![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
51. Komi Can't Communicate 19 by Tomohito Oda - Old story. I had a friend that became such a close friend that we acted like a couple. So much that when I finally said "hey let's be a couple" (not in that way) I was completely blindsided when she said no and that she had a boyfriend. I think she was lying about the boyfriend, honestly, but that doesn't mean that we would really work as a couple since of the two major commonalities - ADHD and childhood trauma - only one is a good basis for a relationship (it's not childhood trauma. Oh man, it's so not childhood trauma. I learned that one the hard way) and after we gave each other space we ended up carrying on with the same "officially just friends but acting like a couple" way for a couple months. Only neither one of us wanted to admit that was what we were doing until she started pulling away and I didn't know what was going on. So yeah, we haven't talked for almost a year now.
My life is better because she was in it. I would love for her to know that. But I also want to stay away until 1. we can be friends without one of us wanting more (or we can be a couple because we both want it - damn tzares is a great metaphor) and 2. she actually wants me in her life again (she probably does to a certain extent but not enough to reach out)
So this is a manga series that she recommended. Or she mentioned it and I put a reserve at the library and it was so good. Her favorite character is the psychotic obsessed one who kidnaps Tadano (the protagonist besides Komi). And it's an incredibly sweet story about a teenage girl who is scared of people, but also very beautiful so everyone just assumes that she's too good for them, until Tadano starts talking to her. The artwork for Komi veers between the very beautiful image that everyone has of her and the very scared version with the big eyes that she sees herself.
So where are we now? Manga can be like a Showtime Original series where the major changes are subsumed into a repetitive story telling. Komi and another girl are rivals for Tadano even as they are actively maintaining a friendship and then there's a great deal about who should date whom. The last part where everyone who doesn't have Komi's contact information schemes to get it is cute, mostly because Komi truly wants to stay in contact with them. Because she's Komi and she's lonely.
I think with this manga my expectations are going to be lower than other mangas which tend to be pushing forward. Komi Can't Communicate reminds of the description of Friends as a "hang out show" where there's really no overarching plot so much as an excuse to keep in touch with characters that the audience liked. That's a better description for this particular manga than Showtime original series which always got extremely tedious after season 3, especially when there was always this narrative drive that pushed the illusion of change hard. Like who the fuck cared what happened on Weeds?
52. The Sinner by Terri Gerritsen - I was originally going to title this post something about Love and include a third book about a 19th century criminal who stole a painting and wouldn't let it go. This is one of the Rizzoli & Isles books and damn, they always get me. I don't think it's the plot since the plot is a lot of running around with the killer usually not someone that anyone really knows. Sometimes the killer has maybe a page or two (like in this book) and other times the killer just shows up and it makes sense. A lot of the mysteries in this one seemed obvious like who was the father of the young nun's stillborn baby? It's pretty obvious when almost every time anyone talks about her she's scrubbing and cleaning her space and being obsessed with purity. Of course, it's an incest baby from a deeply traumatic experience.
The only particularly shocking part is when Maureen Isles' ex-husband has something to do with an industrial accident in India that turns out to be the key to the case of the dead nuns (and dead leprosy victim and dead guy in a trunk).
So the cool part about Rizzoli and Isles books (and I suspect the tv show) is not so much the mystery (which is actually pretty intriguing even as the ultimate answer is disappointment) as the personalities of Rizzoli and Isles and this one seems like an early one in the series so Isles is getting a lot more time as she goes about her job, deals with her ex-husband (who she still loves) and deals with her Catholic fate.
I think that The Apprentice was the other book that I read and that might come before this one and that one is mostly Rizzoli. Oh wait, there had to be at least one in between since I don't remember Rizzoli getting laid in The Apprentice. And that's a major plot point as Rizzoli is pregnant in this one.
But the part of this book that really made me miss my friend was the grisly autopsy stuff. She would have loved that stuff.
My life is better because she was in it. I would love for her to know that. But I also want to stay away until 1. we can be friends without one of us wanting more (or we can be a couple because we both want it - damn tzares is a great metaphor) and 2. she actually wants me in her life again (she probably does to a certain extent but not enough to reach out)
So this is a manga series that she recommended. Or she mentioned it and I put a reserve at the library and it was so good. Her favorite character is the psychotic obsessed one who kidnaps Tadano (the protagonist besides Komi). And it's an incredibly sweet story about a teenage girl who is scared of people, but also very beautiful so everyone just assumes that she's too good for them, until Tadano starts talking to her. The artwork for Komi veers between the very beautiful image that everyone has of her and the very scared version with the big eyes that she sees herself.
So where are we now? Manga can be like a Showtime Original series where the major changes are subsumed into a repetitive story telling. Komi and another girl are rivals for Tadano even as they are actively maintaining a friendship and then there's a great deal about who should date whom. The last part where everyone who doesn't have Komi's contact information schemes to get it is cute, mostly because Komi truly wants to stay in contact with them. Because she's Komi and she's lonely.
I think with this manga my expectations are going to be lower than other mangas which tend to be pushing forward. Komi Can't Communicate reminds of the description of Friends as a "hang out show" where there's really no overarching plot so much as an excuse to keep in touch with characters that the audience liked. That's a better description for this particular manga than Showtime original series which always got extremely tedious after season 3, especially when there was always this narrative drive that pushed the illusion of change hard. Like who the fuck cared what happened on Weeds?
52. The Sinner by Terri Gerritsen - I was originally going to title this post something about Love and include a third book about a 19th century criminal who stole a painting and wouldn't let it go. This is one of the Rizzoli & Isles books and damn, they always get me. I don't think it's the plot since the plot is a lot of running around with the killer usually not someone that anyone really knows. Sometimes the killer has maybe a page or two (like in this book) and other times the killer just shows up and it makes sense. A lot of the mysteries in this one seemed obvious like who was the father of the young nun's stillborn baby? It's pretty obvious when almost every time anyone talks about her she's scrubbing and cleaning her space and being obsessed with purity. Of course, it's an incest baby from a deeply traumatic experience.
The only particularly shocking part is when Maureen Isles' ex-husband has something to do with an industrial accident in India that turns out to be the key to the case of the dead nuns (and dead leprosy victim and dead guy in a trunk).
So the cool part about Rizzoli and Isles books (and I suspect the tv show) is not so much the mystery (which is actually pretty intriguing even as the ultimate answer is disappointment) as the personalities of Rizzoli and Isles and this one seems like an early one in the series so Isles is getting a lot more time as she goes about her job, deals with her ex-husband (who she still loves) and deals with her Catholic fate.
I think that The Apprentice was the other book that I read and that might come before this one and that one is mostly Rizzoli. Oh wait, there had to be at least one in between since I don't remember Rizzoli getting laid in The Apprentice. And that's a major plot point as Rizzoli is pregnant in this one.
But the part of this book that really made me miss my friend was the grisly autopsy stuff. She would have loved that stuff.
Tags:
