Sanzo is pissy man-bitch love.

Gojyo is steamy bad-boy love.

Hakkai is an after-sex cigarette.

The plot is... Well, fortunately the series doesn't spend too much time on the plot. It's mainly a way to scoot the characters along the road so they don't spend all their time sitting in a seedy bar, smoking, drinking, and bickering like cousins brothers. (Instead they sit in lots of different seedy bars, smoking, drinking, and bickering like not cousins at all brothers.) The combat scenes are nice and short and well leavened with character moments. The angst is cleverly handled:

Sanzo: *out of nowhere* If you want to go deal with that... thing... that happened forever ago, it's okay.

Hakkai: No, it's okay. I'll just sit here and...

Sanzo: And?

Hakkai: ...Move all the books slightly to the left.

Sanzo: As long as that thing doesn't bother you.

Hakkai: It did for a while, but then that other thing...

Sanzo: Oh, yes, the other thing.

Hakkai: ...

Sanzo: ...

The Brat Pack: *bursts in* WE HATE EACH OTHER, CAN WE SLEEP WITH YOU GUYS?

Slash fans: *take notes*

Thread of conversation: *is dropped like a hot potato made of arsenic*

...But you know it'll come up in the next episode or two. So far--as in, episode 6 or 7--they've been good at not making everyone wait too long. And apart from one swerve into ancient Japanese cliche ("You did something small for me way back when, I must adore you and worship you for the rest of my life, and if I fail, I must DIE HORRIBLY BY MY OWN BLADE"--WTF, people, are we in Japan or Gor?), the angst has been rewarding.

The cinematic style has been good so far, too. Saiyuki's a hell of a lot artsier than the usual run of anime, to excellent effect. It took time for me to get used to the ultramodern effects in a semi-historical anime, but it works.

The drawing style, though.... The drawing style gives me colorectal cramps. Is there any possible way to make the characters uglier? I can tell they're supposed to be bishonen, but with the occasional exception of Gojyo, they look like angular toads. Sanzo in particular was beaten with the ugly stick--and the one-expression stick--and the weird-clothes stick--and the stupid-hat stick. If he didn't have such a corn-studded turd of a personality, I might actually dislike him.

I have to add one last bitch: Gojyo's race. It's translated as "water sprite." Okaaaay... real, identifiable European-style water sprites do show up in Japanese media from time to time, but if Gojyo's a European water sprite, then so is President Bush. Then I got to hear the Japanese word for "water sprite."

Kappa.

FREAKIN' KAPPA.

WTF, Saiyuki, WTF? Kappa are toad demons. (Think Jaken from Inuyasha.) Unlike most Japanese critters, they don't take on sexy human forms. They DO suck people's entrails out through their anuses, which is always a hopeful sign in a cute man.

I'm still trying to figure out how Gojyo has anything to do with kappa. Perhaps the entrails thing is the link.

And now I'm going to go back to watching sweet, sweet salty Saiyuki again. Maybe Sanzo will take off his over-robe and beat Goku some more.

Never fall for a man with mustard-colored eyes. It is All Bad. The eyes are a clue.

When your bandmate, your manager, and the person you have been stalking all tell you that you are in love, you might want to consider the possibility that you have certain feelings. Please don't wait for your granny, your housemate, and random passers-by to start telling you. You are in a shounen-ai anime. Relax, enjoy it, and for the love of Pete, don't let the inevitable angst get in the way of the inevitable boinking.

BTW, re: boinking: Your bandmate is cuter and more approachable than Mr. Mustardeyes. This, too, is a clue. Yes, he seems to be straight. Yes, he doesn't seem interested in you. But you are in a SHOUNEN-AI ANIME. Take advantage of the genre, and flip him like a pancake.

( Spoilers. )After three and a half episodes, the verdict is: More liquor. The basic storyline is interesting and several of the characters are compelling, but the central relationship is between a three-year-old boy and a hardened psychopath. Gonna need lots and lots more liquor to get through it.

And possibly one of the doujinshis the author herself drew where Mr. Pancake pairs up with--well, anybody. He's one of the best and most subtly drawn characters. It's a pity that he's sliding to the back as Eiri comes to the front.

.hack/SIGN is an unholy blend of Serial Experiment Magical Girl LAIN and Lodoss Wars: The Digital Version. Everyone is so very pretty, and so very fantasy-game floofy, and so very cryptic, and all the dialogue was ganked from French surrealist indie movies. It's as though Miyazaki adapted Waiting for Godot.

Also: Thus far, no paaaaaaaaain.


Damn, I really should have watched the stack of anime chauni gave me back when she sent it to me in, oh, 2003?


EDIT: The story lacks a certain urgency when ou realize that everyone has their panties in a bunch because of... some guy who edited his avatar.

Sure, there are all kinds of horrible things happening behind the scenes--dead people permanently logged in, comatose people permanently logged in, nonexistent people permanently logged in, personifications of murdered kittens permanently logged in--but no one knows that. All they know is, they want to tell Mr. Edited Avatar to stop, Mr. ... is the only person who knows him, Mr. ... is exceptionally good at running away, OMG WE MUST ALL HUNT MR. ... TO GROUND. They've completely forgotten about Mr. Edited Avatar.

Actually, the show's so true to how real RPGs work, it's scary.

FMA reminds me of a certain shoujo anime that I used to be a fan of. "La la la, everything is sweet in its own angsty way. Look! Chewy angstmuffins! Look! Cute boys! La, la, watch them cavort, life is sweet, and--ooh, one of them died. Let's be sad for a while in a hopeful, optimistic sort of way. Now let's cavort some more, and eat some more angstmuffins, but look, life is still really sweet and cute because--oh, wait, we're almost at the ending? WELCOME TO THE APOCALYPSE, BIYATCH."

Except that FMA was never sweet and cute, so the ending is going to be proportionately worse. Where Unnamed Shoujo Anime merely jerked a few tears, FMA is going to cause RL physical damage. A stray flicker of fire from Roy's dying explosion is going to ricochet through the TV screen and KILL THE VIEWERS. That's why there are only 51 episodes, isn't it? If they screened episode 52, cities would burn.

And then they made a movie, which is survivable only because like all anime movies, it probably sucks golf balls through a hosepipe.

I fear the ending. I'm at ep 28 or so, and the angst rends, my precious, it hurtssss usssss. The spoilers I've stumbled across suggest that the story is much like FFX, with psychically tormented greebly goopy things substituted for dead people.

Personally, I could deal with an FFX/FMA crossover. Roy could use Auron on his staff. His current lineup is completely useless as anything except walking sandbags, with the exception of Hawkeye, who probably would have made Fuhrer already if it weren't for her crush on Roy. Rikku and Winry need to get together, because Al Bhed tech + automail = OTP. And Yuna and Gluttony need to get together, because she's probably really tasty.

...Which is tangential to the point, which is that nothing, nothing, is going uphill for the rest of the series, and even Roy stripped to his shirttails and cleaning windows can't make it better.

Am looking forward to it. I plan to watch it with a bucket of half-popped popcorn: The snack of PAIN.