As Mis­aki finally begins to break down the door to Usui’s prob­lems in Kai­chou wa Maid-sama (manga), I’m reminded yet again of just how ridicu­lous pre­dictable and com­mon this trope is; yet despite the uno­rig­i­nal­ity, this tried and true for­mula still deliv­ers much enjoy­ment for me~

The setup has got to be one of the most over­done within Shoujo manga: the self­less and car­ing hero­ine, either by nature or becomes that way from friendship/love, meets the ideal guy, whose stoic per­son­al­ity always serves as the front to a dark and trou­bling family/childhood back­ground. After build­ing up the rela­tion­ship through sev­eral arcs (usu­ally help­ing sup­port char­ac­ters), the girl must directly con­front the guy’s fam­ily prob­lem in order to heal his past scars and firmly estab­lish their happy future~ Read the rest of this entry »

If there’s one arche­type peo­ple fall back far too eas­ily into, it’s the tsun­dere. But really, this per­son­al­ity attribute is nei­ther that sim­ple nor cheap…

[Sora]

Since my post on explain­ing the real life psy­chol­ogy of yan­deres, I’ve been on the hunt for a rec­og­nized psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der that would clas­sify the tsun­dere. Unfor­tu­nately, no such con­ve­nience seems to exist, and while the tsun­dere may be the most overused anime char­ac­ter arche­type of recent years, it is also com­plex enough that few series have truly done it jus­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

At first glance, Misa-chan is any­thing but your tra­di­tional girl. She’s aggres­sive assertive, inde­pen­dent, and bold; she is part-timing to earn income for her house­hold despite still being a stu­dent; most of all, she is the Stu­dent Coun­cil Pres­i­dent of a for­merly all-boys school, tak­ing lead­er­ship over an over­whelm­ingly male pop­u­la­tion. Even fem­i­nists would be proud of her accom­plish­ments, as Misa-chan stands out as the obvi­ous first place wher­ever she goes…

Except when Usui it around, whose mere pres­ence instantly demotes her to sec­ond place. As this is from a pop­u­lar shoujo manga, do girls have a thing for being in sec­ond place? No, don’t think that way for even a sec­ond. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been the start of a great sea­son, and every­thing I’m watch­ing has been either up to my expec­ta­tions or exceeded it. With a good few 8/10 MAL scores from just the start of the sea­son, I don’t think I could even ask for any­thing bet­ter. Hope­fully every­thing will keep up and this’ll be one of my most enjoy­able sea­sons for a while~

Shows I’m watch­ing or tried out includes: Angel Beats!, Arakawa under the Bridge, B Gata H Kei, Haku­ouki, K-ON!!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Kiss x Sis, Mayoi Neko Over­run!, Senko no Night Raid, Uraboku, and Work­ing!! (I’m behind on Het­alia) Now that’s a lot of excla­ma­tion marks, even more so than last sea­son too. I won­der if we’ll get, say, Lit­tle Busters!!!! by the time 2012 swings around…

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Hey look it’s chartfag’s poster for the 437th time!

As usual, every episodic blog­ger in the world already rushed out to take their stab at rat­ing each and every show. I’m not going to waste my time over that, but I do have some thoughts of my own on some of the series. My over­all thoughts on the sea­son are: looks awe­some, but in need of yuri (espe­cially since Rail­gun is fin­ish­ing). Also, there are sure a lot of excla­ma­tion marks.

Here’s the short ver­sion. Entries within each sub­cat­e­gory is ordered from most antic­i­pated to least. I think I have like… the strangest list.

Def­i­nites: Angel Beats!, Het­alia Axis Pow­ers, K-ON!, Da Capo Ext.
Prob­a­bles: Work­ing!, Kai­chou wa Maid-sama!, Senko no Night Raid
Tak­ing Peeks: Arakawa Under the Bridge, Ura­giri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitte Iru,  Haku­ouki, Mayoi Neko Over­run, B Gata H Kei
OVAs: Nodame Cantabile OAD, Gun­dam Uni­corn, Black Rock Shooter

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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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »