Dead Gay Detectives Strike Back

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

Hi, this is boniblithe and this month my co-conspirator, ranalore and I will be introducing you to the lesser-known fandom of Yami no Matsuei. Like many anime/manga based fandoms, it isn't exactly a "small" fandom, but it is not that well known to people who are in more traditional Western TV/movie/media based fandoms.

I was drawn into Yami No Matsuei because it has everything I could ever want in a fandom: pretty immortals, moral dilemmas, supernatural mysteries, textual and subtextual attractions between friends and between mortal enemies ... so what if they happen to be cartoons, instead of live actors? Angst is angst!

This overview contains some character and plot spoilers for the series - I tried not to give away anything too major, but you do have to know certain things about the characters going in.

The Series

Yami no Matsuei is a shojo (or shoujo) manga – a comic marketed to female readers - drawn by Matsushita Yoko. The first story debuted in 1995, printed in issues 7-12 of the biweekly magazine Hana to Yume. The manga has continued on and off and has currently accumulated 11 tankobon (printed story collections). The manga has recently been licensed for translation by the English-language publisher Viz, and is scheduled for release on August 18, 2004. Meanwhile, fan-made translated scans of manga pages, called scanlations, lurk around the ‘net for those of you who don’t read Japanese, and there are other translations available which I will link to at the end of this post.

In 2001, a thirteen episode anime series for Yami no Matsuei ran on Japanese television. The anime doesn’t go into as much detail as the manga, but several main plot arcs are aptly summarized and the three major characters get good development. All 13 episodes are available on DVD - you can choose between hearing Japanese voice actors with Chinese and English subtitles, or English voiceover dubbing (which I do not prefer … Muraki’s English voiceover is nasal and shrill, while the sultry tones of his Japanese counterpart would make Alan Rickman sit up and take notes). You can buy the anime DVDs at various places - from the distributor, on ebay, deepdiscountDVD, amazon.com, or Netflix has them available for rent.

The commonly seen English title for the series is "Descendants of Darkness" - the English translation released in August 04 will bear this title.


The Premise of the YnM-verse

A shinigami is an angel of death, sometimes translated as "god of death" or "guardian of death". Every soul follows a natural course of existence, from birth to death. Meifu is the name for the land of the dead, and all the shinigami live in Meifu. It is a lovely place, with lots of sakura (cherry) trees, as you can see in this screencap from the anime:



Inside the Castle of Candles in Meifu, there is one candle for every human life. When a candle flame goes out this means a person has died. Meifu has a nice, tidy bureaucratic system in place to process and distribute souls into the proper places after death.

But sometimes, things go wrong. People don’t die when they are supposed to, or they die when they are not supposed to, or they don’t die at all, or they die unnaturally. When this happens, it can really mess up the paperwork. The shinigami are the homicide squad of the Japanese afterlife, ensuring that everyone who dies does so in the proper way and at the proper time.

After death, a person might take the job of shinigami if they still have some tie to the world of humans that prevents them from being able to move on to the next level. Most shinigami carry some heavy emotional baggage. Because of the nature of their position, there have been shinigami who have abused their powers. Therefore shinigami are always assigned to work in pairs so they can police as well as protect each other.

There are ten divisions of shinigami. Collectively, they work for JuOhCho, the official Bureau for processing the dead. They have physical bodies and can travel to earth, moving among the living visibly or invisibly as needed.

Some shinigami can summon powerful protective gods known as shikigami. The shiki have both a humanoid and an animal form. The relationship between shinigami and shikigami is a very close and complex one, partially a master/servant relationship but also a willing partnership. A shinigami must find a shikigami and win its acceptance.

There is a large helping of shounen-ai (boys’ love) in this series; relationship-based, not pornographic. If you like a little Ho with your Yay, this series definitely takes the sub out of subtext. But the series also has some compelling storylines, interesting characters, complex relationships, and a broad sense of mystery and darkness. The supernatural focus brings us powerful villains who range from casually amoral to downright wicked.

Characters and some basic plot points


Tsuzuki Asato

Tsuzuki works for JuOhCho in the Enma-chou Division. He has been with Enma-chou for seventy years, although he was only 26 years old physically when he died. For all of his years and experience, he is a continual screw-up who goes through partners like a cop through donuts. He is universally thought of as a scatterbrained slacker, never doing his paperwork, who always seems to find a way to lose his bonus or cost the division money.

Tsuzuki has an insatiable sweet tooth, dances divinely, is a horrible cook, and internalizes everything. He is normally carefree (until he has time alone to brood, and feel guilty about something) and he is quite emotionally sensitive and sympathetic. He's the kind of guy who likes puppies, and is pretty light-hearted for a guy whose job is all about death and dying.

As a child Tsuzuki was teased and abused for being different (mostly for his purple eye color). As we go through the manga series, we find there is other evidence which indicates that Tsuzuki may not be entirely human. He is certainly extremely powerful and can be very dangerous. But Tsuzuki loves humans, and his job of collecting souls is often very painful for his generous heart. His strong desire to be thought of as human and be accepted by others may be why he accepted the job of shinigami in the first place.

Tsuzuki’s self-esteem is very low. As a result he spends most of his time focusing on other people’s problems because his own are so unworthy of attention. He loves everyone instantly, and is confused and hurt when they don’t instantly love him back. His need to help other people and to keep them happy is so strong that it is often used against him by villains or his enemies. Tsuzuki is so powerful that the only way most enemies can defeat him is to attack him emotionally.

Tsuzuki uses fuda magic: spells written on pieces of paper that can be used as physical shields, turned into objects, thrown at an enemy, or lots of other neat things. But Tsuzuki’s greatest power lies in his shikigami. Most shinigami have one or two shikigami; Tsuzuki has twelve. Most often seen are Suzaku (representing fire, the Phoenix, kind of a mother hen), SohRyu (representing water, a very high-ranking Blue Dragon, very serious semi-boss of the other shikigami), Byakko (representing wind, a White Tiger, very playful), and Toudha the Fire Snake, who is extremely dangerous and has the power to actually kill a shinigami like Tsuzuki if he wishes.

There is much mystery surrounding Tsuzuki’s life on earth. It is known that there was a horrible, traumatic incident that occurred during his life which is in some way related to the deaths of people that Tsuzuki cared about, deaths that he was powerless to stop or may in fact even have been responsible for. We do know that after this mysterious incident he became a “John Doe” patient in a hospital and repeatedly tried to commit suicide.

Tsuzuki is usually paired with Hisoka, Muraki, and Tatsumi in fanfiction, although I have a secret love for Tsuzuki/Todha which languishes, sadly, unmet.


Kurosaki Hisoka

Tsuzuki's new partner is Kurosaki Hisoka. When we meet Hisoka he has only recently died, at the physical age of 16. Hisoka is a stubborn, smart-mouthed teenager with the standard anime Gay/Feminine/Uke appearance and a horribly angsty past. Fans tend to either love him or hate him.

Hisoka has strong spiritual powers includng some healing powers and strong psychic defense skills. He comes from an ancient family and is trained in the martial arts. But because his body is still so young, he can sometimes be overpowered in a direct physical confrontation with a larger opponent.

Hisoka is an empath, one who can sense the emotions of others. Sometimes he can read strong surface thoughts and on rare occasions can synchronize with the people around him, getting sucked into their minds if he isn’t careful - especially Tsuzuki, who is quite sensitive and feels every emotion at double strength, it seems.

Hisoka can be very level headed; practical in matters of life and death, he serves as a good balance for the flighty Tsuzuki, smacking the older partner when Tsuzuki’s being an idiot. But like most teenagers, he has a short temper, little patience, and a gift for sarcasm. He is easily provoked if you know where his buttons are.

As oldest/only son of the Kurosaki family, Hisoka would have been expected to grow up to be head of the family. But his superstitious family hated his supernatural powers, thinking of him as unnatural, and locked him up when he was a child. His isolation from others combined with his strong empathic powers means it is often difficult for Hisoka to interact socially with other people. Tsuzuki loves to protect and fuss over Hisoka, and Hisoka secretly relishes the affection no matter how much he likes to pretend it annoys him. Since being partnered with Tsuzuki, Hisoka has started to care a little bit more about other people and has begun to show brief moments of unguarded emotion despite his best efforts to remain aloof.

In the course of the series we find out how Hisoka died: when he was thirteen, he slipped out one night and witnessed the evil Dr. Muraki murdering a woman. Unfortunately, Muraki saw Hisoka as well. Muraki raped Hisoka under a sakura tree (the rape is visually depicted, clearly but not too explicitly, in both the manga and the anime). Hisoka’s empathy was overwhelmed by the darkness in his older, stronger attacker. Because he was so small and young he could not fight back or run away.

Muraki carved a curse into Hisoka’s skin, weaving a memory spell around the scars so that Hisoka forgot what happened. Over the next three years, Hisoka suffered a mysterious, slow, and very painful death.

The scars are mystical and are not visible all the time. When the memory spell was broken, the red scars reappeared on Hisoka’s body. They also appear whenever Muraki is nearby or when Hisoka is thinking of that night.

Hisoka is fixated on power and hates to be called a “kid”. He believes that everything will be better if he can be as powerful as Tsuzuki. He is determined to prove his own worth by acquiring power, and is studying fuda magic and questing for an extremely powerful shikigami. He will push and push and push to achieve what he wants, but he is young and inexperienced and so occasionally finds himself in even more trouble because of it.

Hisoka is usually paired with Tsuzuki in fanfic, but sometimes has other pairings as well.


Muraki Kazutaka

The fate of Dr. Muraki is inextricably woven into that of Tsuzuki and Hisoka. This brilliant and famous physician is also a cruel, sadistic serial killer and practitioner of black magic who is responsible for more than one case that the shinigami must investigate. Muraki is referred to by others in the series as looking like an angel but acting like a demon.

Dr. Muraki is quite a fellow, with a large harem of lust-driven followers fanbase. Muraki is charming, sensual, powerfully built and attractive – silver-haired, silver-eyed, and silver-tongued. He often seduces his female patients and uses them for his own ends, killing or discarding them like unwanted toys when he is finished. One of his eyes is mechanical and may even be magical. He also can call up demons and perform other sorts of black magic.

Every time the doctor kills, he absorbs the life force of the victim to add to his own dark power. For Muraki, killing is an art. He says that he killed Hisoka slowly and with so much pain because a beautiful, tragic boy deserved a beautiful, tragic death. Muraki is delighted that the boy he killed so artfully has become a shinigami and is partnered with Tsuzuki, who Muraki desperately wants to use for kinky sex games multiple nefarious purposes.

Muraki and Hisoka have some parallels in their pasts: Muraki’s mother was insane and considered him a “doll”, not a real child. His emotional needs were completely ignored. In much the same way, Muraki treats the people around him like objects without any feelings. Muraki often refers to Hisoka as his “puppet” and hints that he hopes to one day make Hisoka over into his own image.

Muraki lovingly keeps his half-brother Saki’s disembodied head in a tank full of nutrients and hopes one day to reattach it to another body - so that he can kill Saki again. Much of Dr. Muraki’s “research” centers around putting together body parts and reanimating dead tissue.

Tsuzuki is intrigued by Muraki, obviously both fascinated by his seductiveness and repelled by his evil, right up until he discovers that Muraki is responsible for Hisoka’s death and the manner in which Hisoka was brutally raped and cursed by the doctor. But by then it is too late – Muraki has learned Tsuzuki’s weaknesses, and continues to use them against him throughout the series.

Muraki’s lust for and attempts to seduce Tsuzuki are blatant in both the anime and the manga; it is all part of his twisted game. There is a brief scene in which Hisoka's empathic powers give him a glimpse of Muraki's dark lust for Tsuzuki and it's extremely powerful. Muraki, a man not ruled by any semblance of feeling, knows the emotional buttons of each of the shinigami, and just how to push them. Muraki is most often paired with Tsuzuki in fanfic, but also with Oriya, Hisoka, and on rare but spectacular occasions, Tatsumi.


Konoe Kacho

Konoe is the chief of EnMaChou’s Shokan division (in other words, he is everybody’s boss). He is pretty gruff, but has a soft spot for Tsuzuki. Even when Tsuzuki gets himself into trouble, Konoe is not always as hard on him (he leaves that up to his second-in-command, Tatsumi.) Konoe apparently knows about Tsuzuki’s mysterious past, but has not revealed any of it to us yet.


Tatsumi Seiichrou

The no-nonsense Tatsumi is Konoe's secretary and is rumored to be the real person that runs the Shokan Division. While working in the general ranks of the shinigami, Tatsumi was Tsuzuki’s third partner. Tatsumi dumped Tsuzuki after a relatively short time for reasons unknown to us, but while he is generally very stern with all of the shinigami, Tatsumi has a great affection for Tsuzuki and sometimes goes out of his way to take care of him. On the rare occasions when Tatsumi loses his cool, it is usually something to do with Tsuzuki.

Tatsumi is in charge of the finances of the department and is very tight with money. He is always docking Tsuzuki’s paycheck and reminding him not to spend too much. We don’t know much about Tatsumi’s living days other than his mother was of noble birth and he had a younger sister. His mother’s death was very hard on Tatsumi and he carries a lot of guilt from it, though we have not yet found out the details.

Tatsumi is extremely powerful. He is a kagetsukai, a shadow magic user, which is very rare. He can manipulate shadows to his will, using them as protective shields or even to kill. Fic pairing Tatsumi and Muraki is often quite intense. But Tatsumi is most often paired with Watari, Tsuzuki, and rarely Hisoka.


Yutaka Watari and 003

The eccentric scientist Watari is sometimes brushed off as comic relief, but he is a great character. If you consider that the people Watari works with are filled to the brim with emotional baggage, it’s refreshing to have someone around who’s relatively outgoing, friendly and mostly normal – although it makes you wonder how he became a shinigami in the first place. The practical Watari is always collecting information, trying to twist the laws of the universe in new ways, and when he or his friends are threatened he can be quite dangerous.

Watari’s skill is his inventions, and he can magically animate his drawings (which are not really very good). He has a companion named 003, a cute little owl. He is also completely obsessed with discovering a sex-change potion, which is a fairly well-abused plot device in fanfiction. He is most often paired with his polar opposite, Tatsumi but is sometimes paired with Hisoka or Tsuzuki.


Mibu Oriya

The dark-haired, serious Oriya is the owner of a “restaurant” (actually the front for a brothel) in Kyoto. He has been Muraki's friend since they were teenagers. He is the only person Muraki really trusts. Oriya knows about Muraki’s “research” and his crimes, and seems to know when he is being manipulated by Muraki, but he quietly goes along with it. He does not seem to have any magic abilities but he is a skilled martial artist. In fanfic he is most often paired with Muraki, but there is a subset of Oriya/Hisoka in the fandom because of their brief but intense interaction in the Kyoto arc.


GuShoShin

The GuShoShin brothers can best be described as floating twin chicken librarians in dresses. Like all good information specialists, they are the go-to guys for research, keeping information on all souls both living and dead, and they carry their laptops with them at all times. They are sometimes assigned to go on missions with the shinigami. Since Tsuzuki has completely destroyed the library on more than one occasion, the GuShoShin have banned him from the library, but they love Hisoka and welcome him with open arms. But not in a fic pairing kind of way.


Suzaku

The fiery red phoenix is one of Tsuzuki’s favorite and often-called shikigami. Appearing in human form as a dark-haired woman, she is kind of a mother hen to Tsuzuki, always worrying over him and continually squabbling with Toudha, another one of Tsuzuki’s fire shikis. Suzaku has been known to disobey Tsuzuki’s direct commands in order to protect him when she thinks he needs it.


Byakko

Tsuzuki's white tiger shikigami is a wind god. He is young and playful, and likes to fool around when he has free time. He and Tsuzuki are well-matched in temperament.


Todha

Todha is a fire shiki, who appears in his god form as a great fire snake or “tern” snake. He is tormented and cantankerous - only his close-kept affection for Tsuzuki keeps him under control. He is willing to obey Tsuzuki and accepted Tsuzuki as his master because Tsuzuki released him from prison, but he takes Tsuzuki’s orders very literally, and sometimes Tsuzuki forgets to be careful with Todha. He admits to being a bad fire shikigami, and he drives Suzaku nuts. He is very important in the Kyoto arc. Also, I love him.

There are other fascinating characters in the series - male, female, human and demon, but these are the main ones you should know in order to find your way through the fandom.


The Fandom

The fandom at large isn’t so much different from any other fandom. Character bashing sometimes takes place, so there are plenty of character-love shrines and fanlistings for people to defend their favorite characters against teh h8rz. The fanfiction is mostly yaoi (m/m slash), with a small amount of yuri (f/f slash) for some of the secondary female characters. There are some gen and some plot-driven fics around, but I haven’t found a whole lot that aren’t pairing-based. Pairing wars exist; Mary Sues exist but do not seem to be as common as in some other fandoms, I think maybe because who needs a Mary Sue when everyone in the canon text wants to sleep with your violet-eyed lead character who has overwhelming angst and nearly unsurpassed magical powers?

In anime/manga based fandoms it is traditional to list pairings in dom/sub (top/bottom) order: so if you see Tsuzuki/Hisoka, it is the reverse of Hisoka/Tsuzuki. I am very bad about remembering that, and when I talk about fics I always put them in order of POV character/secondary character, so some of the die hard fandom people out there might slap me around for that.

Typical character stereotyping that may be observed in badfic includes overfeminization of Hisoka or Tsuzuki, flighty over-comical Watari, flat cartoon-villain Muraki and dull, emotionless, uptight Tatsmui. Other typical badfic abuses include the usual bad grammar/spelling, purple prose peppered with repeated overdescriptions of sparkling eye color and flowing hair, and an abundance of Homeric epithets (the green-eyed boy, the dark-haired Shadow master).

Beware of fics where that are not so much stories as they are long mental rambles by various characters, that may only interest you if you already have a fondness for the characters involved. Others have the problem of sex scenes where the characters suddenly lose all their characterization and turn into Harlequin novel rejects.

Are you ready?

If you think you would like a little taste of Yami no Matsuei, my advice is to start with the anime (which you can rent from NETFLIX, yay) for the main storylines and then delve into the manga for more in-depth look at the universe and the characters.

If you’d like to get a quick, visual feel for the anime series, I would encourage you to head over to WTF Productions and scroll down the page until you find the fan video entitled "Possession". It’s about 30 MB Quicktime file. Almost every featured anime character makes an appearance and you can get a good feel for the series from it.

If you’d prefer to start with summaries, scans, or fanfic, please follow the links below.

Where To Find More

General information on anime and manga

Article on shojo manga ("girl comics").

Yaoi/slash glossary with common anime terms, vocabulary and definitions

Scanlations, translations, and summaries of YnM

Amparo Bertram’s translations/summaries of the 11 manga tankoubon.

Theria.net has a glossary of Japanese terms, character profiles including the shikigami, translations (in script format) of the manga, scanlations of some of the early volumes.

Bleeding Moon has episode summaries for the anime, lots of screencaps, character essays, and some fanart/fanfic.

The Shinigami Sweet Shop has beautiful scan galleries.

A few months ago I posted a screencap/scanlation combination summary of the first series arc in my Livejournal. If you don't have time to learn Japanese and buy the manga, or wait for the US release, you can click here:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

It has vampires! Zombies! Pop stars! And a church!

Fanfiction & archives

Rinoa’s Yaoi Playground has fanfiction, sound bytes, essays, rants, and ramblings about the characters, their personalities, their relationships with each other, and their sexualities.

KatCom is an archive of R and NC17 rated fic, sorted by author name, which is difficult to navigate if you don’t know the authors, of course, but a nice place to click around if you like the darker, higher rated fics, and have some time on your hands. If you’re in the mood for carefully crafted BDSM fic, KatCom BDSM is the place to go – the site also contains basic BDSM info, a glossary, and a bit more.

Phantom Moon is an archive with fics of various ratings, PG through NC17. It is also sorted by author name, but at least here they give you the pairings and ratings that the authors have written. It also contains Unapologetic, which is a Hisoka defender fansite.

JuOhCho Files is a new open, searchable archive with a variety of fanfiction.

Livejournal communities:

yamifics

ynm_fanart

yami_icons

Reviews of the anime series:

A review of the anime series and there's another bunch of them here and oh look another one can be found here.


I look forward to posting fics here over the next few weeks and luring more unsuspecting writers encouraging more people to check out the fandom! The manga has recently been licensed for translation by the English-language publisher Viz, and is scheduled for release on August 18, 2004, so ask for it at your local bookstore.