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Phoenix Feathers is updated on Tuesday and Friday

This strip is the result of a careless remark made by Tsunami during coffee last week. Sorry nagi ^^;;

Last Saturday, Moonshadow, Oneiros, nagi and I watched some anime. We started with Chobits, but after watching the.. interesting.. fifth episode (have CLAMP finally resurfaced?), we switched to watching Trigun, which none of us (save Oneiros, who brought it) had seen before. I don't know what I was expecting - I have heard many good things about Trigun but never experienced it (save for the odd AMV, such as Tainted Donuts). Probably something similar to Cowboy Bebop, which is also very good.

We watched 8 hours that day, and watched the remaining 5 on Sunday. It was so good that, had I not had to get up on Sunday morning (a time which shouldn't be allowed to exist), we'd have probably watched it all at once. The plot was good and the humour (of which there was much) was well done, but what really made it were the characters, in particular Vash the Stampede and Nicholas Wolfwood (although the Insurance Girls were good too). I have watched a lot of anime and enjoyed a lot of it, but Trigun really stood out. Normally, I prefer to watch anime with somebody - it's a social hobby - and I'd not want to watch a series on my own. Until this weekend, there was only one anime that I'd be happy to watch over and over again on my own, and that was Slayers. Now I'd add Trigun if I could (we don't have the DVDs yet. But we will).

I was thinking about this, and came to the (obvious) conclusion that it's to do with the characters. I've read a lot more books than I've watched anime, and many of them have been retellings of old, familiar stories rather than anything new. A new plot, or even an old twist on a new plot, is good, but the characters are infinitely more important. Good characters (read 'characters which the reader likes'), which are invariably bound to a good writing style (again, read 'a writing style that suits the reader'), will make an old, familiar story refreshing and fun to read. Slayers and Trigun both have very cool main characters, and so are fun (for me) to re-watch just to see the characters in action again. The same is true of a lot of books - I re-read them for the sake of the characters, although the books themselves are well-written (I don't think it's possible to have 'good' characters with a writing style disliked by the reader).

Have you ever finished a good book/series/RPG/anime and felt really disappointed that there isn't any more? That would have happened to me with Trigun, except that on Tuesday five issues of 'Girl Genius' came through our front door. 'Girl Genius' is a steampunk (they call it 'gaslamp fantasy') comic series done by Studio Foglio, and it is rather good. I went through them all before going to work, and they made me late. Thankfully, the series has just started, so although I have to wait two months between each issue, I won't have to cope with 'end of series' disappointment for a long time ^.^

This was going to be a longer rant, but I think I'll leave it for now, and not subject the web to any more of my incoherent waffling :)

- Sun Kitten, 14.6.02

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