Life Gaiden

Let's assume that, at this point, I'm just really, really not going to stick to the schedule which I had set myself for these posts.

Yesterday, I had a pretty horrible day, with pain, with raging fever and with my whole body turning into one big rash.

However, I still managed to read the newest Bleach chapter, and this page made my day:



Because I would recognise that elbow anywhere.

Now, I'll admit, I've always had mixed feelings about the possibility that Grimmjow might return. On the one hand, I hated the fact that Tite Kubo had left it tantalisingly uncertain as to whether the Sexta Espada had actually copped it from Nnoitra's blow. Dangling threads are, indeed, one of the main things that annoy me about Bleach, not just because they are left for interminable amounts of time before being addressed, but also because most of them could do with not having been planted in the first place. Part of the reason why I like Fairy Tail so much is that it is a master class at swerving all the problems with pacing which Blecah falls into like a champ. But, it's this annoyance more than anything else that made me hope that we would one day find out Grimmjow's ultimate fate.

But then, I got to thinking about the logistics of the thing, and I couldn't figure out how or why there would be a reason to return to the arrancar after Aizen's defeat ... which shows my lack of imagination. I would never have thought up the idea of shinigami and arrancar sharing an enemy.

By this chapter, though, I was expecting this revelation and looking forward to it. I mean, if we'd already been shown that the Tres Bestia, Loly Aivirrne and Tier Harribel were still alive, when they had looked pretty dead last time we saw them, it was a bit of a given that Grimmjow would also return. (Oh, while I'm mentioning Tier Harribel, I have to register my outrage at the torture-porn-style full page picture she was given in Chpter 485. It's seriously disgusting.) Though, by now, Bleach is beginning to remind me of a short reading exercise-type piece I once came across, when I was about eight-years-old. I think it was Victorian. Anyway, it was called 'The Chinese Theatre', and it described it as customary in China for actors playing characters who had died to get up and walk off as soon as attention was diverted from them by the action on stage. I can just imagine Sun Sun, Mila Rose and Apache sidling off back to Hueco Mundo while we were all distracted watching Ichigo fight Gin or Aizen.

And I suppose it was simplistic of me to assume that the end of Aizen's part in the story would also be the end of the arrancar. Part of what had always made the arrancar so interesting was the fact that none of them ever seemed to act out of a sense of unified ideology. Each one was a law unto themselves, with only Aizen's powerful influence keeping them in check. And, I suppose it would be a massive dangling plot thread to not show us how the arrancar act without Aizen's influence. Therefore, it makes it not only possible, but even likely that, under the right circumstances a truce could be made between shinigami and arrancar - even though the operative phrase there is 'under the right circumstances'. This is with Grimmjow being a different kettle of chips to say, Renji.

But, I'm optimistic about this development overall - especially if it means I can see my favourite character again. And do I care that this was probably done only for fan-service? Of course not! My fandom now knows no shame! Who am I kidding? I missed that character and Heaven knows I’m looking forward to this. I can’t wait to see his happy little face as he attacks Quincies. Kinda reminds me of this video actually, something else which makes my day every time I look it up …

This is a little bit random as one of my fandom posts, because I can pretty much guarantee that it will be less review-like in nature and, more like one of my Bleach-related posts, actually arose from a really, really nice experience in my RL. So, without further ado, I'll go into the story:

I'm getting better (finally) after my long period of illness this summer and so I'm getting ready to return to university. Part of this was going through my books, which, on account of the state of my house had all been crammed into two cardboard boxes. So, some of my uni books were all jumbled up together with ... everything else. And that 'everything else' was some lovely and mixed stuff. Like there was '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea', which was one of my favourite books as a kid. Then, there were books like 'The Diary of Pelly D', which have very strong memories attached to them. But, I also found my Hellsing volumes, and had a delightful half hour getting distracted by reading them instead of packing.

For people who might be reading this who might not know what it is, Hellsing is basically a manga 'Dracula' fanfic in which the Lord of the Night, instead of dying at the end of Bram Stoker's novel. But, in the Hellsing manga, instead of being doubly dead, Dracula fights Nazis.

(Oh, btw, one of the trippiest things about this series is that 'Dracula' the novel still exists in the story's universe - it is actually mentioned by one of the manga's characters, who is the direct descendant of Abraham van Helsing. Although, I guess, that the epistollary form of the original text makes this sort of allowable.)

Now, it should be a sign of how good Hellsing is that it overrides my general, well, distaste of anything with Nazis as bad guys. You see, I really hate stories with Nazi bad guys, because, for one thing, the writer often thinks that their being Nazis is a perfectly good excuse to not give their villain a coherent or human motivation. They can just jackboot an army and clock-off for lunch. Because the basic idea is 'Nazis are just naturally bad people who do bad shit.' It’s just, I suppose, that I’m not comfortable with the suggestion that ‘some people are just inherently evil.’ Because, most humans are not like that, and, while fictional Nazis are just tokens used to denote an idea, I dislike their being used in this way as they have actual human, historical counterparts, and thus descendants. We ignore that fact at our peril.

But, Khota Hirano gets away with using Nazis in my eyes, partly for the reason that his Nazis are not historical figures, are, for the most part, not human (vampires, werewolves and one android) and, even though the whole, almost exploitation-movie style of the enterprise was the perfect example not to, he still gives them motivations, which are still recognisable, if exaggerated.

Indeed, I'll go right ahead and say that even though the whole enterprise is totally mental - I mean, Nazis sacking London in a fiery vampire apocalypse - it has some of the best speeches and quotes of any manga I have come across. I mean, get this short speech by Alucard:

“We ruin the countries we govern and the people in our care. We slaughter our enemies and sacrifice all our allies. We’ll keep killing until there’s nothing left but to destroy ourselves. It will never be enough, we’re incorrigible warmongers, aren’t we Major?”

How high-brow does that sound? Especially as it’s delivered by Alucard as looks wistfully up at the moon. Then, there is, of course, the quote which is one of the reasons why this manga is so close to my heart: Giving up is what kills people. It's only when a person refuses to give up no matter what they earn the right of walking down humanity's noble pathway. Well, it's this moral philosophy that makes it close to my heart.

Indeed, I would say that it is this consistent moral compass at the heart of Hellsing which allows it to flit so easily between wackiness and very disturbing violence in a way that another manga which I have mentioned - Black Butler - utterly fails at. Well, that and the fact that it acknowledges its own silliness, a practice which my good friend, Robert, tells me is called 'lampshade hanging'? This can certainly be seen in the series' way of portraying its characters of other nationalities: the English drink tea and there is a bona fide English butler in a story set in the present day, the Frenchman Vernedead's last big speech includes a rant against fish and chips and Father Anderson's Scottish accent is so pronounced, I'm pretty sure that no actual human being could physically speak like that.

But, throughout the series, we get this sense that we are to judge characters, not by their goodness, but by their stoicism, and it is this which gave me a sense when reading that this was something worthwhile and not just the pulp fiction it seemed.

Although, I would say it is this consistency which makes the ending of the whole series a bit of a kick in the balls. Yeah, the final chapter just descends into a lighthearted romp into fan service, with Integra Hellsing fighting a friendly fencing match with Maxwell and Alucard coming back to un-life, after having been tricked to his third(?) death in the penultimate chapter. It’s hard for me to convey to people what an intellectual come-down this was for the series. I mean, there's even a possible allusion to Irish history in the series in the name of Captain Vernedead's French mercenary troupe, the Wild Geese. Then, there is the fact that one of the Nazis listens to and sings along to part of Weber's 'Der Freschutz'. (And, you can bet your bottom dollar that that is why I like that opera so much - as well as, like, its being good...)

But, overall, when I found my Hellsing books in those cardboard boxes and flicked through them, it was with a sense of unambiguous joy, not just at the ludicrousness of the thing, but also thinking about its moral philosophy. I realised that its emphasis on stoicism had affected my own views in a big way. This was especially as I was going through another period of serious illness when I first came across these books, and the phrase, 'giving up is what kills people', resonated with me. I found it strangely poignant when I was flicking through the first volume that the song 'Tokyo (Vampires and Wolves)' by The Wombats was playing on my iPod (and also is now), because when I was looking at those pages and heard the lyric, the demons from my past leave me in peace I suddenly realised that they probably never would. That is, at least, these demons would not.