First off, too all those who might be following me for my literary pieces, I’m still on break from that. As it is, I haven’t posted a diary in a few weeks due to combination of laziness and other projects. I finished my review on Kenzaburo Oe’s Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids nearly two weeks ago, and it turned into a sprawling, 18 page essay, part review, part critical interpretation, part biography, and who lot of spoiler. I sent it out to be looked at by some friends, and have to tackle the tedious task of editing it and rewriting the first draft, which is why I still haven’t gotten around to posting it. I’ve also been busy helping with a children’s theater program.
So finally, it is continued, my much-anticipated first installment of “Manga you should be reading”. I’m dealing today with shoujo manga, for the little girl in all of us. (For terms, see my last diary).
First off, too all those who might be following me for my literary pieces, I’m still on break from that. As it is, I haven’t posted a diary in a few weeks due to combination of laziness and other projects. I finished my review on Kenzaburo Oe’s Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids nearly two weeks ago, and it turned into a sprawling, 18 page essay, part review, part critical interpretation, part biography, and who lot of spoiler. I sent it out to be looked at by some friends, and have to tackle the tedious task of editing it and rewriting the first draft, which is why I still haven’t gotten around to posting it. I’ve also been busy helping with a children’s theater program.
So finally, it is continued, my much-anticipated first installment of “Manga you should be reading”. I’m dealing today with shoujo manga, for the little girl in all of us. (For terms, see my last diary).
Today I’m splitting things up, taking a look at certain genres within shoujo, tagging my favorites. I’m starting with, (drum roll): Akagami no Shirayukihime. At this point I’m sure that even my geeks and otakus are scratching their heads. Well, this is a relatively new series that’s not even 30 chapters in yet (but these are 40-50 page chapters, in other words, they’re chapters with some bulk and substance, it’s not like 30 Bleach chapters or anything). But if I had to pick the best shoujo out there right now, I’d be hard-pressed not to pick it. Why?
Well, while the artwork is great, using very pleasing character designs and clean lines, coupled with an attention to background, (as well as a variety of backgrounds), that you don’t often see in mangas, (shoujo ones in particular), the reason I like this one can be summarized in one word: characters. Akagami no Shirayukihime is a manga that intentionally sets up false expectations. I believe the title translates as “Red-haired Snow White” and it’s set like a classical fairy tale, (excluding magic albeit).
The main character, Shirayuki, is a pharmacist in training brilliant, apple-red hair that is so extremely rare that it makes her a coveted commodity. The Prince of her county decides he wants her to become his lover, and sends for her to be brought and set up in the palace. All this is explained in the very first few panels, and I’m sure some of you who are familiar with shoujo are rolling your eyes and thinking, “Not this old shtick.” So was I. However, on the very next page she bids farewell to the palace courtiers, telling them she will pack up her stuff and be ready for her pick up in the morning.
Then she promptly cuts her hair short and skips out of town into the wild forest with only the pack on her back. As it gets dark she rests at an old hunting lodge/abandoned building in the woods, only to come across a boy, leaping over the wall. Surprised by her, he loses his balance and scrapes his hand falling. He tells her she’s a pest and that he doesn’t need her help because she’ll probably just poison him anyway. She then grabs his sword with her bare hand, and slashes her own arm with it, and proceeds to disinfect and bandage the wound.
This poor play-by-play of the first few panels is merely meant to as an example of the false expectations the author sets up and then tears down. She creates a set-up and then turns it on its head. Shirayuki is perhaps the best shoujo protagonist I’ve come across.
For instance, let me release a minor spoiler, (second chapter, predictable almost), but the boy she meets, Zen, is the younger Prince of the neighboring Kingdom, out in the woods skirting his responsibilities. In the capitol city of that Kingdom she frequents the palace, visiting Zen as a friend, and when told by others that it looks improper, decides, (despite being told by Zen it doesn’t matter), that she will simply get a job there. The palace is hiring an assistant pharmacist, and she beats out hundreds of other applicants, with hard work and a photographic memory.
I’ve touched at what makes this an enchanting story; it’s natural unpredictability—at the same time that it always comes up with satisfying surprises, they never seem forced. And while Shirayuki does share some of the shoujo clichéd traits, (slow to recognize other people’s feelings, worried about being a burden to other people), she’s still a delightful and vivacious, original character. When she goes through the obligatory shoujo damsel in distress scene, (the kidnapping scenario in this instance), she paralyzes her kidnapper with a herbal concoction she made herself, kicks him in the face and makes her escape leaping out of a two story window. It’s not until then that her “Prince Charming” arrives, (and Zen is quite deserving of that title, lol).
This is the same interplay that recurs throughout and keeps this shoujo manga so interesting. Thus far it’s been an incredibly fun and satisfying romance story, filled with a large and compelling cast of characters. I look forward to its continuation. And recommend it highly. It is my “plain” shoujo recommendation.
Now, there are several recommendations I have that fall under the Gender Bender genre, which is a bit of a personal favorite of mine, (so I’ve quite a few of mine). I think that the interplay in such mangas, and the underlying tension, creates interesting romantic stories, (and in most of these plenty of opportunities for jokes). Dom9000 has already covered Hourou Musuko, (Wandering Son), a fantastic, serious manga about two young transgender kids and their struggle and developing relationship with each other. Gender Bender mangas come in all forms and sizes, (and are apparently rather popular, given the plethora of them), so I will break them up by the relationship & gender reversals they play on.
First, the “it looks like yaoi but it’s not actually yaoi” gender bender, i.e. a girl dressed as a boy who is in love with another boy, (or has relationships developing). I can think of a few of these, Nononono, (which I’ll wait to cover for sports mangas) and Love in the Mask, to name some. I haven’t finished Love in the Mask, (and it’s not completed anyway), so I’m going to be recommending one I have finished, (and probably the only manga I’ll cover that has been finished), Hana Kimi.
In synopsis, a Japanese girl, who has lived in America since she was a child, becomes enamored with a high jumping star back in Japan. Problem is he attends an all-boys boarding school, so she cuts her hair, gets a brace, and goes back to Japan to go to school with him. The set up is quite straightforward. And the manga itself is actually very good for the first 100 chapters or so, (each around an average of 35 pages long). While it didn’t take many risks, the character cast was quite large and well-developed, the jokes were funny and the romantic undertones well developed, (though the protagonist was hopelessly dense about them). It was a fun manga, and looked like it would continue a while, even if its artwork was average at best, and it used the most mediocre backgrounds I’ve ever come across, (most were just a set, wallpaper)
Then during the last 44 chapters the chapter length dropped from 35 to 17, (average), and literally half of them were completely off-topic, (side-stories, diversions from the main plot-line, etc). Essentially, the entire series up to that point had been rather concerned with her developing “friendship” with the boy she admired so much, and his high jumping career. Then over the last 30% of the manga high jumping is completely forgotten about, it’s not even in the backdrop any more. His family disappears from the scene, as does his “rival” and a good half dozen plotlines are left hazily unresolved. I’m almost tempted to say that the author got word that the manga wasn’t going to be continued by the publisher and ended it early. But the length of this downward slide, and the lack of focus and quality in the last 40+ chapters, makes me think that rather than that being the case, the author simply lost her inspiration on this project and got seriously tired of messing with it, and that after trying to trudge along for awhile, she just tied it up and ended it.
Another category of gender bender, is the strange and difficult to place, "boy dressed as a girl after another girl." I can think of Mint na Bokura and Usotsuki Lily, (which is more of a cross-dressing gag manga than a gender bender), but the one I particularly want to cover is a very recent series, (with 40+ page chapters), and which is very on but which has really grabbed my interest. Shouri no Akuma, (Devil of Victory?).
The girl in that photo, Kinoshita Akira is, well, not a girl. And perhaps one of the things I like most about this manga is how it somehow catches that in the drawing. Even though Akira looks like a beautiful junior high girl, there’s also always a very boyish aura around him, and the artist catches that. There's always something faintly boyish about his face, the way he carries himself, and even his smile, that I think is brilliant work. In synopsis, a young girl, Asami transfers to a new school due to her father’s bankruptcy. She’s touchy and neurotic, but fundamentally a nice person. The new school is channeling the kind of weirdness I’ve only found in the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimuya, (a great comedy). It’s too early on to make conclusions, (for instance the manga, which is only 9 chapters in, hasn’t dealt with the deeper issue of why Akira always dresses like a girl, and the romantic element is still in its fledgling stages), but it’s already made a very favorable impression on me and caught my interest. It’s one of the bookmarked mangas that I’m following. Count it as big a recommendation.
I’m hardly done with Gender Benders with just this. Next on the list is “guy dressed as a girl after another guy,” as I put the category crudely in my shorthand. Among these there is No Bra, (which is a rather ecchi series, with the one big twist of the main sex interest being a feminine high schooler), and, the series I’m covering, the decidedly more serious and less ecchi, (see previous diary for terms), Prunus Girl.
Prunus Girl is my biggest gender bender recommendation, even though it’s still only in its early stages as well. I say this because I think, of all the ones that I bring up, it’s the most interesting and tears down the most barriers. I enjoy because it’s not sappy and doesn’t rely on cheesy quick shots to develop the internal relationship, which is very slow to develop and still developing at this point in manga. The transgender character, Aikawa, is quite seriously a girl, for real reasons of personal identity, and the artist still draws him well, with a flat chest, and a smallish boy’s frame.
Yet he’s also not a weak stereotypical feminine male character, being exceptionally athletic. In one chapter, he and the romantic interest/protagonist, Maki, defeat all of the sports clubs in the school in their respective sports, so that the various clubs will quit bothering the two of them to join. It’s a manga that is well-drawn, has good bits of easy-flowing humor inserted, and is very interesting. Maki isn’t gay in the slightest, and yet he is initially attracted to Aikawa, a boy dressing as a girl. Their friendship is just that, friendship, (though the way Aikawa dotes on Maki makes it clear that he’s very much in love with him); the underlying dramatic tension of that appeals to me. Something about me likes the idea of tearing down gender-oriented ideas of love and the idea that gender identity is solely related to, or just a function of, physical sexuality, which is what this manga is doing. I highly recommend it.
There are other combos of gender bender as well. Reversible School Life, (I believe is the title), plays two boys dressing as girls in a romantic relationship, (or at least appears to be going in that direction), and I'm sure that there are manga's with girls dressing and acting as a boy, with a romantic interest in another girl, (and likewise with two girls dressed as boys developing a romantic interest), but I'm not specifically familiar with any of those. It's a varied, and to me, always interesting field of mangas.
This is the extent of today's manga list, (cause I'm tired of it). It's just my very casual, straight-laced suggestions, more my comments on good mangas I've read than actual reviews on them. Next time I'll finish up my shoujo suggestions, and then move onto shounen mangas.