When the prayer curtain falls

I haven't written for a while. A lot of lifestyle changes has taken place. I have also turned another year older. I have noted with sadness, perhaps mostly disappointment in myself - that I have finally reached Saitou-san's age.
Yes, fictional I know, but it was a magical number to me for a long time.
The stage of life Saitou-san was at when he met and challenged Kenshin with his famous lines -

The last time we fought, was on the battlegrounds of Toba-Fushimi. 
So,that makes it ten years. 
Ten years...
Two little words said in a breath.
But living it through, is an awfully long time. 
As you put it, ten years...
is long enough to make a man ROT. 
Drowning in your self-satisfaction and phony righteousness...
How can the Hitokiri Battosai protect people without killing?
Have you forgotten?
"A Swift Death for the Evil"
That was the code of justice common to both the Shinsengumi and the Hitokiri. 

i will digress a bit and do some housekeeping updates--
In Feb this year, Watsuki-sensei was not charged but only fined for his paedophilia habits. The fact, that after all the media upheaval and fans' bitter disillusionment etc etc, his punishment turned out so proportionately light, made me suspecting that his perverse collections were perhaps anime-only, and had nothing to do with real children. -_-|||| But, enough was enough and the damage was done. Ironically the very man who made Saitou-san someone not holding back such memorably sharp criticism -of a man previously upright "rotting" after years of invisibility from the public eye - has apparently rotted himself.

Strangely or not I did not actually find it so hard talking about his perversity. Maybe slightly more of an understanding of the culture has allowed me to be condoning. After all, not so long ago compensated dating with under aged school girls was still not taboo in the jap society and only became illegal in very recent years. Instead I struggled hard with the fact that he has rotted in less perverse and much less obvious ways and somewhere inside me still bloody hurts every time when I think about it.

When news came of the Shonen Jump 50th anniversary exhibition - I was determined to do an otaku business trip, and so I did. (yes I ate the delicious Anzai-sensei pudding that had the boing boing bouncy texture just like when Hanamachi bounced his chin XD)

I read Watsuki-sensei's interview from the official exhibition catalog (beautifully bilingual, beautifully translated). The talented genius storyteller has become a disappointment in so many ways - in fact - he was at a complete loss as to why Kenshin was such a popular series. Quoting him:

"30% of the readers were female when it was first serialised. Today a lot of females read Shonen Jump, but back then it was rare. Now that I think about it, the reason why it appealed to so many female readers could have been due to the story being told from a woman's perspective. I didn't realise it back then"

You've got to be joking.
*facepalm*

There really wasn't such a thing as "a woman's perspective" in the Kenshin story. In fact, Watsuki's depication of apparent adult female characters (and there weren't many) were actually terrible fails. In retrospect this is hardly surprising for a man who struggled with mature sexuality and turned to paedophila. Megumi and Tomoe were merely make-believe 2D symbols of what beautiful women should be like and lacked any convincing character depth. Kaoru - got a lot of positive light as the female lead but was incoherent at best, and otherwise quite regressed and impulsive, with a brain completely not in the league as any of the other main characters. I wonder now and then how much he would have subconsciously modelled Kaoru on his own volatile needy mother...(this is going a bit far but I won't be surprised at all if he had one) The Kenshin story told from Kaoru's perspective? - that would be a nightmare.

So what has made a story lacking in convincing female characters so genuinely appealing to female audiences?

Oh the mystery and the irony.
He has not a single clue the real emotional and intellectual needs of the very subpopulation he is sexually attracted to.
Or maybe he intuitively had, once upon a time. and  now he has rotted, and lost it.

I think the discontinuation of the Kenshin sequel in response to his public fall from grace is a good thing.

Talking about pre-loved manga artists rotting... Takehiko Inoue is another. Well he hasn't committed any socially unacceptable crime yet, so my accusation of him rotting is for now but a cowardly whisper.
He has recently upgraded the slamdunk series covers with some new artwork...
Lots of media praise about youth, passion, friendship, nostalgia blah blah blah...
I am sorry... they actually look horrible. They look like middle-aged narcissistic men posing as lively hopeful high school students. Each of their facial expressions convey nothing but "my face alone is a work of art".

I think i feel a bit sick. I will do some comfort eating to cope with that.