some anime -- no, just one anime, it is later than I realised

[alchimie]

Long, long ago I posted about how I was watching Absolute Duo, and I still am. It is very much the sort of thing a teenage boy might enjoy, with a lot of exciting combat and people summoning weapons out of their bodies and evil organisations plotting against one another, all of it tied together by the fact that people fight as pairs -- thus Duo -- and the pairs are intensely emotional relationships, since they rely on one another to survive. Writing it out like that, this clearly goes back to my (well, someone's, perhaps not mine) obsession with the Stepsons in the Thieves World anthologies oh those many years ago when such things were being written -- I do not remember it in much detail since it is 30 years on, but there were male mercenaries who worked in pairs, right-side leader and left-side follower (and perhaps also sword and shield?) and some of the pairs were lovers and there was much excitement and drama and angst about who was paired with whom, how they were loyal or betrayed, what it meant that the immortal god-warrior paired with a particular unlikely someone (a mage?) whom others thought might be unworthy... as I try to write about it all the names come flooding back, people loved it dearly in our early teens. So while Absolute Duo is not marvelous, there is enough in it to engage and feed the imagination, and while the amount of fanservice is not appreciated, it is also not to the point where we cannot ignore it to focus on the things that are more interesting. I have just finished episode 8, so it is moving in towards its climax, and while it is not something I would likely watch on my own, it is pleasant with the overlay of the particular teenage boy in our system who enjoys it.

I would like to write more but really, I must, must read a little bit to settle myself and then sleep.