totally I really like reading your reviews for info about certain series. And I like your reviews about the series I am reading or have read.. It seems like we have the same thoughts about the series.
Thanks again!
November 6, 2009 at 3:26 am
Yeah, with Basara only 4 volumes in when Fushigi Yugi started, I figured there wasn’t much chance one had to do with the other. Some series really take off right away, but usually something has to be well-established before other series start trying to imitate it. It’s harder to pick up on in shoujo manga, but that’s what I’ve noticed in shounen series. Also, both Fushigi Yugi and Basara are from the same publisher, and were both published under the Flower Comics imprint, so it’s also a little hard to believe the publisher would let that happen, too.
For some reason, volumes 19 and 20 are the ones that are the most trouble to find. I had to check Amazon’s marketplace every day for someone to offer a copy at a reasonable price when I was trying to get all the volumes earlier this year. I hope you find a copy eventually, or maybe it’ll eventually get reprinted, I know there are many people that are upset they can’t get ahold of it. It’s also kind of a shame because when I finally found a copy and read it, it had some of my favorite scenes in the series in it.
November 8, 2009 at 10:11 am
I’m surprised the series was intended for a younger audience, since I remember the anime featuring quite a bit of sex and sexual violence towards the end. That’s why I stopped watching and never read the source manga.
November 9, 2009 at 1:17 am
It is, which is a little surprising. It ran in Sho-Comi, which got in trouble a few years ago for having such sexual content. The target audience is in junior high and high school, but looking through the list of titles, the readership might not skew as heavily into junior high as I thought. Red River, Kare First Love, and Mayo Shinjo’s titles all run in the magazine (Mayo Shinjo’s titles are pretty smutty, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they triggered the controversy). Basara ran in Betsucomi, which targets older teens and has titles like Banana Fish, Hot Gimmick, and We Were There.