We continue with more Saiunkoku.

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BTW, according to some Japanese bloggers, “kohaku” can take on the meaning of “ripe/matured plum,” therefore an obvious allusion. Anyway, onto the summary.
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Keep in mind that I CANNOT personally confirm any of this information, as I do not have the book yet. ALL information below in this post (which will be continually updated, until I can get the novel myself and write my own summary) is at your own risk, and the blogger assumes no responsibility for any liability which might occur.
EDIT: I now have the book, and am reading it. So far all of the spoilers seem to be generally correct. I will try to write a summary soon.
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Part 2

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I’ve been reading YugiOh in the original Japanese to keep up my knowledge, but… honestly, I recently read Reborn and was pretty harsh on it, but in many ways, YugiOh is much worse, with bad pacing, less pretty art, and the way the reader keeps being subjected to long explanations of things that are rarely repeated in the storyline. What I especially don’t like is how someone suddenly pulls out a card that we’ve never seen before, and it has this amazing new ability, blah blah. It’s at moments like these that I suddenly wish I was reading a semi-realist manga instead of a fantasy fighting shounen one.

Shounen is a very vague broad category, but of late I’ve become irritated with some of the frequent problems of the genre. I’ll make a random list, in no particular order.

*the mangaka seems to start the series with no idea of what s/he is doing, or no idea of what the plot is going to be. A premise is introduced, but frequently the manga circles around before a big tournament arc finally begins. In essence, this is a problem of pacing and planning.

*the hero is often the least interesting character. Come on. The hero/protagonist doesn’t have to be a pure reader stand-in. Do you really always need to have the most ‘important’ character in a story be the protagonist? Conversely, must the protagonist always be the ‘central’ character of the story?

*poor foreshadowing

*poor development of worldbuilding, making it look like the author is pulling spells/moves/mcGuffins out of his/her ass. This is a big problem. I have no problem with there being a really complex fighting system, but I do have a problem with it appearing arbitrary and only there for the convenience of the author.

*too long: people say that Jojo is long, but what it really is is several manga series, set in the same world, which are about fifteen volumes long, on average. Compare that to series where ten volumes in, the first story arc is barely getting under way.

*having many, many characters instead of deeper characters. Obviously the two are not mutually exclusive, but sometimes series have uselessly large casts.

*creating characters who do not develop or are mostly static, thus making them less interesting