louiselux | International Saiyuki Week (Reply)

rachelmanija has declared it International Saiyuki week and who am I to argue? In honour of this I have temporarily changed my default icon and am posting something Saiyuki related... so, nothing new there then. Pass it on.

The beauty of Minekura's art is absolutely bound up in my enjoyment of the story (or do I mean that the other way round?). It doesn't hurt that her characters are incredibly hot (technical term) and also that Minekura's skill in representing facial expressions is quite astounding. I did want to talk about some of the panels or pages that I find most affecting, but I'm at work and don't have any scans with me: Sanzo crawling past an unmoving Gojyo, Gojyo's terrified face as a child and his hopeful, loving smile, Kinkaku's skeleton, Seitan Tasei's expression of malevolent cunning, Hakkai on the brink of murder, the way Sanzo's expression changes from desolation to stony acceptance over two pages in the Snowdrop arc and wow, these are all intensely painful images, aren't they? These are the pages that instantly occur to me, but there would be far more, I am sure. And perhaps of happy things too, even.

Because Saiyuki, with its story of death, bloody murder, loss and mental and physical pain, is actually life affirming. Underneath the mayhem is the quieter story of four desperately lonely people who find each other and become friends, who in fact becomes each other's family. Also, you can guess that they might be more than simply friends. Minekura never takes it that far, but she is happy to throw her readers clues, and she trusts her readers to spot them. One of the most addicting aspects of her work, and one of my favourites, is how she draws parallels between past and present events and these parallels sometimes only reveal themselves on close reading-- trusting the reader again. As an aside--

coffeeandink's close readings (1, 2, 3) are wonderfully informative and helped me see things in new ways.

That's is something else that makes reading Saiyuki so hugely enjoyable: the story is only half the story. Her artwork gives you the missing half, the story of domesticity and acceptance and coming to terms with yourself and perhaps it's this balance between the story we are told and the story we are shown that gives her characters so much depth.

On a final note, here's that picture of Hakkai and the orange.