Sunday Story Ratings #64: Usagi Yojimbo Book 3.1: The Tower

Usagi Yojimbo Book 3: The Wanderer's Road: 1. The Tower by Stan Sakai

Originally published March 1988 Fantagraphics Books in Usagi Yojimbo Vol. 1 Issue 7; this edition August 2010

Fantagraphics Books

G

Suitable for all audiences

(V, D)

Some violence (G)

Drug Use (G) {an attempt to drink some tea}

Representations

Gender:

Only male characters with speaking roles. Think I saw some women in the crowd.

Sex:

No presence

Race & Ethnicity:

Characters are all anthropomorphic animals in a culturally Japanese (Edo period) setting.

Disability, Physical Diversity and Health:

No presence noted.

Awards

None found

Notes

In this episode, our ronin rabbit hero, Miyamoto Usagi rescues a hungry tokagé that is being bullied by an unnamed restaurant owner for stealing food. According to the author's notes, tokagé is a Japanese word for lizard; they seem to be little dog-sized sauropods that are the main non-person animals I've seen in this setting so far.

Even though this is mainly marked and regarded as a children's series, I have been finding them fun and quick enough to want to keep reading what volumes I can source from libraries. I read the first collection a few months ago, and was unable to get hold of Book 2, so this Book 3 is the second one I have been able to read.

In this particular story it seems the restaurant owner's lack of charity and growing anger at being thwarted that bring his misfortune upon himself. At the end Usagi leaves in the company of the tokagé he has named Spot, and I rather liked the idea of him travelling with a trusty animal companion henceforth.

Late entry

Just posted another Sunday Story Rating, late twice over.

The first reason it is late is less interesting. At the end of December I'd run out of stories from Hard-Boiled to post entries from. The next book I had read was the second of two omnibus volumes of The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. I'd read it half a year ago and since I hadn't been diligent about noting down ratings info as I read, would have to skim over it again to get all that down. And I didn't want to.

Something, various things about that book rubbed me the wrong way and I did not want to go over it again (some things in it were quite nifty, either well-done or not things I'd seen a writer attempt before). I suppose I can talk about them later. The main point is, I kept putting it off and making slow progress and eventually had used up all of the Excel Saga ratings I'd been keeping for my safety net. So I decided not to bother trying to catch up.

Now I have acted on my intention to start up again with what I am reading presently. We shall see if I am able to this time keep it up as a project. My intention is that if I cannot, just abandon the project as a quixotic ambition I lack the discipline to realise. I do hope, though, to write down some thoughts on the stories I read in that nearly one-year gap. There were some I liked quite a bit, and others that continue to haunt me, or made a go of putting me off their genre.

The more interesting, or at least more important reason the post is late, is that last week I got accepted to study librarianship at university, via distance education. However, the course also includes a mandatory three-day residential unit which takes place in the second half of this week, in a different city to the one in which I live. I have therefore been scrambling over the past few days to rearrange my shifts at work, to accept the offer to study, and to arrange accommodation for myself while I am there.

I have been very stressed by this, and though the situation is now seemingly resolved, still I am threaded by a tangle of nervousness and fear over how this next week will go, and whether I am equipped to handle this semester of study in combination with work.

Hoping I will find the outcome favourable to myself.