Hoshin Engi 9

So, do you have problems keeping everything straight in this series like I do?  Ask and ye shall receive.  This volume, in addition to the usual general chart and terms in the back of the book for all the magic stuff, also gives recaps of many scenes throughout the series, and there’s a section in the back that gives positions for different characters and the odds in the Zhou vs. Yin war.  There’s also an entire chapter with copious margin notes that explain the relationship and position of every character, which is basically everyone on the Zhou side in that chapter (it’s sort of a short goof-off chapter before the war actually begins later in the volume).  Even with all this stuff, it’s STILL hard to keep track.  There is just more going on in this series than in anything else I can think of.  I really do have a hard time keeping track, and it drives me crazy.  I don’t have any problems like this with other series.  And it’s not because this is bad, either, it’s just… complicated.  Maybe I should save up a bunch of volumes and read them all at once.

Ah, but there’s the catch… I like it a little too much to wait to read it.  I do like Taikobo, and I like the idea of purging the world of the magical beings.  I’m starting to think that perhaps everyone magical, including Taikobo, will wind up in the Hoshindai by the end of the series.

I am having serious problems with the magic system, though.  So there’s Kongrong Mountains and Kingo Islands, and they both have their sennin and doshi and 12 elites that train everyone, et cetera.  Dakki is… originally a fox, but the type of magical being, that turns into a human after being exposed to moonlight for 1,000 years?  She’s from Kingo Islands, and then betrayed them somehow?  Then there are humans that are born with magical powers that go and train in the sennin world.  You can be a human with magical powers, maybe, that stays a human if you don’t go train with the sennin.  But once you go train, you are then a doshi, and can’t go back to being a human?  And are some humans more gifted magically than others?  Are some only magical beings?  Maybe the ones that were once animals or stone lutes or whatever?  I think most of my current confusion comes from the fact that I thought it took a long time to train to be a doshi, yet Inchi and Inchon left and came back with paope, and then weren’t humans anymore?  I guess?

Anyway.  The important thing is that there’s lots more Taikobo and his strategies in this volume.  Towards the end, the actual battles start, and Taikobo’s clearly a master when it comes to this sort of thing.  Even the human war seems to benefit from Taikobo’s brains.  I also really liked the situation with Inchi and Inchon, and I’m looking forward to the outcome of the battle that this volume leaves off on.  I’m… also rather curious about King Chu.  What has Dakki done.

I forgot to mention last volume, but the character on the cover has a paope which is simply a rock she pitches at people to hit them, and then it returns to her.  This doesn’t do that much damage, but it has max annoyance value because whoever gets hit with it makes a “weirdly erotic face.”  Taikobo’s face is perfect, and we get twice as much since Yozen disguises himself soas not to show his “erotic” face.  It’s little touches like this that make me enjoy this series way more than I should.

Hoshin Engi 8

My main problem with this series is my total inability to keep track of the characters. Luckily, the back of the volume lays out the entire plot up to this point, all the important characters, their relationships to one another, and why all the enemies are fighting against Taikobo, since Dakki is really the only “evil” one. This is extremely useful, and I wish I had known about it before I started the volume. It will serve me well as a cheat sheet while I read the rest of the series.

Aside from trying to keep the characters straight, my other problem is apparently the time frame. Obviously I don’t really care about the months and months between events, like traveling from one country to another, building a fort, etc, but I was surprised when Fujisaki mentioned in the beginning that several years had passed since the start of the story. It’s not really that important since time doesn’t even seem to affect the humans, but I wish it was noted somewhere.

We get the end of the battle with the Maka Yonsho, which involves mostly side characters and not a lot of Taikobo. The Maka Yonsho do have a few tricks up their sleeves, particularly their pretty awesome and short-lived final transformation, but the battle was mostly underwhelming. The meat of the story is mostly in the fact that Zhou is actively declaring war on Yin, and Taikobo is using all the available humans as an invading force.

Bunchu doesn’t agree with this since he sees their fight as a battle between Sennin and Doshi of Mount Kongrong and the Kingo Islands, and is trying for a final solution that will wipe out all the magical beings with the strongest of the Kingo Islands. This is still in the works, but it looks like the two human armies may come up against one another very, very soon.

There is a single doshi fighting against Taikobo et al at their new fort as of the end of the volume. I’m… I’m not sure where this fight is going, because someone came from Kongrong in the middle and the opponent’s daughter proposed and… weird stuff happened.

I don’t know. I think my enthusiasm for this series burned out a long time ago. It’s not bad though, which is enough reason for me to keep reading, I guess. Taikobo is actually a great character too, but sadly there was not nearly enough of him in this volume. Maybe next time.

Hoshin Engi 7

Case in point with stuff I still need to talk about… I read this over a week ago.  I also have one more volume of this I need to read once I write about this one.  I don’t remember a lot of what happened other than a huge fight took place, which I believe is the largest chunk of this volume.

The enemy sennin show up again, except this time they’re different, and this time they’re sent by their master instead of Dakki or the general she’s manipulating.  I’m not sure what this means in the long run, but for right now, it means that the rebel kingdom (which has just declared itself independent, with a new king and everything) is under an attack that the humans are powerless to stop.

Taikobo is taken out of commission fairly early on, but much is made of the way he sets everything up for battle.  His strategies are praised straight to the heavens, and even I have to admit, as mildly as this series is striking me, I still really like Taikobo and basically what a genius he is.  He’s also humble, and just a very unique character.  I’d hate to think about the series without him.

The enemy sennin are actually pretty cool this time around.  The main threat comes from a gigantic paope shaped like a whale that just eats everything.  It becomes impossible to stop it, so they must stop the user manipulating it.  That’s difficult, because he’s protected by the other sennin, his brothers, and they all have different abilities that run counter to each of Taikobo’s allies.  Taikobo plans everything out pretty well though, and we get bits and pieces of four or five interesting battles here.

The other thing that happens is that Taikobo has to help gather allies for the new rebel kingdom.  One of the people he seeks out uses a reiju like Supushan, and his tactic of distraction are once again very admirable.  I believe that it is Bunchu, and not Taikobo, that does the final round of negotiations, though.

The rebellion still seems to be in the early stages, and we haven’t seen any souls go to the hoshindai in a long time, but things are moving along.  As hard as it is for me to read sometimes, I also admire it in a lot of ways… mostly for its scope and pacing.  As boring as it can be to sit through some of these battles with side characters (much like the problems I have with the Soul Society in Bleach), the actual pacing and how the forces against Dakki are being engineered is fascinating to watch.

Hoshin Engi 6

Mmm.  This one still isn’t doing it for me, and it still has to do mostly with the huge number of characters involved with the plot at this point.  I think it will thin out again once Taikobo sets out on the next leg of his journey, and I’m eagerly awaiting this next bit of story, but as things stand… there was a bunch of people fighting, both friend and foe, then there was a flashback with a few different characters, then all the good guys moved into the next town and another character was introduced who will probably be important later… there’s just a LOT of people to keep track of.  Really, there’s only a handful you need to keep track of, so it doesn’t have Bride of the Water God problems where there’s a ton of people wandering in and out of the background whose roles you’re not really sure of.  It’s pretty clear who everyone is and what their roles are, it’s just hard to remember their names and follow conversations where characters are discussed.

There are a few important things that happen here.  Some back story is revealed, including all the back story about Dakki and Bunchu and how Dakki got the body she currently inhabits.  The other important thing is an elephant race, which is not so much important as it is awesome.  Things like this give me hope that the next story line, featuring fewer characters, could really get things going.

Hoshin Engi 5

Aw, Hoshin Engi.  I forgot I even read this volume.  It’s a couple weeks old, it was at the bottom of the stack, underneath two things which must be reviewed together, one of which is delayed because I need to scan something that desperately needs to go with the review.  Anyway.

I’m still always mildly puzzled when I start a volume of this series.  I’m getting better and better at remembering the Doshi and the characters from the spirit world, but this volume stumped me when we were dropped in the middle of a battle that involved all the members of the Buseio’s family.  I actually remember last volume where I had to constantly keep flipping to the front to reference the chart that had their relationships mapped out when they were introduced.  I also couldn’t remember much about the fast Doshi (?) that keeps calling himself Taikobo’s assistant.  I’m sure these things will make themselves clear as the important people stick around longer and the other characters fade away, but man, it’s frustrating to read this series sometimes because of all the characters.

I like Taikobo quite a bit, and one of my favorite things is seeing how he always outsmarts his opponents.   Sadly, there was only a bit of this in this volume, and he didn’t actually even defeat the opponent.  He was tricked and trapped himself a couple times, which doesn’t work for me only because he can’t act stupid then be played a fool, because that leaves me with nothing to root for except an extremely stupid character.  The volume was split between several different battles with different characters allied with Taikobo and the Buseio fighting against a type of Doshi who were from a different spirit world than Taikobo.

The fights themselves are pretty cool, as always.  Lots of different powers are employed, and Nataku especially makes use of several different magical weapons against his opponent.  The Doshi all have different and unusual powers that the other characters are unable to predict, which I think is mostly why the battles lasted pretty much the entire volume.  Like I said though, I kind of read the series for Taikobo and the way he and others (mostly Dakki) always one-up other characters, so while the battles are very cool, that’s just not what I’m looking for.

Hoshin Engi 4

This series does get easier and easier to read as it progresses.  As confusing as the 500 characters and various weird implements, history bits, and situations can be, things stay pretty consistent, and I’m slowly learning everything well enough to enjoy the story.  It helps that the releases are bi-monthly and I’m doing a pretty good job of reading them regularly, too.

Dakki makes a major political move in this volume that sort of acts as a catalyst for setting the whole war and everything in motion.  Some characters from past volumes come back, and amazingly, I remembered all of them.  I never remember old characters in series like this with so many.  What Dakki does, basically, is destroy the life of the Buseio.  Well, not really, since he’s still got a ton of family left.  Anyway, she makes it so he flees the capital, and since he is one of the most powerful warriors in the kingdom, an old ally of his hunts him down and kills him so he doesn’t help train soldiers for some sort of rebellion against the capital.

There are a lot of souls that fly to the Hoshindai, and I’m still not entirely clear on the purpose of that or… a lot of other things about the Hoshindai, but I think that will become clearer in later volumes.  Well, if it wasn’t already spelled out crystal clear at the end of the last volume.  I don’t think it was, but I do have a much better understanding of the Hoshin Project and why it can only be headed by the clever Taikobo.

So yeah, while it’s still pretty complex and still a little hard to follow, I’m getting more and more into it.  If it can succeed in drawing me in all the way, I think it will eventually be capable of wonderful things, both story-wise and character-wise, because there are great places for both to go.  I have high hopes for the future.

Hoshin Engi 3

I read this volume a few weeks ago but kept forgetting to talk about it.  I got the fourth volume in the mail this week, so I figure it’s about time.

Oh Taikobo, that crazy trickster.  The first part of this volume is yet another fight with a recruit.  These are still pretty cool, and I’m glad they’re broken up with other things.  Hoshin Engi is very tasteful about this sort of thing.

There’s a long story in the middle of the volume where Taikobo has to help the two princes, who have run away from Dakki.  The princes are escorted nearly all the way to Taikobo by assassins, who Taikobo then has to fight.  There’s a really cute scene where Supu is playing a decoy, and his speech bubbles are shown backwards.

Later, we get the Hoshin Project explained to us a little more in-depth.  I still don’t quite understand totally what the Hoshin Project will eventually be, and I still suspect there are things which have not yet been revealed, but Taikobo goes to the spirit world and works out things like why people who are not Dakki and her minions are part of the Hoshin Project, and why not all of Dakki’s minions are not on his list.  Basically, the spirit world doesn’t want to appear to meddle too much in the affairs of humans, so Dakki has to be taken out as naturally as possible to avoid chaos.  It’s explained a little bit more clearly and indepth in the manga itself, and my explanation isn’t really a spoiler.

Anyway.  Things are still a bit confusing, but I’m beginning to enjoy the manga more and more.  There are some great characters running around, the comedy usually hits its mark, and the adventure segments and fight scenes are usually on a rather large and meaningful scale.

Hoshin Engi 2

Um.  I know there are more things I read this weekend.  Right now, my pile suggests there’s only Black Sun Silver Moon and Saint Seiya to write about.  I KNOW there are others, though.

It took me a little bit to get re-acclimated with  the terminology for this series again.  I know after a few volumes I’ll get used to it, but the separate names for all magical objects still really throws me.

Taikobo decides he would like a group that will help him beat Dakki, so this volume features him going about recruiting members.  There are two stories surrounding future members of his group.  This series gets serious points for not having said group travel around with Taikobo right away.  Such large groups of characters just run out of control with wacky comic hijinx that usually cause a series to crash and burn.  The group is going to reconvene at a later date to beat Dakki, and currently things are still focused on Taikobo and Supu.  It runs a risk of having too many characters, and it probably will have this problem later on down the line, but it’s pretty easy to keep people straight at this point since they all have really unique quirks and character designs, if not names I can remember.

There’s also a nice part where one of the rulers from Taikobo’s original land prove that Taikoko is a born leader and better at said job than a more powerful and skilled magic user than he.  It was kind of a nice test that this person put him through, and it went like the others where Taikobo turned it around at the very end where you could see he wasn’t just being a jerk and was actually helping everyone out.

So yes, it’s starting to grow on me.  I think it’s gradually picking up steam,  and I like it well enough, but I think it’ll take a couple more volumes at least before it’ll be able to turn itself into something which could be considered a classic… especially since it’s currently moving at a pretty nice, slow pace that leaves a lot of room to breathe around the stories.

Hoshin Engi 1

ARGH.  This one is hard to follow!  I picked it up after it has been recommended by everyone, ever, but I didn’t have much luck following things in the first volume.  I am assured it gets much better as it goes on.

I think part of the problem is that its based on a novel.  Just as I tend to find fault with anime adaptations of manga for not quite fitting everything necessary in (though this isn’t always the case), manga adaptations of novels tend to be similarly flawed, either too much is going on or stuff is left out that is necessary.  In this case, there is way too much going on.  Everything has a name, including magic wands, stages of… magic whatever, people’s clothes, tons of locations (within locations), and the no less than ten characters introduced in this volume.  Some of these things deserve names.  Others are just confusing at this point.  There is an appendix in the back so you can keep everything straight, and I guess it’s best to get these things out of the way now so that the next 22 volumes can be dedicated to plot development.

It’s got a bit of “Vash the Stampede” syndrome.  This came out first, but I like Vash better than Taikobo, so the title stays.  Anyway, this is the kind of series where the hero comes off as totally clueless, but is actually quite cunning and has everything figured out.  Taikobo really pushes the limit on this, as he’s clueless most of the time and only does a couple cool things, but he’s still a pretty likable character.  I also like the plot quite a bit, and I had it figured out enough by the end of the volume to be really annoyed by the cliffhanger.  I like that the characters all seem to be into outsmarting each other, as opposed to just beating each other with pure strength.  Once I figured out all the details and story elements too, everything fell into place really well, and I did kind of appreciate all the attention to detail.

One of the more confusing things for me was remembering all the different levels of spiritual… things.  Taikobo, for instance, is an apprentice in the spirit world.  There is an apprentice level, a “master” level, a title which refers to both, a teacher level, and several different titles to indicate how “things” reach the “master” level.  Said things need to be exposed to moonlight for 1,000 years, then they turn into humans who can then master spiritual… stuff.  This in itself is extremely difficult to wrap my head around, but it’s awesome when enemies turn into things like stone lutes.

How do you romanize Taikobo? Is it Taikoubou? Taikobou? Taikoubo?  I’ve seen it several different ways, but the Viz way of eliminating the “u”s looks slightly wrong after seeing it the other ways for so long.