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A review by cyanide_latte
Fushigi Yûgi: Genbu Kaiden, Vol. 1 by Yuu Watase
3.0
First rating: 2 stars
Second rating: 3 stars
Of all the manga and manga-ka I thought I'd ever revisit, this was not one of them. There is a plethora of issues with Yuu Watase's works overall, and I remember the original Fushigi Yuugi being a top offender for some of the worst aspects of said issues. As of present, I don't intend to ever return to that series, and you'd probably have to pay me a nice chunk of money before I'd consider it. However, over the years, a couple of her works stuck out to me as points of intrigue, probably because I'd never gotten farther than reading the first volume or two of each before running into a brick wall of "no availability." Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden was one of them, as I was genuinely curious to see how it differed overall from the parent series, and now here we are, 15 years after I first read it, making the effort to dive back in and see if I can't read this series to completion and determine my opinion based on an adult's perspective (and not let my poor opinion of Fushigi Yuugi color my thoughts on this series.)
So let's give those of you who read my reviews a quick bit of background, in the event none of you have read Fushigi Yuugi and need some understanding of the connections between the two series. FY was a big series for Watase and I'd hazard a guess it was her first series that made it into English publication here in the states. It's an early example of the isekai genre: two girls are pulled into the world of a book, the Universe of the Four Gods, and through some pretty wild circumstances, our titular character becomes the priestess of Suzaku, and her best friend becomes the [somewhat misguided, manipulated and bordering-on-evil] priestess of Seiryuu. A priestess of one of the four celestial beast-gods usually has a small contingent of warriors [with individual magical abilities] that surround her (usually a bunch of pretty-boys, because this is Yuu Watase) to protect her while she...does...something or other that's important to eventually bring about her role as a priestess to grant wishes, restore peace, and summon the beast-god she's assigned to, with the downside that she and her warrior bodyguards are likely going to die in the process. (I say "something or other" because I cannot recall for the life of me what the hell Miaka actually does in FY, if she does in fact, do jack-squat at all beyond crying over Tamahome.)
So that's what you need to know regarding the first series that Watase wrote. She drew from the Chinese legends about the four celestial beasts, but only explored aspects of two in FY. In FYGK, written as a prequel series ex post facto, she jumps back in time to 1923, as the original transcriptor of the Universe of the Four Gods is finishing his work on his way back home to Japan, and his daughter, Takiko, happens to be pulled into the world of the book. Along the way, she's starting to meet characters with the magical markings denoting them as celestial warriors destined to protect the priestess of Genbu, and learns that this is who she is going to become. None of this is really a spoiler, it's thrown at you in the descriptor summary for this manga.
Re-reading this first volume, it's not quite as bad as I remember, at least not enough to warrant the rather harsh [and arguably not thought-out] two-star rating I gave it. Is it still rampant with the same tired tropes and problematic issues from FY and recycles a lot of the character aspects from that series into this one? Yes, yes it is. Does Watase still sameface the vast majority of her characters even just in this series, not counting how sameface her character designs are throughout all of her works? Tragically, the answer to this is also yes. But as far as an opening to a series goes, I think it's pretty action-packed from the start and remains fairly engaging throughout all the chapters in this volume. Additionally, Takiko is far more tolerable than Miaka as a protagonist, and shows, at least somewhat, that she's capable as a protagonist. (I also enjoyed a lot of the side notes between chapters regarding Watase's research into the time period and how she incorporated or adjusted things into this volume.)
I'll be going through this (and Absolute Boyfriend and Alice the 19th, also by Watase) in the future, so I'm going to hope and pray that I'm not so disappointed by where the series goes in the end that I come to regard it with the same hateful rage that I do FY or C:CL. Fingers crossed, anyway. There's nothing wrong with enjoying Watase's work, as far as I'm concerned, but I do think it's important to analyze aspects of it more closely and come to an understanding of what in her work isn't okay, which is what I'm hoping to do for myself.
Small side note, but this has been bugging me ever since I received my copy of this volume in the mail and noticed it: Limdo's hand on this front cover is proportionally too small. A general rule of art that's especially good to take note of in manga, is that the size of one's hand [from the heel of the palm to the tips of the fingers, when splayed open] should be proportionate to the size of the individual's face. If the hand looks big enough to cover most of the face when pressing hand to face, then good, it's the right proportions. Limdo's hand here would not do that; it's too small to be proportionate, and that annoys me enough I have to point it out.
Second rating: 3 stars
Of all the manga and manga-ka I thought I'd ever revisit, this was not one of them. There is a plethora of issues with Yuu Watase's works overall, and I remember the original Fushigi Yuugi being a top offender for some of the worst aspects of said issues. As of present, I don't intend to ever return to that series, and you'd probably have to pay me a nice chunk of money before I'd consider it. However, over the years, a couple of her works stuck out to me as points of intrigue, probably because I'd never gotten farther than reading the first volume or two of each before running into a brick wall of "no availability." Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden was one of them, as I was genuinely curious to see how it differed overall from the parent series, and now here we are, 15 years after I first read it, making the effort to dive back in and see if I can't read this series to completion and determine my opinion based on an adult's perspective (and not let my poor opinion of Fushigi Yuugi color my thoughts on this series.)
So let's give those of you who read my reviews a quick bit of background, in the event none of you have read Fushigi Yuugi and need some understanding of the connections between the two series. FY was a big series for Watase and I'd hazard a guess it was her first series that made it into English publication here in the states. It's an early example of the isekai genre: two girls are pulled into the world of a book, the Universe of the Four Gods, and through some pretty wild circumstances, our titular character becomes the priestess of Suzaku, and her best friend becomes the [somewhat misguided, manipulated and bordering-on-evil] priestess of Seiryuu. A priestess of one of the four celestial beast-gods usually has a small contingent of warriors [with individual magical abilities] that surround her (usually a bunch of pretty-boys, because this is Yuu Watase) to protect her while she...does...something or other that's important to eventually bring about her role as a priestess to grant wishes, restore peace, and summon the beast-god she's assigned to, with the downside that she and her warrior bodyguards are likely going to die in the process. (I say "something or other" because I cannot recall for the life of me what the hell Miaka actually does in FY, if she does in fact, do jack-squat at all beyond crying over Tamahome.)
So that's what you need to know regarding the first series that Watase wrote. She drew from the Chinese legends about the four celestial beasts, but only explored aspects of two in FY. In FYGK, written as a prequel series ex post facto, she jumps back in time to 1923, as the original transcriptor of the Universe of the Four Gods is finishing his work on his way back home to Japan, and his daughter, Takiko, happens to be pulled into the world of the book. Along the way, she's starting to meet characters with the magical markings denoting them as celestial warriors destined to protect the priestess of Genbu, and learns that this is who she is going to become. None of this is really a spoiler, it's thrown at you in the descriptor summary for this manga.
Re-reading this first volume, it's not quite as bad as I remember, at least not enough to warrant the rather harsh [and arguably not thought-out] two-star rating I gave it. Is it still rampant with the same tired tropes and problematic issues from FY and recycles a lot of the character aspects from that series into this one? Yes, yes it is. Does Watase still sameface the vast majority of her characters even just in this series, not counting how sameface her character designs are throughout all of her works? Tragically, the answer to this is also yes. But as far as an opening to a series goes, I think it's pretty action-packed from the start and remains fairly engaging throughout all the chapters in this volume. Additionally, Takiko is far more tolerable than Miaka as a protagonist, and shows, at least somewhat, that she's capable as a protagonist. (I also enjoyed a lot of the side notes between chapters regarding Watase's research into the time period and how she incorporated or adjusted things into this volume.)
I'll be going through this (and Absolute Boyfriend and Alice the 19th, also by Watase) in the future, so I'm going to hope and pray that I'm not so disappointed by where the series goes in the end that I come to regard it with the same hateful rage that I do FY or C:CL. Fingers crossed, anyway. There's nothing wrong with enjoying Watase's work, as far as I'm concerned, but I do think it's important to analyze aspects of it more closely and come to an understanding of what in her work isn't okay, which is what I'm hoping to do for myself.
Small side note, but this has been bugging me ever since I received my copy of this volume in the mail and noticed it: Limdo's hand on this front cover is proportionally too small. A general rule of art that's especially good to take note of in manga, is that the size of one's hand [from the heel of the palm to the tips of the fingers, when splayed open] should be proportionate to the size of the individual's face. If the hand looks big enough to cover most of the face when pressing hand to face, then good, it's the right proportions. Limdo's hand here would not do that; it's too small to be proportionate, and that annoys me enough I have to point it out.