Manga matters.
Jan. 21st, 2007 04:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elwenI think this entry is child-safe, even though it talks about things that aren't. Just in case my cut titles make you squeamish. It's not as bad as it sounds and is really just me being mocking and/or overanalytical. :P
Very wrong manga: yaoi edition. (White Guardian)
The other day I read this new review at AnimeOnDVD about a series called White Guardian. Wow. I mean, just . . . wow. Even reading the summary was like a trainwreck. I think I can deal with PWP -- usually in fic, though -- but apparently porn with attempted plot is just painful. Especially when it's politics. I love a good political series, and I hate it when authors waste that potential. That's why I ditched the Meine Liebe manga -- you're in a fictional European country in a volatile era, dealing with the children of nobles, how can you turn it into the most ordinary high school romance?! So, yeah. I just had to comment on that.
It kind of made me wonder, though, whether Viewfinder is really more than PWP. I think I'm reserving judgment on that one. But I mean, I guess there is a very real interaction between Feilong, Asami, and Takaba that's moving the story along.
Very wrong manga: shoujo smut edition. (Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero!)
Speaking of BL, my sister and I saw the strangest thing at Kinokuniya the other day.
This is the cover of one of Shinjou Mayu's newest series:
[Well, I guess it's not that new, since the third volume just came out in December; but Kinokuniya hasn't been restocking their Shinjou Mayu stuff for a while. And in case you don't read alt text, the title is Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero! ("Rather than Sing of Love, Fall for Me!").]
Our first reaction was, "OMGWTF? Shinjou Mayu doesn't do BL!"
Then we flipped it over to read the plot summary. Turns out that one of them is a girl. "Okay, I guess he could be a girl... even though he looks exactly like the guy from Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari."
Unfortunately, we didn't read the plot summary carefully enough, or we would have figured it out: the blonde, who looks like every single one of Shinjou Mayu's guys, is the girl. ...yeah. It's mind-boggling.
I guess the story is: she wanted to do something different. Brain-hurtingly different. The whole series is a trainwreck. Akira, the boy who looks like a girl, is known as "Princess" at his all-boys school where all the guys fawn over him -- yes, this is totally a Princess Princess flashback. On the other hand, Mizuki, the girl who looks like a boy, is known as "Prince" at her all-girls school where all the girls fawn over her -- yes, this is totally a flashback to the Lobelia girls in Ouran. Then, Mizuki's best friend ever and vocalist for the band they're in (Blaue Rosen) leaves for New York, forcing them to find a replacement singer . . . in Akira! Cue typical Shinjou Mayu stormy romance that most likely will end happily ever after.
In her little sidebar notes, Shinjou-sensei talks about how she wanted to try something different, even though she knows that most of her fans go for the guys. That's all well and good, but the problem is that Akira is evil. More evil than many of her other guys -- in her second sidebar note, she mentions how, as cute as Akira looks, he's actually no different from her previous guys and probably stronger and less emotional than Gin (from Love Celeb), which is absolutely true. And Mizuki, despite her cool, pop-star exterior, is actually more unstable than most of the girls, who generally have some degree of fortitude. So in doing an appearance-based gender swap, Shinjou-sensei somehow managed to push her characters further apart on her stereotypical spectrum. To the point, I think, that it's hard to like either of them.
Mizuki is just a wuss. Isn't the whole point of shoujo (not excepting shoujo smut) to be able to relate to the main character? The certainly-not-perfect-but-somehow-strong ordinary girl who gets in over her head but somehow makes it out? Mizuki alternates between being too cool and too wimpy. I feel sorry for her because she's so pathetic, but that's hardly a way to make people identify.
And, as I said, Akira is evil. He is truly a wolf in sheep's clothing. In contrast, all of Shinjou-sensei's other guys are just wolves. They don't need to hide their bad boy ways, and that's what makes the fangirls squee over them. I just don't know what to make of Akira. Sometimes he acts absolutely vulnerable; and then he becomes just as nasty as the other guys. I guess the problem is that these two facets, like Mizuki's, are so different that you can't figure out which one's real. The other guys ultimately become emotionally involved, but it's a slow process and usually they refuse to admit it outright. Akira just swings back and forth. When he converts, it's so absolute that I start to hope it's permanent, and then he goes back.
Maybe it is just the character designs screwing with my head. I mean, compare Akira to the character who looks exactly like him: Shouta from Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari ("If Only You Were Also Bound by Chains of Love"). Shouta is the sweet, innocent young boy that Akira appears to be. Shouta does have his evil moments -- otherwise I don't think Shinjou-sensei would have been able to figure out how to make Akira look evil, either -- but it's only when he's being possessed by an evil demon. So, where two faces really were caused by two separate personalities, now we're expected to reconcile them in one person. Doesn't work.
...yeah, I like to overanalyze things. I was just pondering why I found the series so unacceptable last night in bed, and those were possibilities I came up with. ^^;;
[And, this probably should have gone at the top, but I couldn't fit it in: a brief overview of those who don't know or don't remember who Shinjou Mayu is, if you made it all the way down here. Shinjou Mayu is a very rich and popular mangaka who does shoujo smut. All of her guys look the same (and look like Mizuki) except that they come in different flavors of hair color. All of her guys are bad boys who like to pick on the good girl of the story, whom they eventually fall for. The variations in her stories come more from the outrageous situations in which they're set. The tamest series I've read is Suki Shite Sadist ("Do as You Will, Sadist"), which is a fairly straightforward high school romance involving the bad-ass twin brother of the school council president, who suddenly transfers to the same school and starts hitting on his (the president's) girlfriend. Things rapidly spiral outward from there. Sexy Guardian is about a girl who transfers into an all-boys school (as part of a pilot program, I think) and the guy chosen to be her guide and bodyguard. Ha Ou Ai Ren (officially translated as "Despotic Lover") is about a girl who unwittingly saves the life of a mafia boss, who then decides to kidnap her to Hong Kong and make her his wife. Love Celeb is about Kirara, an aspiring actress/singer who manages to avoid getting ahead by using her body, but catches the attention of Gin, the next prime minister of Japan and one of the most powerful men in the country. Gin starts buying Kirara's way into various recording deals and dramas, but never manages to collect on his price, which is her body, of course. (If the summary sounds crude, it's because Love Celeb is much smuttier and more openly so than the other series.) My favorite series, Akuma na Eros ("Satanic Eros"), is about a girl who summons the devil to make her crush fall in love with her -- guess who actually end up together in the end. ...and it's people like me (who read all her series) that make Shinjou Mayu so disgustingly rich. ^^;; She does apparently do less smutty, more straightforward shoujo, although the only one I've read is the aforementioned Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari, which contains Akira's lookalike.]
Very right manga: shoujo (smut?) edition. (Bloody Kiss)
On the same trip to Kinokuniya, I was sad because there was nothing new for me to buy, so I decided to get a random volume 1 of something. I ended up choosing between this BL-ish series about a guy who can read people's minds and a shoujo romance with a vampire. Both of them sounded highly stereotypical, and I have an instinctive prejudice against vampire series -- probably from the vampire overload a while back what with Tsukihime, Tsukuyomi, Trinity Blood, Hellsing, etc. etc. -- but in the end I went for that one after all. It's called Bloody Kiss, by Furumiya Kazuko. [Apparently the only other series she's done is Kimi to Scandal ("A Scandal with You"), which I think I've heard of, but have no specific recollections about.]
I admit, I went for it because the art looked really nice . . . and because the set-up sounded kind of like Shinjou Mayu's stuff. ._.;; It's about Kiyo, a girl aspiring to be a lawyer (which had nothing to do with my decision, I tell you!), who inherits a mansion from some aunt she never met. It turns out there are two squatters living there, a dhampir named Kuroboshi, and the full-blooded vampire Alshe who serves him. Kuroboshi, as the back cover says, "has an overbearing attitude and is always forcibly coming on to Kiyo." [Wow, way low confidence level for that translation, so here's the original: 俺様な性格で、いつも、聖に強引に迫る♥] Kiyo ends up deciding to live with them there instead of selling the house to pay for school.
Although the description of Kuroboshi sounds bad, it's actually nowhere near as smutty as Shinjou Mayu's stuff. In fact, it's mostly just shoujo with slightly erotic depictions of neck-biting, as befitting a vampire series. XP It's a refreshing change from Shinjou Mayu because Kiyo is actually quite strong-willed and much more dimensional than Shinjou-sensei's girls. I love the first encounter between Kiyo and Kuroboshi: he appears while she's surveying the house with who I assume are the executors of her aunt's estate, and he attacks one of the men. Then he grabs Kiyo and she thinks '殺さ...' ("I'll be killed...") and there's your very classic horror-movie shot with her look of shock and his evil smile and all.
And then on the next page she completes her thought: '...れてたまるか！' ("Like I would let that happen!") and throws him over her shoulder. XD
So that's Bloody Kiss. The interaction between Kiyo and Kuroboshi is very cute, with him alternately being overbearing and getting smacked by her. And they both show a wide range of human emotions without you having to wonder whether they're genuine, as you do with Akira. Alshe is a bit of a random element, though. He can be spacey and a source of slapstick comedy, but he's also very attuned to Kiyo and Kuroboshi and probably an important facilitator of their relationship. In some ways he's like Yamino from Matantei Loki . . . an appendage with no independent depth. --;; But maybe Furumiya-sensei will fix that in later volumes. After all, he does happen to be a silver-haired bishounen -- in fact, he looks exactly like Ayame from Fruits Basket -- and no right-thinking shoujo mangaka would let that go to waste, right?
But yeah. New series to squee over, for sure. ^^b
Very wrong manga: yaoi edition. (White Guardian)
The other day I read this new review at AnimeOnDVD about a series called White Guardian. Wow. I mean, just . . . wow. Even reading the summary was like a trainwreck. I think I can deal with PWP -- usually in fic, though -- but apparently porn with attempted plot is just painful. Especially when it's politics. I love a good political series, and I hate it when authors waste that potential. That's why I ditched the Meine Liebe manga -- you're in a fictional European country in a volatile era, dealing with the children of nobles, how can you turn it into the most ordinary high school romance?! So, yeah. I just had to comment on that.
It kind of made me wonder, though, whether Viewfinder is really more than PWP. I think I'm reserving judgment on that one. But I mean, I guess there is a very real interaction between Feilong, Asami, and Takaba that's moving the story along.
Very wrong manga: shoujo smut edition. (Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero!)
Speaking of BL, my sister and I saw the strangest thing at Kinokuniya the other day.
This is the cover of one of Shinjou Mayu's newest series:
[Well, I guess it's not that new, since the third volume just came out in December; but Kinokuniya hasn't been restocking their Shinjou Mayu stuff for a while. And in case you don't read alt text, the title is Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero! ("Rather than Sing of Love, Fall for Me!").]
Our first reaction was, "OMGWTF? Shinjou Mayu doesn't do BL!"
Then we flipped it over to read the plot summary. Turns out that one of them is a girl. "Okay, I guess he could be a girl... even though he looks exactly like the guy from Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari."
Unfortunately, we didn't read the plot summary carefully enough, or we would have figured it out: the blonde, who looks like every single one of Shinjou Mayu's guys, is the girl. ...yeah. It's mind-boggling.
I guess the story is: she wanted to do something different. Brain-hurtingly different. The whole series is a trainwreck. Akira, the boy who looks like a girl, is known as "Princess" at his all-boys school where all the guys fawn over him -- yes, this is totally a Princess Princess flashback. On the other hand, Mizuki, the girl who looks like a boy, is known as "Prince" at her all-girls school where all the girls fawn over her -- yes, this is totally a flashback to the Lobelia girls in Ouran. Then, Mizuki's best friend ever and vocalist for the band they're in (Blaue Rosen) leaves for New York, forcing them to find a replacement singer . . . in Akira! Cue typical Shinjou Mayu stormy romance that most likely will end happily ever after.
In her little sidebar notes, Shinjou-sensei talks about how she wanted to try something different, even though she knows that most of her fans go for the guys. That's all well and good, but the problem is that Akira is evil. More evil than many of her other guys -- in her second sidebar note, she mentions how, as cute as Akira looks, he's actually no different from her previous guys and probably stronger and less emotional than Gin (from Love Celeb), which is absolutely true. And Mizuki, despite her cool, pop-star exterior, is actually more unstable than most of the girls, who generally have some degree of fortitude. So in doing an appearance-based gender swap, Shinjou-sensei somehow managed to push her characters further apart on her stereotypical spectrum. To the point, I think, that it's hard to like either of them.
Mizuki is just a wuss. Isn't the whole point of shoujo (not excepting shoujo smut) to be able to relate to the main character? The certainly-not-perfect-but-somehow-strong ordinary girl who gets in over her head but somehow makes it out? Mizuki alternates between being too cool and too wimpy. I feel sorry for her because she's so pathetic, but that's hardly a way to make people identify.
And, as I said, Akira is evil. He is truly a wolf in sheep's clothing. In contrast, all of Shinjou-sensei's other guys are just wolves. They don't need to hide their bad boy ways, and that's what makes the fangirls squee over them. I just don't know what to make of Akira. Sometimes he acts absolutely vulnerable; and then he becomes just as nasty as the other guys. I guess the problem is that these two facets, like Mizuki's, are so different that you can't figure out which one's real. The other guys ultimately become emotionally involved, but it's a slow process and usually they refuse to admit it outright. Akira just swings back and forth. When he converts, it's so absolute that I start to hope it's permanent, and then he goes back.
Maybe it is just the character designs screwing with my head. I mean, compare Akira to the character who looks exactly like him: Shouta from Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari ("If Only You Were Also Bound by Chains of Love"). Shouta is the sweet, innocent young boy that Akira appears to be. Shouta does have his evil moments -- otherwise I don't think Shinjou-sensei would have been able to figure out how to make Akira look evil, either -- but it's only when he's being possessed by an evil demon. So, where two faces really were caused by two separate personalities, now we're expected to reconcile them in one person. Doesn't work.
...yeah, I like to overanalyze things. I was just pondering why I found the series so unacceptable last night in bed, and those were possibilities I came up with. ^^;;
[And, this probably should have gone at the top, but I couldn't fit it in: a brief overview of those who don't know or don't remember who Shinjou Mayu is, if you made it all the way down here. Shinjou Mayu is a very rich and popular mangaka who does shoujo smut. All of her guys look the same (and look like Mizuki) except that they come in different flavors of hair color. All of her guys are bad boys who like to pick on the good girl of the story, whom they eventually fall for. The variations in her stories come more from the outrageous situations in which they're set. The tamest series I've read is Suki Shite Sadist ("Do as You Will, Sadist"), which is a fairly straightforward high school romance involving the bad-ass twin brother of the school council president, who suddenly transfers to the same school and starts hitting on his (the president's) girlfriend. Things rapidly spiral outward from there. Sexy Guardian is about a girl who transfers into an all-boys school (as part of a pilot program, I think) and the guy chosen to be her guide and bodyguard. Ha Ou Ai Ren (officially translated as "Despotic Lover") is about a girl who unwittingly saves the life of a mafia boss, who then decides to kidnap her to Hong Kong and make her his wife. Love Celeb is about Kirara, an aspiring actress/singer who manages to avoid getting ahead by using her body, but catches the attention of Gin, the next prime minister of Japan and one of the most powerful men in the country. Gin starts buying Kirara's way into various recording deals and dramas, but never manages to collect on his price, which is her body, of course. (If the summary sounds crude, it's because Love Celeb is much smuttier and more openly so than the other series.) My favorite series, Akuma na Eros ("Satanic Eros"), is about a girl who summons the devil to make her crush fall in love with her -- guess who actually end up together in the end. ...and it's people like me (who read all her series) that make Shinjou Mayu so disgustingly rich. ^^;; She does apparently do less smutty, more straightforward shoujo, although the only one I've read is the aforementioned Kimi Sae mo Ai no Kusari, which contains Akira's lookalike.]
Very right manga: shoujo (smut?) edition. (Bloody Kiss)
On the same trip to Kinokuniya, I was sad because there was nothing new for me to buy, so I decided to get a random volume 1 of something. I ended up choosing between this BL-ish series about a guy who can read people's minds and a shoujo romance with a vampire. Both of them sounded highly stereotypical, and I have an instinctive prejudice against vampire series -- probably from the vampire overload a while back what with Tsukihime, Tsukuyomi, Trinity Blood, Hellsing, etc. etc. -- but in the end I went for that one after all. It's called Bloody Kiss, by Furumiya Kazuko. [Apparently the only other series she's done is Kimi to Scandal ("A Scandal with You"), which I think I've heard of, but have no specific recollections about.]
I admit, I went for it because the art looked really nice . . . and because the set-up sounded kind of like Shinjou Mayu's stuff. ._.;; It's about Kiyo, a girl aspiring to be a lawyer (which had nothing to do with my decision, I tell you!), who inherits a mansion from some aunt she never met. It turns out there are two squatters living there, a dhampir named Kuroboshi, and the full-blooded vampire Alshe who serves him. Kuroboshi, as the back cover says, "has an overbearing attitude and is always forcibly coming on to Kiyo." [Wow, way low confidence level for that translation, so here's the original: 俺様な性格で、いつも、聖に強引に迫る♥] Kiyo ends up deciding to live with them there instead of selling the house to pay for school.
Although the description of Kuroboshi sounds bad, it's actually nowhere near as smutty as Shinjou Mayu's stuff. In fact, it's mostly just shoujo with slightly erotic depictions of neck-biting, as befitting a vampire series. XP It's a refreshing change from Shinjou Mayu because Kiyo is actually quite strong-willed and much more dimensional than Shinjou-sensei's girls. I love the first encounter between Kiyo and Kuroboshi: he appears while she's surveying the house with who I assume are the executors of her aunt's estate, and he attacks one of the men. Then he grabs Kiyo and she thinks '殺さ...' ("I'll be killed...") and there's your very classic horror-movie shot with her look of shock and his evil smile and all.
And then on the next page she completes her thought: '...れてたまるか！' ("Like I would let that happen!") and throws him over her shoulder. XD
So that's Bloody Kiss. The interaction between Kiyo and Kuroboshi is very cute, with him alternately being overbearing and getting smacked by her. And they both show a wide range of human emotions without you having to wonder whether they're genuine, as you do with Akira. Alshe is a bit of a random element, though. He can be spacey and a source of slapstick comedy, but he's also very attuned to Kiyo and Kuroboshi and probably an important facilitator of their relationship. In some ways he's like Yamino from Matantei Loki . . . an appendage with no independent depth. --;; But maybe Furumiya-sensei will fix that in later volumes. After all, he does happen to be a silver-haired bishounen -- in fact, he looks exactly like Ayame from Fruits Basket -- and no right-thinking shoujo mangaka would let that go to waste, right?
But yeah. New series to squee over, for sure. ^^b
no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 02:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 03:49 am (UTC)I guess they do appeal to me to some degree, but usually not enough for lasting squee. I prefer what I call "rogues", who don't really care about dominating; they just want to be free to play around. Maybe that's why I like Bloody Kiss: Kuroboshi is more of a rogue. ^^
no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 04:32 am (UTC)That's it. I don't really like the dominating part. re Bloody Kiss, it helps that the heroine appears to be able to hold her own, and that may make a difference as well.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-22 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-23 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-24 06:36 am (UTC)But also, both of the people in the picture there look like girls to me.
Apparently the title is a pun on that: "W" Juliet --> Daburu Juliet --> Double Juliet. Though the girl looks more shounen-ish usually (link).