Blog Post: The Obligatory OTP Posting

OK, so I’ve had a bit of a manic time of late and as a result, I don’t have any new reviews or the such-like prepared. Struggling to find something to cobble together for this week’s post, I noticed that there have been a lot of OTP (One True Pairing) Posts of late. “Aha,” I said to myself. “That’ll do nicely.”

So yeah, this is an OTP posting I’m afraid. In an effort to be a little different however, I’ve decided to limit myself to the sort of pairings that I can choose. Rather than stick to the usual anime and manga selection, I will instead be picking two pairings from the aforementioned ever popular form of entertainment and two from series outside that particular art form. I will also be avoiding the most obvious pairing for me: anyone who’s read my reviews of Nisekoi will now that I ship Raku and Chitoge, so to bring it up yet again would just be silly.

Anyway … let’s get this show on the road:

Rock and Revy: Black Lagoon
Rock and Revy are the two main protagonists from Rei Hiroe’s fantastic Seinen series about a group of modern day pirates. So why do I see these guys as a great pairing? Well, there’s a wonderful dynamic between the two of them in the series. Revy is fairly off-kilter as a character, violent, short tempered and disillusioned with life. Rock on the other hand was a simple salary man that traded his mundane life in to travel with the Black Lagoon crew. At first seems to be far more balanced than Revy, but as the series goes on it becomes clear that there is a dark side to Rock, even if it is at times hidden behind some (sometimes misguided) good intentions. It’s unclear whether the two are actually together in the series at this point, but there’s definitely something there, at the very least from Revy’s standpoint. What remains to be seen though is whether Rock will haul Revy out of the gutter or whether Revy will drag him down into the dark. Either way, they’re a wonderful pairing in my eyes and really bring out the best (and worst) in each other.

Setsuko and Yukino: Octave
Failed idol Yukino moves back to Tokyo, the place of her failure, in an effort to regain her pride. It is there that she meets former composer Setsuko and her world starts to flip on its head. The thing that I love with Octave is its sheer realism. Yes, Yukino embarking on her first lesbian relationship with the more comfortable Setsuko is not a new storyline, but the way its presented stands it head and shoulders above others for me. These are two ordinary women trying to make their way through the world. They have their own problems to deal with, they face mixed reactions to their relationship and they trundle through a variety of everyday experiences and slightly-more-dramatic-but-still-realistic events together. While Yukino’s indecisiveness in the relationship can be a bit of a drag at times, they’re an endearing couple and one that I am also happy to revisit.

Goliath and Elisa: Gargoyles
1994 brought many things, one of which was the awesome Disney show ‘Gargoyles’. Therein, a group of the aforementioned stone beasts awaken in (then) modern Manhattan. Goliath is the leader of the ‘Clan’, while Elisa Maza is a detective that discovers the Gargoyles’ existence during the first episode. Both characters were given plenty of opportunity to play off each other (with Goliath in particular coming to understand the world a lot better thanks to Elisa) and are given a slow burning build up to confessing their feelings for each other. By the end of season two, they have enjoyed their first kiss and are ready to embark on a loving relationship together. Yes, yes, it’s a human and a (humanoid) non-human, but as Elisa herself says, “normalcy is so over-rated”.

Raphael and Alopex: IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Honestly, this is probably one of my favourite shippings. Most people know of the Turtles and so will be no doubt be aware that Raphael is the angry and sometimes brash turtle. Alopex however may be less known to many. She is an IDW original, a mutant arctic fox, and was designed by franchise creator Kevin Eastman. While originally a member of The Foot Clan, she slowly moves away from Shredder and the Gang and attempts to connect with the Turtles during their stay in Northampton. Now, the first time she met Raphael it was not under good circumstances, and so he is naturally mistrusting of her to begin with. This grows into a slow attraction (including that gloriously cute picture over there), then more mistrust and by the end of the first fifty issues has developed into them clearly liking each other but not yet taking the step enter into a full blow relationship. After all the heartbreak Raph had with Ninjara in the Archie version of the comics, I’d love to see this one work out for him. Plus, Alopex is genuinely adorable. Here’s hoping they make it official somewhere in the next fifty issues.

So there you have it. My four, sometimes odd, shipping preferences. What about you peeps? Who do you ship (in any form of media)?