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REVIEW: Gate 7 GN 1

An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.

Quote:

An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy.

They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]

050795 wrote:

Quote: An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy. They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]

That is really stupid. IMO they shouldn't have spoiled it like that on the back cover. Glad I decided not to order this title.

but is that the english copy that says that or the japanese copy? because i can believe that the translators for the english copy would do something like that by mistake, by giving Hana a gender in their heads like most people do but then writing it down on the description, totally forgetting it hasn't been confirmed one way or the other in the story yet, essentially assigning Hana a gender themselves without noticing it because they always use personal pronouns in all their other works they do the same thing here

however, if it was the japanese copy then that is just stupid, unless CLAMP didn't write the description and the publisher made a similar type of mistake

If you're not going to buy Gate 7, it should be because the story makes no frickin' sense. Even if they had crappy endings, xxxHolic and Tsubasa had really good starts. Gate 7's beginning is just like the confusing endings of those two series.

I really really don't get the hate for Tsubasa's ending. The final third of the series had one too many twists, sure, but the last volume made sense of them quite well, I think. With people's reaction to it, and with the story getting more convoluted, I was expecting a horrible ending, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only good, but excellent. I truly don't see a problem with the final volume at all, but then again I'm kind of a sucker for spoiler[paradox] story elements (I'm guessing people either had a problem with that aspect, or the slightly open ending). I'm still in the early volumes of xxxHolic, but if the ending is as "crappy" as Tsubasa's, then I can't wait.

I'm actually surprised the review didn't bring up the fact that the story relies heavily on prior knowledge of Japanese historical figures. That was the main reason I had so much trouble getting into Gate 7. Imagine for a moment there was an American series about William Henry Harrison, Betty Ross, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Sacagawea, and Teddy Roosevelt all living together in modern times. As Americans, we've at least heard of these people, but it's not going to mean the same thing to someone living in another country who hasn't studied American History. I found Gate 7 inaccessible in part because even though I've heard the names of a lot of the characters, I don't really know anything about them, and they're not presented in story in a way that allows me to learn about them without extensive notes on the side.

They also inexplicably decided to introduce a ton of characters all at once before I had any kind of a chance to learn who was who. So, yeah, considering I was a CLAMP fan? Kind of disappointed with this.

bahamut623 wrote:

I really really don't get the hate for Tsubasa's ending. The final third of the series had one too many twists, sure, but the last volume made sense of them quite well, I think. With people's reaction to it, and with the story getting more convoluted, I was expecting a horrible ending, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only good, but excellent. I truly don't see a problem with the final volume at all, but then again I'm kind of a sucker for spoiler[paradox] story elements (I'm guessing people either had a problem with that aspect, or the slightly open ending). I'm still in the early volumes of xxxHolic, but if the ending is as "crappy" as Tsubasa's, then I can't wait.

Take it from someone who actually liked the ending of Tsubasa, xxxHolic's ending sucked for an entirely different reason. Where Tsubasa's final arc at least had a pretty good lead-up to an ending, xxxHolic just kind of peters out and doesn't so much end as it just stops. A total whimper that resolves pretty much nothing at all. And then there's the double whammy of realizing spoiler[every character you ever cared about besides Watanuki is dead] and you have an ending ripe to tick off fans.

050795 wrote:

Quote: An interesting point is Hana's gender. CLAMP is up to their old tricks again with this one, never establishing if Hana is a girl or a boy. They may not have said it straight out yet in the story, but the description on the back of the book clearly states Hana's gender. spoiler["Visiting a legendary shrine, Chikahito stumbles into the mystical world of Hana and her comrades."]

That is really stupid. IMO they shouldn't have spoiled it like that on the back cover. Glad I decided not to order this title.

They then feed him noodles

If the Japanese book had back text at all (they usually only have a few lines on the obi band) for the reasons given in the review, gender pronouns wouldn't have been in it.

I'm actually surprised the review didn't bring up the fact that the story relies heavily on prior knowledge of Japanese historical figures.

Yeah, but how many Japanese men have the name Hana as a given name?

has anyone ever read Rex?