Loop

Oh dammit I just reached home and I missed the postman by less than an hour!!! Nooooooo!
Looks like it will be at least one day more before I get my CDJapan package…
I NEED MY YUUNAGI LOOP NOW! T_T
*goes to torrent* D:

Anyway, here’re random reviews of (obscure) books that I read recently!

Kannadzuki no Miko Vol.1

This has been collecting dust on my shelf for quite some time and I finally read it today. It’s still as yuri-licious as the anime and has an art style very similar to the original designs. The story is pretty screwed up as it suffers from the Stick-Too-Much-Shtick-Into-Every-Chapter Syndrome(tm). I would only recommend it to hardcore fans and maybe yuri lovers …then again, the mecha part might be too excessive and detracts from the yuri-ness for some people. The art is really good and the story is almost completely changed (or completely desecrated depending on how you look at it), so it should at least keep fans entertained.

Also, it’s not very fun when you don’t get to hear Ayako Kawasumi’s voice when Chikane speaks. But that’s just me.

Hoshi no Koe

Another long-time dust-collector on my bookshelf that I finally got to reading. Surprisingly for an anime to manga adaption, it’s pretty good. Wow. Based on the well-loved OVA made by Makoto Shinkai, this manga by Mizu Sahara and pusblished by Kodansha is a complete retelling of the long-distance love story between Noboru Terao and Mikako Nagamine with a new ending and a more developed plot. The artwork is actually pretty sketchy, but I love it. Don’t expect any breath-taking backgrounds or fine-detailed mechas though. I also LOVE the ending.

But as usual, I’ve got a bone to pick… It seems to me that the manga artist misunderstood the reason for the time gap between Noboru and Mikako. I believe I have ranted on this before, but I’ll do it again briefly… It’s semi-spoilerish, so if you have not even watched the OVA, then stop reading now.

SPOILERS
Noboru does not age 10 years during the few months that Mikako is in space. It’s just that her SMS takes 10 years to reach Earth (by the time which she would have aged 10 years too if she were alive…).

You can see this very clearly from the OVA, but the manga is a bit confused about this. In the manga, (Warning, here’s a huge spoiler that’s related to the ending of the manga) a 25-year-old Noboru decides to take part in the Third Wave of the Taursian Project in order to meet the still 16-year-old Mikako. This is impossible, since it implies that the 10-year difference between them was caused by the ship Mikako is on travelling at relativistic speeds, which is not the case since the ship uses a warp gate to teleport instantaneously.

Now assuming that at the point in time after Mikako warps that there is a 10-year difference in age between the two of them in realtime (due to relativity), then the fact that she is 10 light years away from the solar system means that her SMS (travelling at light speed) should’ve reached Noboru when he is 35 years old and not 25.

Yet the SMS is addressed clearly to “the 25-year-old Noboru”, therefore we can deduce that the warp gate must be operating outside the boundaries of Einstein’s theory and that there is no actual age difference between the two of them at any single point in the story, just a HUGE communication lag… (Imagine a ping of 10 years on your internet connection).

Therefore, the fact that the 25-year-old Noboru joins the Third Wave in order to meet the 16-year-old Mikako makes no sense! If the Third Wave is supposed to be reinforcing and resuppling the badly-defeated Second Wave (which is only a few months into its mission), then why the heck is it 10 years late and why is Mikako still 16 years old?

It’s still a beautiful ending, but I can’t help getting distracted by such minor imperfections…

Japan’s Longest Day

No cover picture, but here’s the Amazon link. I don’t actually own this book, but I did spend a total of around six hours reading it back-to-back in Kinokuniya. I’m cheapskate. D:

Anyway, this book gives a well-researched account of the days and events leading up to the surrender of Japan during the war. It also gives an hour-by-hour account of the day before the Imperial Rescript was broadcasted by NHK at 12 noon on 15 August 1945. Based on numerous primary sources and interviews, the book describes very vividly the decisions, meetings and mistakes which determined the fate of Japan, such as the factional disputes between the civilian government under Prime Minister Suzuki and the Imperial Army under War Minister Anami.

The first half of the book talks about the Potsdam Declaration and the Japanese response to it. All the events are told in a descriptive narration, which makes the book read like a novel. The amount of details is mind-boggling. Anyway, the gist of it is that the civilian government wanted to accept the Potsdam Declaration (the ultimatum given by the Allies demanding for Japan’s unconditioned surrender), which the Army refused. They bickered a bit and failed to come to an agreement. It took them two atomic bombs to finally agree to surrender.

And here we come to the focus of the book. The Imperial Army was trained to rather die than surrender, thus it was very difficult to get the young and idealistic soldiers to lay down their arms peacefully. It was decided that the only way to calm the soldiers of the Emperor was to get the Emperor to announce the surrender himself, in order to subdue the Army and prevent a potential coup. This is because the Army was loyal only to the Emperor (in the minds of the soldiers) and they could not ignore a direct Imperial order (although such a request was not technically legal-binding).

However a few radical elements managed to convince themselves that the Emperor had been deceived by the “cowards and traitors” (i.e. the civilian government under the Prime Minister), and made it their duty to “protect the Emperor” (i.e. take over the Imperial palace in a coup d’etat) and prevent Japan from surrendering.

The second half of the book gives a very detailed account of the entire palace takeover from various perspectives, which is a very interesting read.

On a related note, I recommend this first-person account of Hiroshima too.