Fushigi Yugi 2 (Big ed.)

Yuu Watase – Viz – 2009 – 18 volumes (this Big edition is 4-6)

I’ve read all this before, and I find knowing the context this time around helps, and also doesn’t help.  I hadn’t read very much shoujo manga the first time I tried this, and was baffled by being dropped in the middle of a fantasy story set in China with so many characters.  There was a lot of stuff I was missing by not reading the beginning, and I remember some of my thoughts from the first time through too, since again, I read these magazines over and over again for lack of any other manga to read.  But I’m also surprised by how well I grasped the story.  It’s pretty simple, when all is said and done.  Everyone loves Miaka, and she’s trying to summon Suzaku while her best friend is trying to thwart her.

The badly-done romantic drama grated on me in this volume.  Hotohori jumping to Miaka’s every wish, the way everyone, including Tasuki, steps in to try and save her, the way Miaka blindly keeps throwing herself into dangerous situations with no heed for anyone else’s feelings… all the “Tamahome!”s we sit through… none of it works very well.  Hotohori’s parts in particular, when he tries to swoop in for the rebound, and the one page where Miaka briefly ponders switching… wow.  I had a hard time powering through these parts and ignoring what was going on enough so that I could move on with the story.

I hate Miaka in general, which hasn’t changed.  I was a little sad the way she kept cataloging her wishes while gathering the Celestial Warriors.  I suppose any girl her age would, given the chance, but I like that she thinks she can wish for however many things she wants.  I remembered wrong, and thought there was just one wish, but the fact that out of three, only one wasn’t for herself only sealed my hate for her forever.  That, and the fact that it didn’t occur to her to ask other people what they might want.  The fact that Nuriko even had to ask for his wish was just sad.  On the other hand, she’s quite a bit more cheery than most shoujo heroines, and she isn’t very prone to fits of anger, sadness, or drama (aside from calling out Tamahome’s name over and over again), and that does make the story a lot more easy and fun to read.

The formula itself still works okay.  I like the struggle between the Suzaku and Seriyu forces, and the various tricks and tactics they use against each other.  Nakago, for as creepy as he is, keeps things interesting, and most of what was good in these three volumes were things that he threw in for sabotage.  I also like Chichiri, who seems to be the only person who hasn’t fallen for Miaka aside from Nuriko.

The way volume six ends, you can sort of hear the editor telling Watase she has to keep writing past the original end to the story, but Watase also mentions that this part was only the first chapter, so perhaps she did have the rest planned out.  I didn’t like it quite as much after this point, and there’s something that happens soonish that made me more or less quit reading, but I’m curious to see how the story continues from there.

I think, also, sometime shortly after this, Utena or Chicago started running in Animerica Extra, and I forgot all about Fushigi Yugi, so that might have had something to do with it as well.  Now that neither is distracting me, perhaps I’ll be more interested in the story.