Friday I discovered two of the translated Madara at BMV and polished them off yesterday. I don't know if Madara's really as dismissable as it comes across in English-- or to turn it around, if the resonances I sense in the later manga avatar are due entirely to Japanese scrim. The latter is a chronic anxiety of mine: 'there's less here than meets the eye, and if it was in English you'd realize that.' But also: what English does is flatten the flavour of the Japanese. The language's own resonances don't-- can't-- resonate any more. The content of any Japanese sentence may well be simple to the point of simple-minded, but as always in Japanese, it's not what you say it's how you say it, and even more importantly, what you don't say. Which is all lost in translation.

Also-- truly, translator guys, there's a difference between will and shall. The difference may be arbitrary by region-- still recalling the hapless 18th century Scotsman who fell into a river and declared, according to his English listeners' ears, that no one should save him and he *would* drown dammit; so they left him to do it. To render all (implied) futures as shall is wrong, and the work of someone who never uses shall themselves, humpf sniff.

That said, am fairly sure original series Madara is run of the mill shounen. The shoujo redact of blue has nuances, yes, but again a lot of the nuances come from not knowing who everyone is. (After seeing the stock relationships in Madara 4&5, watching Kaos abandon Jamila and his kids *just like that* is a surprise, to say the least.) So much of the mysterious feel to Japanese whatevers does come from a lack of context, I agree. Even so, it's a pretty manga and I *would* like the rest of it.

ETA: Read the afterword. Madara blue in fact is a series of doujinshi dealing with Kaos' after story. Is why all the satisfying emotional interaction cough cough.

Stepped on something odd this morning in my bedroom. Looking revealed it to be my bike light- small thing on a bendy rubber band. Not painful, but how did it get upstairs to my side bedroom? It was last seen on the kitchen table.

Agreed, it's perfectly possible that I put it in a pocket, brought it upstairs, took it out, and forgot doing any of it entirely. God knows I forget things. But I'm seriously going to consider the possibility of poltergeists, who hide my Ikea knife, my vacuum brush head, and my bicycle light. Except that the other thing they hide is socks. And, well, socks; you know, socks. There is only me here in the house, and I have *two dozen* unmatched socks. Including two $25 a pair compression socks, which lemme tell you hurts. So unless everyone in the world has sock poltergeists, there's got to be something else happening entirely.