Today’s deck is the Rabbit Tarot.
First of all: I appreciate that it has which suit replaces which on the back of the box so I don’t spent 10 minutes deciphering that. And second: I didn’t know the black and white rabbits were called “Dutch Rabbits”.
Today’s deck speaks of delays born from exhaustion (physical or otherwise) which… yeah… yeah…
The mission to sort the bookshelves continues! but there is a bit of shift in priorities right now in that I wanted to sort things… roughly by size, since I talked yesterday about how this sliding bookshelf can only take up to a specific size of book on its columns.
Thankfully, aside from the odd container with mixed stuff, most of it was already divided by size which meant I just had to shuffle the things around… there WAS one moment when I basically trapped myself in a cage of containers all around me. It was calculated and temporary, but have I ever told you I have clausthrophobia? Because I do.
The process was actually effective enough I was able to move books from a different room into these containers.
While sorting I was able to sift through some manga and this is where today’s title comes in, because you see, as much as it pains me one of the ones that’s going into the sale box is Uzaki Wants to Play.
Now, I will open this by saying that I don’t hate this manga or to be more specific for those that have seen me mention it in the past, it’s not like I started hating it suddenly. This is less “you changed you used to be cool” and more “this is where we part ways, I wish you the best”.
When thinking about what my problem was, the phrase “I am not middle-aged enough” kept popping into my mind so I stopped to think WHY I kept thinking about it, and to undestand that I gotta tell you about my own theory about the difference between male fantasy and female fantasy.
This isn’t some formal theory I can quote, this is more observational findings. But anyways…
In short: Male fantasies are all about The Result while female fantasies are all about The Chase. Let me put forth a grossly generalized example.
Let’s take a siscon (fetish/fixation with sisters) scenario. In male fantasy the appeal of this tends to lie more in the fact that a sister is a female that’s Already There, you didn’t have to court her, you didn’t have to meet her and being family means there’s a sense that you’re entitled to some level of her affection so what’s extrapolating a bit with that?
In a female fantasy, the same scenario would focus more on the slow realization of those feelings, on the taboo and drama of the relationship.
In both cases if you reveal they’re not actually blood-related I will find you and bitch slap you by the way.
You get the point, dudes will fantasize a store clerk that smiled at them is into them without doing anything, girlies will see a keyboard with the ESC key missing and go “this, too, is yuri”.
So where does Uzaki come into this? Well, now that we’ve established my Freudian-esque theory of male and female fantasies, let’s talk about age.
I don’t know about you, but the older I get the more tired I get emotionally. The world has a way to grind you down over the years where it’s not like you don’t wanna fight but that the fire is more of a white-hot coal than a gasoline fire.
As Uzaki has evolved in plot it actually caused a very VERY interesting shift that is part of why I keep my respect for it. It was always meant to be a laidback fantasy about having a cheeky kouhai with tits bigger than her head, but as the plot evolved the POV shifted.
Now it wasn’t Uzaki who was the focus of affection, it was Sakurai (the main guy). Now it wasn’t about a teasing kouhai with big tits, it was about the quiet himbo with big tits.
The story kept its underlying current of being laidback and playing with built-in expectations from the genre while at it. At first Sakurai had a Charao best friend but instead of him trying to steal Uzaki he becomes their main cheerleader in Getting Anywhere Together. Then after Uzaki and Sakurai get together they flip the expectation that Uzaki’s overbearing dad will turn on Sakurai and turns out he becomes elated that one of his favorite gym buddies is now his political son.
In the latest volumes there’s a subplot where Sakurai has to starts learning that his sexual desires aren’t some filthy thing as the boundaries with him and Uzaki are set and it’s all nice oh so nice… it also has a specific lack of friction that meks me think of someone in his 40s-50s fantasizing about a relationship.
Now, there’s a couple of things I want to get out of the way here before I continue:
First is that I have nothing against indulgent fantasy, I love indulgent fantasy, I feel like art is a dialog between artist and viewer and what more personal dialog than indulgent fantasy.
Second: I don’t want Uzaki to suddenly become a drama, in fact I’d HATE it if it became one. I’ve had a critic’s brain since around 2011 and one of the most important things I’ve learned in that time is that the moment you start wanting something to be something else that it isn’t, your criticisms become invalid. Review the apple on its appleness not on its lack of orangeness.
These two reasons are why my reaction is more “aight hope I keep seeing you around” and why I don’t really want it to have more friction or anything.
In fact, I’m gonna illustrate the point by contrasting one good and one bad example.
On the positive side this is a manga I wholeheartedly recommend. It’s called roughly “The two smoking cigars behind the supermarket”. It’s about a peppy supermarket clerk and an salaryman that, as the title suggests, start bonding when they start taking a smoke break together. With the “twist” being that the peppy and “normal” clerk turns into a sour-looking, leather jacket-wearing, choker-bearing woman when her shift is off.
This is another one that has a very “I’m not getting any younger” energy but it lies in a different side of the spectrum. Rather than building a fantasy about a more idealized youth it builds on the idea of how things as they are can get a bit brighter after metting someone. It’s also not without friction but the problems are more mundane, the sort of things that make you have a bad day in real life.
In contrast, there’s this one about a boy and his teasing cousin. I was already considering putting it into the sales box because it was fffffffffine but I’m not someone that gets off on eternal teasing and edging.
But then volume 2 has a scene where the wimpy MC shoos off some dudes trying to pick up his cousin on a pool and let me tell you there’s no faster way of making me stop reading something than pulling that.
Here’s the thing, those dudes are a universal pest, IN FACT when I was in high school my own cousin used me to get some dudes like that off her heels. But whenever it happens it’s always less dramatic than these kinds of manga make it look. Those assholes aren’t gonna insist the moment another guy is in the picture, they’re gonna disengage and move onto their next victim like a bear that found a locked trash bin.
I am not gonna call myself an expert, I’m sure plenty of women have had experiences where they’ll disagree with my statement, but also it makes me wonder if every manga author that has tried to pull the “defending from pickup guys” plot point has ever had that happen near them.
It’s just a lazy plot point, a cheap way to have the wimpy guy sweep a girl off her feet, why create an engaging dynamic where you can see what one sees in the other when you can just manufacture a moment where I guess being a decent person entitles you more Affection Points or something.
Anyway, this is why I don’t really think Uzaki should manufacture friction, because it usually ends up with shit like that.
You know, now that I remember, I Wanna Be Praised By A Gal Gamer tried to pull that shit too, I think that’s why I dropped it.
ANYWAY, as for other manga I came across in the process.
Destiny Lovers is going into the sales box. I love love LOVE Kai Tomohiro’s artstyle but not enough to put up with the whole thing in a bookshelf. I might get it digitally though.
This one is fun because it’s for porn video nerds and it even includes in the back when they reference specific videos, like that shockingly well made Sentai parody that was making the rounds a while back. It doesn’t elicit more than a “neat!” from me so into the sales it goes.
This one is a neat one about living with a dragon but a literal reptile dragon. It’s not bad just not my thing.
This one is one of those “killing myself in the process of making a manga” dramas. Not bad! Just not my thing.
This one isn’t manga but it’s a fun one. It’s basically a compilation of creepy supernatural things that happened on stream for a bunch of Vtubers.
There WAS work done today, mind you. But as you can tell my focus was on moving containers around to sort things a little. It’s also some nice exercise, so hey.