CIPC #106: Ao no ekusoshisuto, Chapter 15
Today I’m absolutely in terra incognita, but sooner or later it had to happen. In this day and age, one cannot be a critic of popular culture without ending up talking about manga. So here we go. Okay. Well. Today’s subject is some kind of mango. Sorry, manga. Which is a general term for Japanese comics. That, in a nutshell, was pretty much my complete knowledge about the topic, so I headed to Wikipedia. Apparently, the title of the series means Blue exorcist and, presumably, it deals with an exorcist who’s blue – whether that’s blue in the literal or figurative sense, or – God forbid, both – I don’t know. And frankly, I don’t care. The only thing I care about is: where is the chess? How is the chess? Where does it come from? Where does it go? 1
CIPC #103: Bertina Henrichs, Die Schachspielerin
The long-time readers of this blog might remember how, quite a while ago, I made a few blog posts about my impressions while watching movies which heavily feature chess. I have also made some others about books. Why not combine both types of blog post? Why not read a book in which chess plays an important role an write down my thoughts while reading? There a few such books, but the most famous ones, like Nabokov’s Luzhin Defense and Zweig’s Schachnovelle carefully avoid the sort of ridiculousness which makes for good blog posts. This is probably not going to be a problem in today’s subject, Bertina Henrichs Die Schachspielerin.1 It was translated by Claudia Steinitz, whose name is probably the closest connection this book has to actual chess. Let’s see what happens. Apart from spoilers, that is.