It’s been a while since I feel in love with a manga so quickly and after being utterly impressed by the sheer orig­i­nal­ity of it. Is the Otomen con­cept com­pletely unique? Not quite, there have been sim­i­lar con­cepts, but I can’t think of one that’s this well pre­sented and inter-supported. The fact it turned the tra­di­tional shoujo con­cept box inside out also gained huge points.

And Asuka-chan is SOOOOOOOOOO MOE~!!!! >.<

Otomen is about a funny yet some­what seri­ous story of gen­der role-reversal in the mod­ern world still filled with gender-based stereo­types. It fea­tures an orig­i­nal premise, an excel­lent male lead (main char­ac­ter) with all the quirks of a real human being, and a tri­an­gle of bestest friends that fits together so per­fectly. Although, the sto­ry­line is rather light and pre­dictable though, great for pure enjoy­ment but not enough to be con­sid­ered dramatic.

On that note, Viz Media released Otomen vol­umn 5 this month, and vol­umn 6 and 7 are due in May and August. I’m so late on this already!!!

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With Sono Han­abira ni Kuchiduke wo trans­lated, I thought back to my fun time with Aoi Shiro and grabbed it in a flash. Well unfor­tu­nately things didn’t go as I would like— the game ended up dis­turb­ing me in under ten min­utes. Why? Because this is no yuri romance story, it’s almost pure yuri H, with two really per­verted girls nonethe­less and prob­a­bly more H text than story writ­ing… Really, the cute title and soft color pal­lette fooled me. But it’s been a long time since I’ve dis­liked a yuri story and that got me thinking—

I wish I had an onee-san like Yuki-chan

Most peo­ple clas­sify yuri as a pri­mary genre, like romance or action (as opposed to secondary/tertiary gen­res, like psy­cho­log­i­cal, school, etc, which are more like descrip­tor tags). This implies it’s amongst the main rea­sons to watch a show, and that if you don’t love yuri then you can’t enjoy the show. To date I’m still not com­pletely sure of this view. Yes, I’ve picked up yuri for the sake of it being yuri, but is yuri the tar­get that I’m look­ing for? Or, is yuri merely a medium of deliv­er­ing what I really sought? I’m reminded of what ETERNAL said:

Yuri, like all set­tings and devices and what have you, is sim­ply a premise.

Maybe when I sought yuri, I’m sim­ply look­ing for a really cute romance with an ele­gantly refined atmosphere.

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Before I get labelled as some Yan­dere the­o­rist like meflo­raine: no, I’m not a Yan­dere expert. Heck, I’m not even a Yan­dere fan, even if Kaede from Shuf­fle sits on my MAL top 10 favorite char­ac­ters or that I tend to like a lot of yan­dere char­ac­ters or that I argue for them when— okay not help­ing my case.

Of all the char­ac­ter archtypes lying about out there, Yan­deres seem to be the most mis­un­der­stood and hated, far more than even the most sadis­tic vari­a­tion of tsun­deres. Obvi­ously, I can’t judge other people’s pref­er­ences on the mat­ter, but I always felt like peo­ple are tak­ing Yan­deres the wrong way. When most peo­ple think of yan­dere they instantly think of “they will mur­der you! Nice boat style!” Uuu­uuu— I feel bad for them already. After all, they just wanted to be your bestest friend for ever and ever and ever. That box­cut­ter busi­ness? It’s not going to hap­pen unless you cheat on or betray them, and in some cases you might be just a bit deserv­ing of what’s com­ing… I mean, Makoto (School Days) sure does.

But even then, it’s not quite that sim­ple. I knew that Yan­deres (and Yan­gires for that mat­ter, see their MAL club for word break­down) were on the extreme ends, but even I didn’t quite under­stand the issue involved until I read this TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle on Bor­der­line Per­son­al­ity Dis­or­der. Yeah, psy­chol­o­gists once thought of this as a fatal dis­ease, how’s that for you sick-girl Moe lovers, not to men­tion all the Dam­aged Goods and Katawa Shoujo fans.

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Okay, fair reminder. But Japan, you just love to remind us… (Uwasa no Midori-kun by Ikeya­mada Go)

When was the last time a shoujo manga lead char­ac­ter was strong and capa­ble, in more than just an emotional/supportive sense? Okay plenty of times, scratch that. When was the last time they were strong and awe-inspiring with­out being foiled by some­thing else, such as comedic ridicule or con­sis­tent over­shad­ow­ing and shel­ter­ing by an even more GAR male? I’m pretty sure I can count my encoun­ters using just my fin­gers here. The key words here aren’t the ‘GAR male’, as I’m quite fine with the pres­ence of awe­some guys who are even bet­ter than the hero­ine; the key terms are ‘over­shad­owed and shel­tered’. I under­stand that being pro­tected and saved by the clas­sic knight-in-shining-armor is quite roman­tic, but some­times, they really do overuse it.

Doesn’t look like it’s a rare feel­ing of annoy­ance either, as I loled when Hyper Par­fait yelled out:

A CHAPTER WITHOUT KAZUMA PROTECTING FUMIKO!!!! *CELEBRATES*… I’m so sick of her being pro­tected. So Sick. SICK.

Well yeah, I agree, espe­cially given that Fumiko from Faster than a Kiss was sup­pose to be one of those strong delin­quent type char­ac­ters in the first place.
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Some­times great drama doesn’t need ini­tial com­edy while your audi­ence gets in touch with the char­ac­ters, or a long and com­plex buildup to raise the ten­sions, or fan­tas­tic ele­ments and mir­a­cles. Some­time all you need is to blend together two char­ac­ters with unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances and breath life into them. After all, the pie of life is always half sweet and half bit­ter, and by directly con­fronting its sad­dest ele­ments we arrive at some­thing bit­ter­sweet, beau­ti­ful, and absolutely touching.

Maybe illus­trat­ing the manga edi­tion of Voices of a Dis­tant Star instilled her with the same essence that Shinkai Makoto used to author his work; maybe she always had the gift. But either way, Sahara Mizu’s works man­age to por­tray char­ac­ter and rela­tion­ship devel­op­ment with a depth that few oth­ers could reach.

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So Honya finally started the sec­ond round to the anime fam­ily project. Yay! It also means it’s time for me to pub­lish this post that I started two months ago. About time. There’s been quite a few changes in my anime fam­ily, reflect­ing upon how my views have shifted over the two years since Honya’s first anime fam­ily project startup. But I think this time, a few more of the char­ac­ters have entered the frame to set­tle down permanently.

The bestest true end I wish for

The anime fam­ily project is, in a nut­shell, a selec­tion of char­ac­ters from anime, manga, vis­novs, et cetera, that are assigned to roles in your ideal fic­tional family.

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A love born from an exper­i­men­tal act, as threats and exploita­tion from one side meets back­stab­bing from the other…

As the lat­est series authored by Tooyama Ema, the man­gaka of Hyakuen! and Koko no iru yo! (also known as that Kimi no Todoke alike, which isn’t really true), Watashi ni xx Shi­na­sai sure made huge strides of improve­ment in break­ing out from the stereo­typ­i­cal Shoujo shell. I’d def­i­nitely say this is her best work yet.

Though, I have to admit, this manga has one smut-covered title that really gives off the wrong impres­sion. Yet it’s also sur­pris­ingly accu­rate in an dif­fer­ent way. The premise may not exactly be orig­i­nal, but it’s uncom­mon enough to war­rant a refresh­ing read, and the pre­sen­ta­tion is just won­der­ful. Thanks goes to Nagare­boshi Manga for scan­lat­ing it.

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Thanks to Potato-otaku’s relent­less trans­la­tion, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama finally brings out the inter­est­ing details, after… 45 chap­ters, forty-five chap­ters!!! Well, this is assum­ing that ch46 brings us the goods, see­ing as dear 45 left on a cliffhanger.

Dear Fuji­wara Hiro, what were you think­ing! You’ve tan­ta­lized us with this mys­te­ri­ous past of Usui since god knows when. If it weren’t for the fact our dear cou­ple look so cute together I would have dropped this ages ago, and even then read­ing Kai­chou felt almost like a guilty plea­sure prior to this chap­ter. As some­one on baka-updates manga put it, Kai­chou is like smut with­out the smut. Read the rest of this entry »