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Gensoumaden Saiyuki - Just a thought
Dec. 28th, 2005 05:13 pmAfter meeting Murasaki-chan, who is an avid fan of GS, I remembered myself during my sixth-seventh grade, still completely enamoured with the fandom. I vividly remember myself writing fics back then, all of which were Mary-Sued, but never posted. I was completely shy of my works – both in writing and in drawing. That was also when I first got along/became close friends with Nikka, who was part of a barkada that my best friend at the time, Melody, joined, and by default, the shy little anime-freak had to join too.
Nikka wasn’t even into anime, but when she read my works (back then, since she was my seatmate in the back, she was wheedling me into showing her what I kept on writing about), she got into her first ever fandom, GS. She was a writer first, then a fan later and much later, a drawer, whereas I was a fan first, drawer second then a writer later. Looking back, the both of us, still subdued but obviously more experienced juniors, we’d be laughing our asses off at how we were so taken by OCs that were Mary-Sues, and our own, slowly budding original plotlines behind the looming figure that was the GS fandom.
Nikka and I were both happily gushing to each other about our respective idolized male characters. Sanzo and Hakkai respectively. Honestly, I can hear her already admonishing me for using the words “Nikka” and “gushing” in the same sentence pertaining to each other. Still, fandoms are fandoms.
Come my freshman year at high school, my attentions slowly shifted to Yami no Matsuei due to the joint influence of Melody, AXN previews that I could not watch simply because they were beyond my weekday curfew and my acquaintance-and-slowly-becoming-friend Sey.
Back then, I wasn’t even interested in shounen-ai/yaoi. Guess who was reluctantly (and later on, happily) converted?
Either way, I got into shounen-ai and YnM, got raised eyebrows from Nikka and constant Weiss Kreuz-yaoiness from Melody. (Weiss Kreuz was our fandom when I first met her, when I was in grade three. She was a foreign transfer.) My love for Gensomaden Saiyuki died, I wrote Yami no Matsuei shounen-ai fics, stopped fanfic writing in the span of roughly two and a half years, started to become active in my current fandom (Yuu-Gi-Ou) through fanart. Huzzah.
My point was…
Muu-chan made me think about the GS fandom again. You know, if ever I’d get back into the fandom… then it struck me. There was this one character… one character that struck me.
The thought plagued me for the longest, longest time… “What was the name of the guy that really struck me in Saiyuki?”
It wasn’t Hakkai, nor Tenpo Gensui, my crushes. It wasn’t Sanzo, it wasn’t Homura, it wasn’t Kougaiji. There was someone who really caught my interest and held it, despite all these years, and thankfully, not in the romantic kind. His name constantly escapes me.
He stands for what he believes in, and worries greatly for those that he cares for and is ridiculed because of it; cast aside with no other pretense other than there existing hotter men in the series. I could never remember his name, but upon contemplating him and his mysterious name while doing the dishes, one unsure name, lost in the passing of interest oh so long ago, but ringing so comfortably with the man in my mind came to me.
…Jiroushin.
Nikka wasn’t even into anime, but when she read my works (back then, since she was my seatmate in the back, she was wheedling me into showing her what I kept on writing about), she got into her first ever fandom, GS. She was a writer first, then a fan later and much later, a drawer, whereas I was a fan first, drawer second then a writer later. Looking back, the both of us, still subdued but obviously more experienced juniors, we’d be laughing our asses off at how we were so taken by OCs that were Mary-Sues, and our own, slowly budding original plotlines behind the looming figure that was the GS fandom.
Nikka and I were both happily gushing to each other about our respective idolized male characters. Sanzo and Hakkai respectively. Honestly, I can hear her already admonishing me for using the words “Nikka” and “gushing” in the same sentence pertaining to each other. Still, fandoms are fandoms.
Come my freshman year at high school, my attentions slowly shifted to Yami no Matsuei due to the joint influence of Melody, AXN previews that I could not watch simply because they were beyond my weekday curfew and my acquaintance-and-slowly-becoming-friend Sey.
Back then, I wasn’t even interested in shounen-ai/yaoi. Guess who was reluctantly (and later on, happily) converted?
Either way, I got into shounen-ai and YnM, got raised eyebrows from Nikka and constant Weiss Kreuz-yaoiness from Melody. (Weiss Kreuz was our fandom when I first met her, when I was in grade three. She was a foreign transfer.) My love for Gensomaden Saiyuki died, I wrote Yami no Matsuei shounen-ai fics, stopped fanfic writing in the span of roughly two and a half years, started to become active in my current fandom (Yuu-Gi-Ou) through fanart. Huzzah.
My point was…
Muu-chan made me think about the GS fandom again. You know, if ever I’d get back into the fandom… then it struck me. There was this one character… one character that struck me.
The thought plagued me for the longest, longest time… “What was the name of the guy that really struck me in Saiyuki?”
It wasn’t Hakkai, nor Tenpo Gensui, my crushes. It wasn’t Sanzo, it wasn’t Homura, it wasn’t Kougaiji. There was someone who really caught my interest and held it, despite all these years, and thankfully, not in the romantic kind. His name constantly escapes me.
He stands for what he believes in, and worries greatly for those that he cares for and is ridiculed because of it; cast aside with no other pretense other than there existing hotter men in the series. I could never remember his name, but upon contemplating him and his mysterious name while doing the dishes, one unsure name, lost in the passing of interest oh so long ago, but ringing so comfortably with the man in my mind came to me.
…Jiroushin.
