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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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 »

As the very much over­rated (but enjoy­able nonethe­less) Ouran High School Host Club has proven before, char­ac­ter and story premise orig­i­nal­ity in manga is hardily nec­es­sary for it to become a smash hit. For this sub-genre, all the man­gaka needs there is some­thing just inter­est­ing enough even if its cliche, com­bined with a great sense of humor in pre­sent­ing it. By the time the reader has fin­ished laugh­ing at the high ratio of early chap­ter jokes, they’ve already become attached enough to the char­ac­ter rela­tion­ships to keep going for a while, thus pro­vid­ing the man­gaka an extended period of chance to take a series to the next notch. This is pretty much what I feel about Obaka-chan, Koigatariki (by Sato Zakuri).

One of the best con­fes­sions ever Ｏ(≧∇≦)Ｏ

Thanks goes to Sakura for rec­om­mend­ing this deli­cious piece of mango, and to Shin­nen for scan­lat­ing it.

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Ack too many things to post about—!!!

Chap­ter 13 is out and the long awaited scene (spoiler!?) is finally here! I guess that marks an end to the first extended arc of Akagami no Shirayuki-hime (Eng­lish: Red-haired Snow-White princess), and I am utterly impressed. I never thought I’d see so much.. sen­si­bil­ity, or ratio­nale, in a fan­tasy shoujo manga. I mean not only is the entire cast (all of them that mat­ters) lik­able, but they’re all intel­li­gent and hard-working peo­ple, whose actions are log­i­cal, and whose emo­tions are bal­anced, con­sid­ered, and devel­oped only in response to other character’s actions (rather than any plot device).

Even more shock­ingly, the hero never over­shad­ows or over­pro­tects the hero­ine, who is as inde­pen­dent and capa­ble as they come with­out get­ting unnec­es­sar­ily stub­born.  She’s has the role of Cin­derella in a rela­tion­ship with the prince and I can’t even pick out any sig­nif­i­cant flaws in the polit­i­cal interactions!

Is this even shoujo any­more? Cause I sure can’t spot any of shoujo manga’s major flaws. Well, appar­ently man­gaka Aizuki Sorata begs to dif­fer as she crafts this mas­ter­piece, com­plete with one of the most sim­plis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful art styles I’ve seen. Its even more amaz­ing that this seems to be her first ongo­ing series! Wow do I see some amaz­ing works com­ing out of this mangaka’s career!

It is truly a hid­den gem amongst manga. (well, thanks to Aeran­dria, prob­a­bly not so hid­den anymore).

Rea­sons for Read­ing (I guess this is a Review):

• A remark­able hero­ine — she’s not per­fect, she’s not strong, but she tack­les every­thing with smart think­ing and an iron will.
• Great art style — sim­plis­tic yet ele­gantly beau­ti­ful, cute with­out rely­ing on chibi-esque pro­por­tions, all-fitting yet unique.
• Excel­lent sup­port cast — a lik­able and ratio­nale cast who reflect­ing upon the main cou­ple from all the respec­tive sides of the palace structure.
• Good pac­ing — unex­pected things may come but noth­ing jumps out of the blue, feel­ings and deci­sions come grad­u­ally but not too slow.

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With the release of Chap­ter 27 by Maki­maki Scan­la­tions, Girl Friends finally brings a con­clu­sion to its first arc — and what a ride it has been.

Cute­ness refined~

First pub­lished in 2007, Girl Friends is hardly amongst the most well-known manga, even in the yuri cat­e­gory. How­ever, its pol­ished art, blush­ing cute­ness, and gen­eral adher­ence to girl stuff is quickly gain­ing rep­u­ta­tion amongst the cir­cles of yuri fans. I was first intro­duced to it by Honya, whom was intro­duced to it by some­one else, so yeah — word is get­ting passed around even as we speak. It seems every time a new per­son is intro­duced, it doesn’t take long for them to quickly become hooked to this mas­ter­piece of high-school romance drama. I was no excep­tion — Girl Friends jumped onto my top 5 manga list by the teens chapters.

Rea­sons to Read:

• Excel­lent and well-paced (inter)character devel­op­ment — Friend­ship came as a chance get, while romance was grad­u­ally born from it. Day to day nor­mal­ity rounded and changed the char­ac­ters with­out gain­ing filler repetitiveness.
• Sweet romance drama in sim­plic­ity — A con­fes­sion between best friends brings out romance drama of the high­est grade, even with­out the bit­ter­ness pro­duced by love polygons.
• Cute~! — I can­not stress this enough. The inno­cent blush­ing and hes­i­tance eas­ily made this one of the most adorable manga ever created.
• Pseudo-pragmatic yuri — Prob­a­bly the most real­is­tic I’ve seen yet, as the pair tried their best to apply all the com­mon expec­ta­tions of romance to their spe­cial relationship.

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