Showing posts with label romantic comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label romantic comedy. Show all posts

Thursday, April 4, 2013

Twilight + Yokai = Black Bird

In the year 2005 a new pop cultural phenomena was launched and spread throughout the world. It released a giant of a question onto the world at large: Are you team Edward? or team Jacob?

I am, of course, referring to the giant franchise that spans 4 books, 5 movies, was on the NYT Best Sellers list and propelled Kristen Stewart into almost every home. That phenomena would be Twilight.

Now, I am not really going to go on about my opinion of the books one way or the other. I have actually read 2 of the 4 books while I was in college. My suite mates and I were passing around romance novels my senior year of college and I remember reading Twilight, the first installment of the series, in a matter of hours. For a YA novel, it wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination, but it had heart, the situation was entertaining, and the writing was so easily read that my brain didn't have to engage at all. It was like reading a really good fanfiction that was bound in paperback.

In 2008 Twilight, the first book in the series, was translated and sold thousands of copies in Japan. My Japanese teacher, an older and very smart women, actually read them because her friends were talking about it. The series and the books were a huge success in Japan, which is not very surprising because when you read Twilight and you've read some old shojo manga, you recognize that the plots and characters are made very similar.

Which is why it shouldn't surprise you that I am going to be looking at how Twilight and Black Bird, are very similar in a lot of ways.


Monday, December 31, 2012

Lovely Complex


About a month ago I asked, via tumblr, what people thought was the best shojō manga they had ever read to get some ideas for good older shojō to read for the shojō marathon I find myself currently going through. I, sadly, only received one response; which tells you how popular I am on tumblr. Anyway, the response I got was Lovely Complex, or Love Con, by Nakahara Aya. After I finished reading Kōkō Debut, which was also wonderful, I started reading Love Con, watched the anime, and then I reread it. I can't get enough of this story!

I've heard and read other readers say that both manga titles are what they would title "classics" in the shojō genre, so I decided that I would read both and see if I agreed or disagreed.

Well, here's what I thought. This won't be a long post, but I just wanted to throw my 2 cents in with the rest of the community.



Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Baseball and Touch

It is without a doubt that Adachi Mitsuru is the ruler of romantic comedy and he also knows how to write a baseball manga. I will be the first to admit, I'm not usually one for baseball mangas unless it's Ookiku Furikabutte. I usually find the characters too one dimensional and all the "powering up" can get annoying after a while. 

Yet Touch doesn't get that way at all. It's a depiction of what baseball can bring out in people, but it's not an all encompassing theme; which I, as a reader, appreciate. 

This is not going to be a real essay, but just thoughts I had while reading. 

I should warn you, there are spoilers (as always) with this essay.