I recently re-read Kare Kano, for the 4th time in my life — all 21 vol­umes of it.

I remem­bered the plot­line. I remem­bered the char­ac­ters. Yet I couldn’t help but feel mes­mer­ized once more. It shocked me that every time I read this beloved series, I encoun­tered a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence, felt a dif­fer­ent emo­tion bloom.

It wasn’t story incon­sis­tency. It was a change in the appre­ci­a­tion and under­stand­ing of life.

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We all know the gen­er­al­iza­tion: that the shoujo genre is filled with sparkles, bub­bles, and chap­ters of cute and fluffy romance. Being a big fan of shoujo with strong leads, I first picked up Crim­son Empire, an Otome Game adap­ta­tion by Quin­rose (pro­duc­ers of the famous Heart no Kuni no Alice) because of an sur­pris­ing aspect: its hero­ine is an ex-assassin secu­rity guard in ser­vice to the crown prince— sure don’t see that one every day =o. Nev­er­the­less, five chap­ters of the manga did not pre­pare me for the actual game itself. Read the rest of this entry »

[Karu]

Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Girl Utena is undoubt­edly one of the most ambi­tious anime I’ve ever seen. Stuffed with artis­tic sym­bol­ism and cin­e­matic motifs in every scene, reflect­ing social and psy­cho­log­i­cal themes in every char­ac­ter, it’s not sur­pris­ing that many con­sider it one of their favorites. What began as a series that miffed me for its seem­ingly casual use of weighty terms like “the world rev­o­lu­tion” really grew on me, since the coming-of-age themes por­trayed by Utena truly are rev­o­lu­tion­ary, even if they’re not quite as blood­stained as its pre­de­ces­sor. Read the rest of this entry »

About time I write some­thing for beloved Yumepati, hardily any­one blogs about this series…

Well yes, there’s noth­ing too excep­tional about this super-shoujo series, other than the fact its sug­ary atmos­phere drove off most of my anime club­bies with the fear of dia­betes. Yumepati is tar­get­ted at the upper end of the tra­di­tional pre­teen ‘mahou shoujo’ audi­ence, and its style cer­tainly pro­vides cute­ness and flashy­ness in abun­dance, full of dawww~ and kawaii~! moments. Yet, Yumepati also high­lights some­thing often for­got­ten in mod­ern shoujo: a heroine’s jour­ney isn’t just romance and adven­tur­ism, there’s plenty of life dreams and goals to chase~ Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

A story of war between a poor girl and the upper class

The damsel in dis­tress is an overused lit­er­ary cliche. It annoys a lot of peo­ple, espe­cially in the shoujo genre, where a heroine’s need to be pro­tected by the ‘stronger male’ draws all kind of venom from read­ers. Stamp­ing it as gen­der stereo­typ­ing, read­ers look toward the other side of the fence, putting the spot­light on the inde­pen­dent and badass hero­ines of shounen/seinen as ‘true strength’. There is some valid­ity to that, but I’m far from agreement.

The ban­ner for my Strength Arcana card high­lights my beliefs quite well: “Per­fec­tion is a State of Mind.” Read the rest of this entry »

The shoujo com­edy genre is mostly known for its flow­ers, sparkles, and sug­ary bub­bles, so for the longest time I couldn’t under­stand the use of orga­nized crime as a premise within shoujo com­edy (shoujo smut is a dif­fer­ent story). Out­side the whole ‘bad boy’ image, what’s so great about get­ting deeply involved with a pack of uncouth and rough-looking thugs, espe­cially given the social stigma and the pos­si­bil­ity of get­ting involved in their gang wars?

Well, Ban­cho pol­i­ticks aside, Arakure (or Wild Ones as Viz Media calls it; no clue) sure taught me that I’ve never paid atten­tion to the Japan­ese Roman­ti­ciza­tion of Yakuza. While Arakure mostly avoids the ‘crime’ part, it really high­lights the beau­ti­ful ide­al­ism sur­round­ing them, from the broth­erly love to their ver­sion of chivalry; plus, the Yakuza humor is just hilar­i­ous. 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 »