Akagami no Shirayuki Hime and Women with Agency

Last post, I discussed how we were able to apply and connect Twilight criticism to the Japanese manga Black Bird. When looking at popular culture, from any country, I am always looking into what kinds of behaviors that piece is trying to teach the target audience. Does this show/book/song try to tell people what is considered masculine? Is it trying to tell women how to attract men? Are the young men and women reading that YA novel truly connecting and understanding what the author is trying to imply they are going through? How does that particular fandom respond to certain characters and what kind of fan enterprises are they embarking on? These are all questions that many pop culture critics and scholars research and expand on to further, scholastically, understand what constitutes "popular" and what a phenomena reflects back on to the culture that is consuming it.

While I was reading Black Bird, it was impossible not to see the obvious and tonal connections between the book/movie and the manga. As I said last post, Twilight could have been a shojo manga, it's tone, characters, and plot fit into the established genre so well. It was no surprise that the Japanese market picked it up and was widely popular. Never mind what unhealthy information about relationships the two imparted to its readers.

This post, I am looking at the complete other end of the shojo spectrum with a manga that's not too widely popular and a lot less soapy. Out of LaLa magazine, the one publishes Natsume Yuuchincho, comes the story of Shiyuki, or Snow White, is a rather inverted look at the fairy tale.

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.

Created families and Kiss Yori Hayaku

The joy of having such diversity in manga content is that there is always a manga to read that matches your mood.

Recently, I've been really uninterested in manga that make me think a little too much. It's probably all the reading I've had to do for school, but my mind just is not ready for Gantz at the moment. With this is mind, I headed to a manga that I could just read and enjoy without too much mind capacity needed.

So, I read Faster Than a Kiss, or Kiss Yori Hayaku, by Tanaka Meca. I have to admit, any of the manga that comes out of LaLa is usually a fun read. They tend not to be too serious, but have enough "cute tension" that you can flip pages quite easily and at a rather steady pace.

Within this manga, the biggest theme I saw was the created family.

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.

Ouran High School and the Ideal Foreigner in Japan

The reverse harem has become almost ubiquitous in shojo manga in the last 10 years. After the whole manga and anime world was glutted with shonen harem plot lines, it was a refreshing change to see the guys act like school girls all trying to get the same girl. All that embarrassment and obliviousness by the heroine was just a joy to watch. I can't remember how much I giggled as a high schooler over those plots.

Do you guys remember this anime? I think it exploded in the US and I remember dozens of anime conventions that honored Ouran cosplayers. After the anime ended, I tried to stay up with the manga, as it wasn't finished when the anime was produced, but I lost interest (and forgot) in checking up with it every month. So I kinda knew how the ending was suppose to go, but I really didn't at the same time. Now that I've gone back and reread the series, there was one main thing that I noticed; Tamaki as the ideal foreigner experience in Japan.

Shojō Titles, Takano Ichigo and Orange

As most of you know, I don't usually write about manga that has not finished serialization. But I just cannot help up write about Takano Ichigo's newest manga Orange. Some of you may have seen her other successful shojō title, Yume Miru Taiyou (though it has yet to be finished scanlated), but it is Orange that I predict will be called her masterpiece. I can quite honestly say, I think it is the best shojō manga I have ever read. And it's not even 10 chapters in!

I've previously posted about other shojō titles such as, Strobe Edge, Kare Kano, Bokura Ga Ita, and 7 Seeds among others, but I am much more of an adamant fan of shōnen titles. As you can see from the other articles I've written, the shōnen titles overpower the shojō titles by a solid 2/3 to 1/3. Part of this might be because of that mini Jump marathon I did, but I would mostly blame it on my personal tastes. So, I am going to focus on some shojō titles to give this blog, and my brain, a little balance.

While I will be the first to tell you that I don't and haven't read many "classic" shojō titles, I can tell you that I have heard of them and usually know the general plot lines and tropes that they carry. I haven't read Nana and I've actually never read Hana Yori Dango, but I know almost everything about them because they are so popular and I just cannot stop hearing about them. Not even those, I can probably go into detail on the different tropes that shojō manga relies on. For example, Kimi ni Todoke, Suki itte Ii na Yo, and Hiyokoi all have the same trope of the popular guy in class, who is usually very "refreshing" and nice to everyone, getting together with the shy outsider. Of course, the trope is used differently between all three of them based on the intended readership. Kimi ni Todoke, which captured national attention with not only a 2 season anime, but also a live action adaptation, is easily one of Betsuma's most popular manga and the one aimed at the widest audience. Whereas Suki is aimed at mature audiences, as it is a josei title and Hiyokoi, published in Ribon, is for the middle school crowd.

So, without further ado, I shall get started on what my thoughts and feelings are on Takano Ichigo's manga Orange.

CLAMP and the tied worlds of xxxHolic

One of the things that I always love about manga is how much intertextual references are made between them. When you have that knowledge, or cultural capital, it makes the reading experience more interesting and it takes the reader to a new level of understanding. It is very easy to convey a feeling or importance through what could be a subtle reference. 

The whole intertextuality between xxxHolic and Tsubasa was a little confusing at times and I still don't feel like it was completely explained in Holic, but it was very interesting to follow it through till the end. I haven't read another manga that relies that heavily on intertextuality to establish a plot before.