#she's also way more into shoujo manga than I am

[carewyncromwell]

Hey, you mentioned that Anastasia likes fantasy stories and manga, but does she also like sci-fi as well? Maybe something like John Carter or Dune?

Not as much, no! Ana finds that science fiction, in general, tends to be very "forward"-looking, while fantasy is much more inspired by myths and history -- and for someone like Ana who is also enamored of history, that's really more her thing. There are definitely some sci-fi properties that blur the line between fantasy and science fiction -- such as John Carter and Dune, as well as Star Wars -- but honestly, they're still not as much Ana's thing, not only because there are less women as the leading role in those works (Jyn Erso and Rey are really the only times for Star Wars, and Rey's storyline was...yeah, not the best executed), but because Ana likes worlds that are a bit more romanticized and comfortable. (Some of her favorite books are The Last Unicorn; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and the works of Lewis Carroll, to give you an idea.) Then of course in the case of John Carter of Mars, the man was an ex-Confederate...sorry, budding political activist Ana really wouldn't warm up to that. 😅

Another thing dictating Ana's tastes is that a lot of science-fiction properties have a colder, cleaner aesthetic and oftentimes a far less optimistic view of the world than many fantasy properties do. In the realm of sci-fi, you're much more likely to find stories of man's hubris -- of Man creating monsters and fighting against evil dystopias. And Ana is honestly a true romantic at heart -- however reserved and difficult to trust she is, she actually believes that people are inherently good, and she likes feeling happy, powerful, and optimistic, in the fictional worlds she escapes to. She wants the promise of a happy ending, even if not everything goes perfectly and not everyone makes it. So she enjoys the warmth, color, and comfort of something like a Middle Earth way more than something like out of the Starship Enterprise. Yes, she does like Gothic and steampunk visuals (you can thank her stepbrothers Jasper and Preston for turning her onto those subcultures!!), but she likes a certain lived-in, but not dirty or cynical softness to her fictional worlds. Plus from a nerdy history perspective, Ana finds the diverse interpretations of familiar mythical and magical creatures in the fantasy genre -- such as fae, giants, yokai, and dragons -- incredibly interesting to compare. ❤️

[forcebookish]

*reading a review for a beloved manga from my childhood* "the art is really good for shojo" well there u go i can't trust ur opinion lol

[pienhime]

my ten manga/game/anime/etc recs for jirai

hiii long time no long ass recs post! i wanna recommend media that is popular w landmine types for newbies to the subculture, and recommendations for those who might have been here long enough to know the most popular media within jirai subculture and want some recommendations beyond that!

so without further ado...

1. Tomorrow, I Will Become Someone's Girlfriend

TW: unsafe sex work, abusive relationships, body dysmorphia, self harm, substance use, misogyny, and parental death

Okay you knew this was coming. It's probably the most popular manga amongst jirai girls as it literally is about Kabukicho, sex work, trauma, and jirai culture. Everyone's seen Yua at this point, and she is a jiraicon, but the other characters are interesting and may be relatable to jirai girls too!

2. Mahou Shoujo Site

TW: sexual assault, r@pe, abusive family dynamics, transphobia, self-harm, suicide, murder, gore, bullying, human sacrifice

This is probably also familiar to people in the jirai community and yandereblr. Super mega fucked-up parody of magical girl animes with a cast of memorable but mentally unhinged and often morally gray-to-terrible characters with a hopeful message at the end. The most unfortunate girls around Japan get given magical girl items to improve their lives, but using them drains their life force- and someone's on the hunt for magical girls, all while the countdown to the apocalypse ticks down on the mysterious magical girl site. DO NOT BOTHER WITH THE ANIME, JUST READ THE MANGA!!

3. Needy Girl Overdose/Needy Streamer Overload

TW: substance abuse, self-harm, murder (potentially), suicide, non-graphic sexual content, abuse (player is being abused by the main character), unreality, internet addiction

Duh. I can't not have this game on here! Created by a renowned menhera subculture artist and featuring Jirai icons Ame-chan and KAngel, this game has blown up unexpectedly since its release, getting art exhibits and collabs with brands like DearMyLove. You play as P-chan, Ame/KAngel's boyfriend and producer, while you try to help her achieve her goals of becoming an influencer and prevent her from killing herself or going insane along the way. If you've been in a relationship like this as the P-chan, I'm sorry we relate but this game was super therapeutic to me so maybe it'll help you process too!! Also the soundtrack fucks. Hard.

4. Neeko wa Tsurai Yo!

TW: agoraphobia, existentialism, substance use (kind of), ecchi (of both adult and high schooler characters), suicidal ideation, internet addiction

This is a super underrated personal favorite I've posted about a few times before. It follows hikki-NEET gacha gamer Niiko, as she faces jealousy of her little sister for being farther in life than her as a high-schooler, the trauma of a particularly horrific job rejection keeping her from going outside or trying for another job, and being totally fed up with her life. It's a pretty depressing read for the first half, but becomes a realistic story about recovery by the end.

5. Wristcut Warriors: Menherachan

TW: suicide attempts, self-harm (duh), parental abuse, parental death, parental neglect, attempted sexual assault, mild gore, societal ableism/sanism

Much more popular in the menhera subculture than anywhere else, but still popular enough with landmine types to be included, and a personal comfort series of mine. This is a satire manga about three teenage magical girls who have to self-harm to transform, meant as an allegory for how suffering and self-sacrifice for the sake of upholding societal norms is seen as more noble in Japan than speaking out etc. It's pretty short with only 20 chapters and some supplemental material, and tons of merch collabs but due to Ezaki being the actual fucking worst i encourage you to only but fanmerch and second-hand.

6. Danganronpa

TW: murder, suicide, ableist depiction of DID, misgendering (kind of, im not getting into ******* discourse so ill put it jic), SA, addiction,and general violence and blood

I'm biased as a Danganronpa multi-kin and selfshipper but I personally think every jirai should play Danganronpa, read the supplemental materials and watch DR3 if they can. Quirky teens with mental issues locked in a school and forced to kill each other or themselves? Prime insanity and mindbreaking ensues, with some really cool characters coming out of the franchise. Despite the premise, theres a pretty hopeful message.

7. Oshi no Ko

TW: stalking, teen pregnancy, exploitation of minors, suicide attempts, murder, terminal illness, age gap relationships, bullying, abortion, parasocial relationships, and... sigh... pseudo-incest is apparently in the manga as well

If you are into idol anime and expect your standard cinderella story about passionate girls and guys hitting it big... Oshi no Ko isn't the idol anime you're used to. This doesn't even follow the hit idol herself- rather, her two children who are reincarnated fans. They have to find their way in the exploitative and often dark showbiz world while trying to solve their mother's murder.

8. Bocchi the Rock!

TW: agoraphobia, alcohol abuse

I only watched this one recently, but it's already an all-time fav. It follows agoraphobic and severly socially anxious Hitori (aka Bocchi), and her newfound friends as they do their best to become a successful local band! They make odd friends along the way and Bocchi starts to try to recover and better herself, with often comedic failures along the way.

9. TUYU's interconnected songs

TW: abuse, substance abuse, unsafe SW, dysmorphia, suicide, self harm, parasocialism

Okay so... ik the timing is bad but I meant to make this list ages ago and this was on it so... a lot of the TUYU songs and MVs are interconnected! Some specifically cover jirai kei and ryousangata otaku topics! My favorite songs and MVs are the ones involving my favorite characters, Anhiro and Anzu, who are heavily featured in the Under Mentality album.

10. School-Live!

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!! I RECOMMEND GOING IN BLIND FOR THIS ANIME SPECIFICALLY!!

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TW: unreality, major character death, parental death, self-harm, animal death, graphic depictions of delusions and hallucinations

I loved the anime, so I picked up the manga recently. I'm only a little ways in, but I want to complete it since the anime didn't cover it all! You don't even know the plot until the final seconds of the first episode, where it's revealed that Yuki is the only member of the squad who doesn't realize what's going on- she's not in school for class, she's living there for shelter in a zombie apocalypse. Oh, and she sees dead people. She has moments of clarity, and the story often follows other characters' memories and POVs, so you still get to have a clear look into what happened and what's going on for real.

That was my list of my current top ten media recommendations for jirai kei! Please lmk if you decide to give any of these a try! Remember that I also regularly post music recs under #music too! Bye-bye!!

[cheesus-doodles]

Yoo, it’s Winky Wink. Since your reader has always been the innocent to a fault type and very motherly, I wonder how tr boys will react if reader is the typical girl in shoujo manga? I am not talking about the protagonist of the shoujo manga, but those fan girls in the bg. This reader is very girly, she follow the trend, knows every hot boys at the school, attend sport gams to meet the star of the sport club and such. Although the toman or the tr boys are good looking themselves, but reader doesn’t see them as men or potential love interest, so she always gushing about how hot this sempai from class b is and such with them. Reader might be even drag them to clothing stores, so the boys can be the judge the outfit for her potential future dates. I also can see this reader complaining and whining on how her youth is wasted when this is the prime time to fall in love and such.

Y'know, that type of girl, lol.

the vote has spoken! i've watched exactly one (1) shoujo anime, and that was fruit basket - decided to write this as each boy on their own cause writing them as a whole group is getting too predictable...

Masterlist

‎‎

Mikey: Gets very annoyed and pissy whenever you act like that around him, and will look to eliminate the threat outright and as soon as possible. Don't get him wrong, Mikey likes that you put effort into what you wear and how you look, and would be more than happy to go with you to the store since being seen next to such a pretty princess is an ego booster whether he actually liked you that way or not. But he doesn't like in the slightest that you aren't doing it just for him. This boy simply can’t understand what’s so fantastic about anyone else but him, and absolutely will not stand for this disre spect - how dare you call another boy hot in front of him? How dare you fawn over some shit stain instead of focusing all your attention on pampering him? Starts off whining and trying to pull you away, insisting that you give him the affection he deserves and forbidding you from going to sport games, but when this doesn’t work is when the Toman President starts to get downright pissed. This delinquent couldn't be more bothered to learn who is popular or why you are shrieking about someone else, the moment they catch your attention is the moment they are going down. Sports stars, older students, really don't matter, Mikey will find them and he will beat the shit out of every single one of them the next time he catches them around. He wouldn’t care if there is an audience or not, or whether you are part of the eyes watching, this blond boy makes sure that he puts all these threats out for good by breaking their noses and maybe an arm or a leg. Not going to be so hot if they can barely stand. Grumpily returns for cuddles in your lap once he’s done.

ㅤ

Draken: Much more lenient with gossip than Mikey will ever be, but will not hesitate to punish any rule-breaking on his watch, be it you or the poor student getting dragged into your mess. This boy thinks it probably just a phase, since the brothel girls back home do the same thing albeit with celebrities rather than school boys, and that you will get over it soon, so Draken will be more than happy to indulge you in your complaining and whining like he does for his adoptive family. Lets you rant to him about the latest trends and all the guys you think are hot shots (though be prepared for this blond boy to interject with his own thoughts about the subject and how he could easily beat them all). Enjoys going shopping with you, and will give you his opinion on whether the outfit was appropriate or not, but this boy is already ready to never let you take even a step closer to those disgusting boys. And will absolutely not even discuss the mere idea of you dating them *shudders*. If the Toman Vice Captain hasn’t already had them dragged away and threatened by the rest of the Toman members, Draken will simply redirect you every time you try to go and meet/see one of those “hot boys”. Doesn’t like to have to beat people up in your presence, so he’ll turn you around when you try to make your way to a sports game or another classroom, but if you persist, this boy has no issue simply picking you up, tucking you under his elbow and walk off and out of your school. Plops you onto his motorbike and takes you somewhere else to distract you.

ㅤ

Mitsuya: Understands everything that you are saying and where you are coming from, but already dreading the day that his younger sisters become interested in boys (if ever). Because he already feels horrid that you have reached that phase, can’t imagine having to deal with it another two times, but Mitsuya would never tell you that. This boy is generally pretty level headed and doesn’t like to fight without very good reason, so rest assured that he will not be beating your schoolmates right and left if they don’t give him any excuse to do so. More likely to discourage you from pursuing boys at your school by getting the best gossip scoops about them and letting you in on all the reasons you should stay away from boys like them. And I don’t doubt that he would be against starting those nasty rumors himself either - he didn’t say that he wouldn’t play dirty. At least the one part he really enjoys is going clothes shopping with you, and out of all the Toman founders, you just know the Second Division Captain has the best fashion sense and will never lead you astray. Would even design and make the clothes himself if you let him, because it would be a good excuse to close to him and too busy to attend sport games and all. Of course you will have to spend all your free time with the crafting club and going fabric shopping with Mitsuya, you want your outfits to turn out perfect, don’t you?

ㅤ

Baji: Beats them at their own game. You want a sports star? Guess he’s joining the sport clubs just to show you he can do way better than any other student in the school. Baji doesn’t attend the same school as you? Doesn’t matter either, by hook or by crook, he’ll join your school’s club anyway. Will show you that he is the superior athlete once and for all, and that your so-called hot boys aren’t shit next to him. This boy will even happily humiliate the entire club in the process, bragging that he doesn’t even need training to sweep the floor with them (what he doesn’t tell you is that he secretly practices by himself, but eh). The only thing he won’t be able to beat them at is academics, but he is definitely not below sabotaging the others so that they do worse than him, be it by breaking their fingers so they can’t write, or something more mundane like putting their ‘confiscated’ homework through the toilet while they watch. Doesn’t want to risk losing you over something as petty as him throwing hands with your schoolmates or your disgustingly precious ‘senpais’, so Baji is limited to working around the system. That is, as long as you don’t seem to be getting a tad too close for comfort to any one of them, cause in that case all bets are off. Would try to prevent this by clinging to you as much as possible, but even that has its limits. Baji would happily tag along and clothes shop with you regardless, and will weigh in on what he thinks, though take note that he does not exactly have the best fashion sense - will absolutely start panicking and ask his mom for tips and what the latest fashion trend is before going out with you.

ㅤ

Kazutora: Starts crying immediately the moment you start talking about anyone but him (and well, he makes an exception for the rest of the Toman founders as well he supposes). Straight up just tears up and accuses you of cheating on him, clings to you and refuses to let go until you apologize - doesn’t matter if you are in the middle of class or in the middle of the corridor. Kazutora has an iron grip and strength way beyond what you will ever have, and if this boy has his arms around you, you aren’t going anywhere. If he thinks that the situation was getting worse and out of his control, i.e. you proclaim that you have a crush on so and so sport athlete, he will refuse to let you go to school at all because all those “evil fucks” brainwashing you are there. Would even purposely get you into trouble with your teachers and the school by hiding your homework from you, or messing your classroom up and getting it blamed on you. Which would of course lead to you opting to hang out with him instead, preferably somewhere that was empty of other people so that nothing can steal your attention away from him. Nothing would make him happier than being invited to go shopping with you, but much like Baji, this boy doesn’t exactly have any fashion sense. Will probably insist that the leopard print pattern he favors looks good on you and nothing else, so be prepared to make your own decisions. No doubt Kazutora will go behind your back and beat the living shit out of any guy he thinks is a bit too attractive once his jealousy reaches boiling point, making sure that he breaks whatever is necessary to make them less attractive.

ㅤ

Pah-chin: Doesn’t mean to, but this boy will accidentally give you all the worst advice known to mankind when you do end up whining about wasting your youth. Pah is very unsure about what you talk about or why you want to go and see other students, but this boy doesn’t stop you from doing so as long as he gets to come along. This boy is pretty clueless to say the least, and will resort to asking Peh what he should do when you tell him that your youth was fleeting. Does that mean that you were sick and dying? Oh, okay it means that you are in love - which is a big no no even in Pah’s books. Fortunately with how fierce Pah naturally looks without even trying, no doubt any popular guys are already keeping a wide circle from you whenever he is around. Plus the advice he gives you just scares them away even more, because this boy has no idea what he is doing without Peh there. And you absolutely would not be able to get Pah to leave you alone, this Third Division Captain will attend every single sports game just to make sure that you weren’t trying anything funny. Also another Toman founder that doesn’t have any fashion sense whatsoever, so I would hold off asking for advice on your outfits as well, but upside is that he will absolutely pay for your outfits if you let him.

[nica-my-beloved]

Things I Love and Dislove About Ikemen Games

These are my opinions!

CONTAINS ADULT CHARACTERS

You don't know how much this means to me because most of the time I try finding shoujo mangas I end up with stories that involve high school kids.

I'm a die heart fan of demon romance but majority of the shoujo manga that explores supernatural beings involves a 1000 year old demon king falling in love with a 16 year old high school girl. This sickens me not only because of the age gap but one of the party is a freaking minor.

As an adult, I'm so happy the Ikemen Games doesn't involve younger characters or at least characters that are 'minor' as a romantic partner.

MC's ONLY JOB IS TO SIMPLYFY THE STORY

I have said this before, MCs are just props to simplify the story and characters to us because the writers think we're too dumb to understand what the character is saying. They're like Paimon so that we don't use our braincells to understand the characters better.

I wish they didn't do that and have MCs backstories that describes their personality. I mean, all the MCs want to 'prove' to the male leads that they wanna be 'strong' but I'm tired of this trope.

Why does MCs have to always be innocent and prove themselves? Why does she always want to 'understand' the male leads? Can't we...for once have a romance that doesn't involve MCs teaching male leads true love?

Also STOP give MCs odd jobs! Book stall employee...letter carrier? I mean who is happy and satisfied doing this? How about giving the high-paying jobs like Auditor or Businesswoman or Scientist or etc etc...I know Mai is a fashion designer and businesswoman and Mitsuki is a travel agent turned maid. Alice is a baker and Yoshino is a pharmacist. The only MCs that continues to follow the path of their dreams is Mai and Yoshino.

MATURE ROMANCE

I enjoy seeing two adults slowly fall in love.

There is something different about teenagers falling in love vs adults falling in love. The romance is more realistic. They don't talk about how they're gonna plan their future together or which college they're going to go instead their chat is much more deep and that's refreshing.

NO BAD ENDINGS

Happy endings are nice. Everyone deserves one! But when there are no bad endings, the story won't have stakes.....and when there are no stakes, I can't take any gunshot sounds, blank screen and MCs saying 'Is this the end?' seriously.

Just stop being cowards writers! Put some bad endings!!

FAIR SHARE OF ROMANCE

Although I have played my fair share of Maiden games, majority of them are not that romantic.

I love cute romance moments to lighten up the mood and I really need them. Ikemen games delivers that too well....way too well...

I do have some criticism for random steamy scenes, I don't mind as long as they have context and mood.

The story is not so story focused all the time and also has time for mischievous romance which I like! It helps in calming me down and enjoy at the same time.

BULLSHIT GACHA SYSTEM AND NON-EXISTING GRINDING SYSTEM (Not very F2P friendly)

Even though Genshin's gacha system is shit (you need mf 90 wishes to get a guaranteed 5 star and 180 wishes to get the limited 5 star you want!) I still think it's ways better than the gacha system of these Ikemen Games.

Yes I agree that both the games are different in genre, one is an open world anime rpg and other is a maiden game with gacha mechanics. But that doesn't mean that I have to always pay to buy limited gacha tickets!! At least genshin gives us an open world to explore and grind primos (even though its time consuming)

Yes they do give limited tickets when you enter an event or complete the mission board but that's only ONE TICKET and you need 50 LIMITED TICKETS to get your guaranteed limited 5 star card. On the other hand, they give out many standard tickets but what am I gonna do with it if they aren't gonna update the standard banner?

These games are NOT F2P friendly and if you wanna...like say, want rank no.1 in an event you'd have to save a lot of items.

Ofc I know about the subscription thing and you do indeed get a lot of items, but the most essential thing for me is limited gacha tickets and diamonds because I wanna collect as many beautiful cards as possible and you don't get them from these monthly subscriptions. It's a waste of $5 very month. I'd rather buy a nice hair care or skin care items from that.

INTERESTING SETTINGS

I have my criticism in some of their stories but I can't deny that I LOVEE their story settings. Their premise for each game is solid to the point it makes me wanna actually try it.

This is something I find very rare in 'shoujo' genre.

For example, I don't like Vampire themed games because they suck! (both figuratively and literally) but Ikemen Vampire interests me because they take real historical figures and makes them vampire, which is a really cool idea! You don't know but I'd die to get myself in situation like that because it would be an honor to meet some great historical figures, chat with them and make them lose all their brain cells just like me. I would die to meet especially Isaac Newton and grill him for making those torturous physics theories that gave me brain tumors in my school.

Very cool setting! I can't wait to see what's in store for us in the future!!!

EVENTS ARE INSANELY BORING

I've never enjoyed a single story event from Ikemen Villains. They are boring and makes me fall asleep immediately at chapter 1. I think that kinda spread to Ikemen Prince because I barely open Ikemen Prince app now.

I honestly don't find the stories of these events interesting at all. It always feels like 'I have seen this before' maybe in some other game or some other manga.

And the Collections events.....yeah, I hate them! I wish they never existed!!! They keep the fan-loved characters at the butt-end of the list where 90% of the players don't even make it unless they burn their whole month's salary. I know that's why they do these anniversary elections because I bet if Sariel was the most voted character, his story would have been the most expensive one to get.

VERY LIKEABLE MALE LEADS

This is a personal thing but I love charismatic male leads a lot! Male leads with a lot of suave and beauty! Yes I care about these things when I play gacha games okay! I play gacha games to look at hot guys (because I know I'm never gonna get one in real life!)

But I also love that the devs puts an effort to make them feel good too. So I wanna give a shoutout to them!!! 'KEEP GOING!!! JUST DON'T MAKE TRIGGERING MEN WHO SAYS 'I'LL KILL YOU'!!!

[notexactlyrocketscience]

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood: a critically kind review from a femme acespec physicist <3

> scroll to the next section for my review on the physics academia content in this book!

First, a quick romance novel review!

spoiler: it wasn’t my favorite but I gave it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 because being a writer has made me a generally more appreciative reader + I am so starved of woman in physics rep.

the good

It just felt good to read about a woman physicist, who are still incredibly underrepresented in fiction, especially as protagonists. (I’ll go off about that in a minute.)

The romance is so swoony with shoujo manga vibes, I haven’t read straight M/F adult romance novels in a while and I just loved the flutteriness of it.

A couple of chapters were so soft with excellent pillowtalk. There was something about the ambience of the snow, the hypnotic sadness of failure, the prescence of a comforting person.

I enjoyed identifying the relatable parts about physics academia. Hazelwood clearly did a lot of research, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. It definitely kept me reading!

the bad

The academia issues are so over-simplified it’s almost juvenile. For an adult novel, even one marketed as a romcom, I expect more nuance, more explanations, more explicit lingering in tight positions.

And then the romance tries to be complex (and has a lot of potential!) but not a lot of conflict really happens.

A fictional physics fued between theorists and experimentalists is a really fun (and actually not far off) concept, but I would have expected some things to be the other way around. (More on that later!)

Okay this is personal but the main couple both have terrible taste in movies. Twilight vs white male rage movies??? There is no lesser evil here

Elsie’s hardships aren’t put in a very serious light. Her diabetes and lack of access to health insurance is used as a plot device to engineer romantic momentum between the characters and/or comic relief.

Just overall, the book tried so hard to remain “light” that I think it fails to garner depth. Because adult lives really aren’t that light all the time, and a book can bring relaxation and joy whilst including real worldly negative experiences.

There were aroace and sapphic side characters, but I wanted so bad for Elsie to be demisexual. It's set up so perfectly only for it to be averted—As a demisexual person myself, Elsie’s feelings about attraction felt acutely familiar to me, and every other reader I've spoken to has agreed that the book took a dissapointing and unexpected turn. I understand Hazelwood may not feel equipped to write queer protagonists but if I were her editor, I would have flagged that and recommended she make it canon. It would have added so much more context and dimension to Elsie, and would’ve put hetero demisexuals on the map. </3

Following up on the above: The smut tries so hard to be meaningful but it ... really is icky, stereotypical, unrealistic allocishetero stuff. Think: the shy inexperienced girl vs the man who knows exactly how to advise her. The characters try to subvert the trope by calling it out, but it feels performative because all is forgotten in the next second. The PiV sex is weirdly conventionally idealistic considering the pairing’s size difference. I’m picky about smut but also forgiving when I do like the dynamic. I just didn’t here.

Following up once again: I was ready to ignore all the repetitive comments about how sexy Jack’s height and muscles were, because sure, I guess Elsie has a type. But the sex scenes solidified the redundancy of it all. I've read this same dynamic in countless smutty heteronormative M/F paperbacks. And I have also been made aware by every Hazelwood reader that all her books focus on this kind of physical build pairing. I just want more diversity, you know?

IDK, I just wanted more physics in here than complaining about teaching, glossed over toxic mentors, and using some quirky physics term in every other sentence. (More on that below!)

I just wanted ... more? It’s not an extremely short novel, but both the plot and the character development fell flat. The ups and downs were too fast and easy, and the placement felt off. I finished the book and wondered, “That’s it? That’s all that happened?” It just wasn’t fulfilling. The side characters aren't expanded upon, and don’t get enough pagetime. My other romance reads this year were Bellefleur's The Fiancee Farce and Mcquiston’s One Last Stop. In both of those novels, the drama was fleshed out with so much care and detail. In comparison, Love, Theoretically may mention similar social difficulties in passing, but failed to really, really show us.

Overall ... the novel was fun for being about physicists but I really don’t see myself picking up another Hazelwood book, especially considering this isn’t even a debut novel. The conventional white steminist vibe and the particular allocishetero M/F dynamic just isn’t my thing.

But perhaps a reader wanting more of a novel and its characters is a good problem to have. Never say never, I guess! I look forward to keeping tabs on what Hazelwood publishes in the future!

Now, onto the physics!

First, most physicists, as good scientists, understand that theory and experimentation are fundamentally linked. It’s true that we each are often biased towards our own methods of research, but it is quite a stretch to imagine full professors so blatantly feud against others solely because of theory vs experimentation. Regardless, I was happy to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the plot that was framed in a genre-specific, lighthearted, humorous way.

Secondly, both theory and experimentation have sources of funding that are motivated in different ways, and Hazelwood's decision to have the theorists struggle with funding cuts due to declining interest in pop culture/the general public is actually quite credible. Experimentation garners a lot more interest from the application and engineering end of society, parts that are easily fueled by capitalism.

However, I think experimentalists in general are far less likely to be mean to theorists than the reverse scenario. Dr Fatima Abdurrahman has a great video essay about that called on her YouTube channel called “Quantum Physics, Feminism, and Objective Reality: What Physicists Don’t Want You to Know About Quantum Mechanics.” Dr Fatima outlines how old white men in physics have maintained this image of unwavering scientific objectivity in the name of rigor, despite studying a field that fundamentally is barely fathomable for humans. In simpler terms: Men, even in theory, pretend to be better, smarter, and more valid as physicists despite being in an infamously iffy field. And I would have liked to see that represented. It was just really hard for me to buy narcissistic grad students mansplaining Elsie about her field, and Elsie’s righteous feminine rage, when the field in question is … physics theory? It just didn’t make sense to me, when all of my personal experiences point to the opposite.

But every cloud has a silver lining, and having a woman theorist in a physics field that’s less popsci-oriented is actually … really cool. And having her love interest be a man in experimentation … sort of subverts gender roles and conventional media expectations.

Let me explain. The reality is that when women are represented in STEM, media prefers to put them in biology, like a nurse to a doctor, a people-oriented nurturer, a mere sidekick to the real “objective” scientist—often a mathematician or an astrophysicist who is always a man. And when women are placed in physics, they are automatically assigned to observational astronomy, which is dismissed as passive and easy. (This is wildly untrue—though styles of research in astronomy has interestingly allowed a somewhat more diverse array of researchers in history. Even today, you’ll see a higher frequency of women and queer people in every astronomy department.)

I think my ideal version of this novel would be retaining Elsie in theory, while also making theorists the overall bad guys in the feud. I would love to have her talk about the unique sexism she faces as a theorist. I would kill for a scene in which Jack gets gobsmacked by how fucking good at math she really is, compared to him (instead of, like, only making fun of it like it’s easy). I would love to read about her getting a tour of his lab, and just more physics content. But maybe I’m the only one saying that, because I’m a physicist. Maybe Hazelwood simplified it all to keep the book appealing to the general masses.

Still, it all read more like a girlpower!!! chant rather than a real commitment to represent a woman in STEM. I savored every moment Elsie or George would go off about physics. I loved Elsie’s conversations with Olive, a different STEM academic. (Monica was more complicated and actually quite interesting, and I wish we could have seen more of her. Heck, I wish we had actually been given any tangible info about Jack’s mom, even.) But I genuinely felt these instances were rare. Elsie referred to being a physicist a lot (and frankly, her mind is more physics-y than any IRL physicist considering the sheer number of physics-inspired figures of speech she uses … but I excused that as silly comic relief, a quirk in Hazelwood’s writing style). But she didn’t tangibly do physics on page. It was disappointing, considering women characters in STEM is what Hazelwood is known for.

And there are physicists who love teaching—even physicists who solely want to teach. Physicists who do pedagogy research. I know the book was mainly trying to criticise the adjunctification and dismissal of physics higher education, and it’s actually quite accurate in representing that most physicists in academia would prefer not to teach. But the excecution also ends up erasing physicists who aren’t in academia just for research. And I say this especially because the validity of teaching physicists as physicists is dismissed in real life. It’s used as justification to further force all physics academics to try to juggle between both research and teaching, whether they want to or not.

Which leads us to bad mentors. I’ve had a bunch of those. As Olive pointed out in an excellent quote, “Academia is so hierarchical, you know? There are all these people who have power over you, who are supposed to guide you and help you become the best possible scientist, but . . . sometimes they don’t know what’s best. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes they have their own agenda. […] Sometimes they’re total shitbuckets who deserve to step on a pitchfork and die.” And the thing is, the novel really doesn’t show us any of that (perhaps other than in Monica). We don’t fully get to know what happened to Jack’s mom, or Olive. We are not shown what Dr L’s agenda really was. Their final confrontation was so quick, when in reality shitty mentors are often sticky and entwined with your work, hard to cut off and scarier to talk back to even after you’ve finally realized they’re toxic.

Which isn’t to say the novel is just inadequate about everything. It’s correct in how goofy physics faculty are, and how white man-dominated the field is, how students try to mansplain women profs, how theorists madly work on their computers (as an experimentalist, I could never understand), how publishing is finicky (to put it kindly), and how tenured faculty fail to understand the reality of the job market in academia today. There are certain parts (like the quote above!) where I felt incredibly seen as part of a minoritized identity group in STEM academia. It’s rare to have a book written from this PoV, and as a first I think this novel will always be special for me!

If you’re interested in reading about more fictional women physicists, I would highly recommend skimming through this list I made on GoodReads (and feel free to add more!).

And if you’d like to support memoirs and science communication books by IRL women physicists, then look to further than this other list I’ve also made. (We’re actually currently seeing a boom in these which is inanely exciting to me, so again, contributions are always welcome!)

[threecheersforinking]

Review: Boys Over Flowers

*this review will contain spoilers!*

Hi everyone! This is going to be an extremely long, unsolicited recap of all my thoughts about Boys Over Flowers. I don't know a single person in my real life who has watched this, so I'm using this blog as my space to infodump because this show has become my new hyperfixation. If anyone at all ends up reading this, I really appreciate it! But this is mostly entirely for myself lol.

As someone who is pretty deep into the shoujo anime world and just recently getting into kdramas, I have heard of this show in passing many times. Kkotboda Namja is referenced in Korean media a lot and Hana Yori Dango is lauded as a classic shoujo in the manga sphere, so I figured it might be good to watch the show just to be able to get all the references and consume a piece of shoujo history. Originally, I thought it would be a mindless watch that I might have to force myself to finish; I started off concerned about getting through 25 episodes, but in the end, I ended up wishing there were more lol.

I'm gonna be honest, when I first started watching it, I was like uhhh this is... kinda bad. especially in the beginning. But I became endeared to the quirks I originally criticized. The slow motion dramatic replay shots, the shaky camera, the questionable acting skills all are an essential part of the show itself.

In general, the story was more compelling than I was expecting. But the characters were undoubtedly the best part of the show for me. I always find myself getting attached to media where characters are the focus, and I believe that's why I enjoyed this so much. So I am going to go into each character a bit more in depth.

Thoughts on Jandi

As far as shoujo protagonists go, Jandi is pretty quintessential and standard. She is poor, she is hardworking, she is kind. We've all seen this before. But I always liked her, and she grew on me even more as the series went on. She has the ever-present shoujo 'hard working poor girl' trait, but the show took that to a more serious level than I was expecting. The arc where she had to essentially raise her little bother by herself forced her to mature so quickly, which felt very realistic to me.

I also really loved how much of a 'girl's girl' she was; as far as earlier episodes go, the episode that focused on Minji was one of my favorites. I loved how she called out those popular girls on their hypocrisy for criticizing Minji's plastic surgery when they've all had surgery themselves. She also was such a good friend to both Minji and Gaeul and a very strong, assertive person.

As far as her indecisiveness goes, that is kind of a requirement for being a shoujo protagonist in a love triangle, but it did still get on my nerves even though I was fully anticipating it.

Thoughts on F4 (ranked in order of how much I liked them)

Yijung

Yijung was my favorite F4 boy by far. I just thought he had the most interesting and complex backstory. His struggle with his parents was very humanizing and the way he handled it so poorly felt like a realistic response to that kind of trauma. Ultimately, he made bad choices, but in an understanding and forgivable way that made him complex, not unlikeable (unlike someone else... but more on that later).

Jihoo

Jihoo was another character I grew to be very fond of. I was interested in his backstory a lot too, and although we knew from the beginning that he experienced a tragic loss as a child, learning that he carried the guilt of thinking he killed his family for 15 years really gave extra context to his stoicness and sadness. His reunion arc with his grandfather brought me to tears several times, and it really gave his character a lot more depth. My biggest issue with Jihoo is that I felt like he was almost too perfect sometimes; it's why I liked the grandfather reunion arc so much, I thought it gave him some much needed flaws.

Junpyo

Speaking of flaws, look who it is! Obviously, I have a lot of conflicted feelings on Junpyo. As someone who is actually very open minded about redemption arcs, I didn't have too much of an issue with him being a bully at the beginning, but his, truthfully, abusive tendencies were such a turn off and felt completely unnecessary. Unlike Yijung, Junpyo's trauma/bad choices made him extremely unlikable and nearly unforgivable. The constant physical violence against completely innocent people and his unwillingness to listen to Jandi explain herself were hard to watch, knowing that he's one of the romantic leads that we're supposed to be rooting for. I also felt like until the final arc, any character development he had gotten just kept undoing itself every time he found a new thing to get angry about. Despite all this, I enjoyed what his character became towards the end of the story. I just wish it wasn't such a painful and unnecessary journey for him to finally become that way.

Woobin

Woobin was kind of a disappointing character in general; I can only assume that he was a bigger character in the manga and they just didn't have time to really develop him in the show, because that's pretty much the only valid explanation for his lack of substance. At the beginning of the show, Yijung and Woobin got less screentime than Junpyo/Jihoo did, but as Yijung started to get more development, Woobin became even more noticeably lacking. They threw in that one scene where he was stressing over being the son of a mafia boss or something (which felt completely out of left field by the way) but because it was the only scene where he was given any backstory it might as well not have existed at all. Overall, he was nice to Jandi and a good friend and I enjoyed him in all the F4 group scenes, I just wish he was a bit more of a fully developed character.

Other Characters

Before I get into the friend characters, I wanted to say that something I really loved about this show was how genuinely kind all the older female characters were to Jandi. For some reason I was expecting most of them to secretly be evil or mean but they were all extremely kindhearted and helpful people, which just made the viewing experience better. Even Minji, who was literally the only one who actually did turn out mean, was able to reconcile with Jandi and end their friendship on a neutral/positive note.

Gaeul

I loved Gaeul from the start, I thought she was so adorable and the perfect best friend character for a shoujo. I honestly wasn't even expecting her to be a fully fleshed-out secondary character in the show, I thought she would just be Jandi's coworker who she gossiped with on occasion. But the fact that she became such a major player in the story made me very happy. I also really loved her with Yijung and was practically screaming at the screen for them to get together, but more on that later.

Jaekyung

Jaekyung was interesting. She was a little ditzy and out of touch, but extremely kindhearted despite her wealthy background. I think her introduction into the show, which subsequently threw a curveball into the relationship of Jandi x Junpyo, came at a good time. I found it refreshing that she was always nice and friendly to Jandi, but also didn't want to give up on Junpyo just because Jandi liked him. My biggest issue with Jaekyung was that her concession at the end of the wedding felt a little out of left field, considering how adamant she had been previously about her pursuit of Junpyo. But based on the nature of her personality, I can see that being believable. I also wish she made another appearance after the wedding arc was over, but we didn't see her again after that :(

Junhee

Junhee was yet another character that I expected to be kind of bitchy/mean but who turned out to be extremely cool and nice. The literal only thing that bothered me about her was that I couldn't fathom how she and Junpyo were supposedly raised in the same home but turned out so different, lol. I guess it's a testament to how girls vs. boys were treated in their patriarchal household, but still jarring.

The Romance

I want to start off by saying that I'm someone who is ok with love triangles. I think there's a lot of people who are tired of them and don't like them, but I am okay with it so long as it's interesting.

That being said, when it comes to love triangles I think a lot of people conflate the character they like better with the character the protagonist very clearly wants more. To me (and to most people I'd assume) Jihoo was just overwhelmingly the better choice. I'd go as far as to say he's the objectively better choice. He was always a million times more kind and thoughtful than Junpyo and truly loved Jandi for almost the entire show. However, I could never fully see him being endgame because Jandi was simply more focused on Junpyo and had more history with him.

I know this is a hot take, but I actually really enjoy the 'bickering couple' trope. I think a little back and forth roasting of each other is fun and entertaining! But bickering is not the same thing as genuine cruelty and one sided bullying. Which is pretty much what was happening at the beginning of the story. However, by the time Junpyo finally mellowed out, I really grew to love his dynamic with Jandi. The teasing was just that; teasing, and not bullying anymore. I just wish there was about 200% more of that dynamic and 100% less of whatever the hell they were doing in the first 2/3rds of the show.

As for couples outside of the main trio, I was the BIGGEST Gaeul/Yijung shipper from the minute they first interacted. I cared way more about them than the main love triangle and was on the edge of my seat whenever they showed up. My biggest criticism of them though is that it took WAY too long. And believe me, I can handle a slow burn, but at a certain point it felt so dragged out that I almost stopped caring (it wasn't confirmed canon until the literal last 10 minutes of the whole show lol). Of course, I was still pleased, but man! Give me a break.

The Show In General

I think it became obvious to me early on that this is like, the mother of all shoujos. Most of the common shoujo tropes I mentioned in this review probably either originated or were popularized by both this show and the original manga. It really set a standard and became iconic, despite its many flaws.

(Side note, I hope I'm not in the wrong for still calling this kdrama a shoujo, I think it being based on a shoujo manga makes it a fair enough label but correct me if I'm wrong)

I also just started reading the manga and wow, they uh... toned some stuff down for the show didn't they? I do like it though, it's different. But I can definitely see why some changes were made from the manga to the show. So far out of all the characters, Jihoo and Junpyo's manga versions feel the most different from their kdrama equivalents, which is a bit surprising as they are the main characters. But we'll have to see if that changes as I get further in.

I also am aware of the several other adaptations of Hana Yori Dango such as the Japanese drama and Meteor Garden (although I am put off by the fact that it's 50+ episodes?? are they an hour long too? if so... I'm not sure about that one) but I knew Boys Over Flowers/Kkotboda Namja was the one I wanted to start with due to its popularity, and I think that was a good choice.

This is a 15 year old show but I know there is still somewhat of an active fanbase for it on here so if you're a hardcore Hana Yori Dango stan please go easy on me! These are just my opinions so take them with a grain of salt.

Anyway, if anyone ended up reading this to the end thank you for reading. I'm going to be posting more kdrama reviews on this blog that I promise will be way shorter. Bye!

-threecheersforinking

[nohrianseneschal]

Paradise Kiss: A Lesson on Dreams and Being Happy (heavy spoilers) Part 1

Thanks to this totally random tweet about anime endings, I'm reminded of an old shoujo manga flame of mine from the early 2000s: Paradise Kiss, nicknamed ParaKiss by its mangaka and fans. In stereotypical Ai Yazawa fashion (baddum tss), this manga revolves around a hopelessly flawed yet peak relatable girl undergoing the trials and tribulations of self-discovery. It just so happens that the setting takes place in a generic, average-sized town in Japan, and it just so happens that this town is home to an eclectic ensemble cast of aspiring fashionistas and designers. And it also just so happens that this cast is at a crossroads: their 3rd year in high school. Yukari was initially on the conventional path of graduating with top marks and entering into a prestigious university. By the time we get to the 2nd chapter of the manga, we see Yukari cast all her mother's dreams aside to become a model in the cutthroat fashion industry.

We begin with our protagonist Yukari, who is enrolled in an elite private high school. She spends her days studying for college entrance exams, but early on, we discover that her hard work is very extrinsically motivated. Specifically, her mother has had an iron-clad grip on her life, and if not for a chance encounter on the street, Yukari would've continued on in this way. Living without living. Doing things that don't make her happy or give her any meaning -- a shell for others' aspirations and desires.

As I said, a chance encounter brings her to the hole-in-the-wall atelier, which was an antique bar rennovated into an... well, atelier for fashionistas attending the local art school. Yukari has been scouted by one of the students to model for their upcoming fashion show in the school's Culture Festival. Although she vehemently opposes the idea at first, Yukari decides to model for them, after witnessing firsthand the extent of their conviction and earnestness of their efforts.

I am deliberately downplaying George's role in here, because I do think future readers should get to know George (the manga's romantic lead and 90s toxic boy) at their own pace and through Yukari's perspective. Describing him would remove some of the magic that is necessary to experience through Yukari's besotted eyes, and Yazawa does a great job staging the cognitive dissonance Yukari herself feels when she's around George. What you should know right away is that George is the de facto leader of the Atelier group and designer behind the label Paradise Kiss. It is his word that becomes the final voice in asking Yukari to model, and it is his intoxicating presence that drives her to join them.

All this to say, that there's a reason -- I think -- that ParaKiss, out of many other Shoujo or even Shounen romances of the 2000s, is still the only one being reprinted. Its 20th-anniversary edition was reprinted back in 2019. In the wake of Nana's permanent hiatus (Yazawa's more popular manga), ParaKiss's fandom is alive and well. More and more people are discovering it, thanks to the reductively short anime adaptation making its way to streaming services. The promise of a (very satisfying) conclusion provides a healing balm of sorts for deluded Nana fans, and the story in its entirety holds its own as a romance masterpiece. The art style, the fashion, the romance, and the writing are all top scorers, but something about ParaKiss remains startlingly unique despite more than 20 years passing us by. Very few shoujo manga dare to try what Yazawa has done with this story, and very few shoujo manga do it so seamlessly -- devoid of the mandatory witticisms and marvelizations so common in today's media. ParaKiss is honest. Brutally honest. Yukari's inner monologues and expressions anticipate what the audience is thinking, not because she's so clever but because we can all relate to her. We've all made that mistake we can't help making. We've all watched ourselves undergo the consequences of our stupid actions, with nothing but self-pity to help us weather the storm. And all of us have known the beauty of believing the world is full of limitless possibilities, and we've tasted the bittersweet revelation that limitations do exist, and that's okay.

In other words, you don't have to be an intellect to enjoy and feel the takeaways of ParaKiss. The mangaka isn't trying to wink and nudge you into believing you're a smart consumer, because Yukari's story (or perhaps, Yukari herself) speaks of a hurt deeper than narrative conflict. Her hurt comes from one's first love, whatever or whoever it may be. First love isn't always romance (although it's a huge part of Yukari's story in ParaKiss). First love is the feeling that everything is new and ripe for discovery. First love is the disappointment that this period of discovery is finite, but you're so much stronger and better for having gone through it, brief as it may be. That is Paradise for Yukari: first love as the Edenic coming-of-age journey she needed to become who she is meant to be.

Many fans and critics agree that Paradise Kiss is a story about one's first love, and how you can have an impactful romance without it ending into a happily ever after. Of course I agree with this take. George is the 2nd protagonist, no question. His presence, actions, and personality catalyze the journey of self-discovery that Yukari finds in her last year of high school.

That said, I don't think enough attention has been paid to the other first love Yukari goes through: the world of fashion. Indeed, the story begins and ends with Yukari's time in the fashion world - her first thrills of modeling and her final, bittersweet acceptance of its inevitable end. This part of the story is so underhanded yet profoundly philosophical, I'm surprised discussions of fashion have become afterthoughts in any serious commentary of ParaKiss.

It's worth noting that Yukari doesn't exactly have insecurities directly related to her physical appearance. It's probably the most unrelatable part of her. When people comment on her beauty, she doesn't deny it, but she doesn't affirm it. We're meant to see and understand Yukari's natural beauty as a fact of her life, like the color of her hair or her height. She even brags about being able to stay skinny no matter how much she eats, which is the closest I came to hating a shoujo protagonist to be honest. Rather, her feelings of self-inadequacy stem from her immaturity, lack of style, and overall lack of self-confidence. In other words, when she starts the story believing her crush on classmate Tokumori is hopeless, she reasons, "Tokumori won't go for girls like me." Yukari doesn't mean she's too ugly for him. She means she's too inferior; too stupid; too 'uncool' for someone she perceives as the ideal. Even when she swiftly moves on to George and sets her sights on him, Yukari's feelings of worthlessness influence her behavior and decisions in the relationship, ultimately affecting how George himself treats her.

If Yukari's psyche sounds incoherent, it is and it isn't. It's realistically incoherent. Women are socially conditioned to find themselves inadequate in some way, and that self-perception is ultimately dictated by how men receive and project it back. This is the genius of ParaKiss. Whether or not you relate, this facet of Yukari's personality is an apt observation on what it means to be a woman as a high schooler, and I don't think it's an accident that prior to meeting the ParaKiss fashion team, Yukari's self-worth came entirely from her mother. For Yukari, growing up and leaving the nest means learning your place in the world in relation to men, and perhaps that's why Yukari's first love is riddled with so much pain, beauty, and joy.

In this cut-out of a panel, Yukari finally asks herself the question that must be in the fore of everyone's minds: 'What am I to George?' What is she to the man she considers the most important to her? What are we in relation to men? It takes Yukari 6 months to figure out that she doesn't need George to answer the first part of that question. By the time the series ends, Yukari is able to ask the same question without George.

These romantic pitfalls and triumphs become more meaningful when you realize this occurs in the context of breaking out into the fashion industry. Similar to Eve in Milton's Paradise Lost, Yukari looks at a mirror and discovers herself. She falls in love with that image. She falls in love with what fashion (not George!) reflects back at her -- a confident, cool woman who can don all sorts of masks and clothes.

When she asks a veteran model for advice on how to walk the runway, the model cryptically replies, "Just tell yourself you're the most beautiful woman in the world." This is a hurdle for the likes of Yukari, whose low self-esteem has prevented her from truly being alive prior to the events of the story. When she does walk down that runway, fully confident and basking in the crowd's reaction to her beauty, Yukari finally understands what it means. Telling yourself you're the most beautiful woman in the world is akin to believing yourself a woman; akin to believing yourself a woman worth existing and hogging the spotlight, without a man to justify it. Yukari might have been wearing clothes that George designed, but one can argue that the dress would not exist without Yukari. Indeed, he designed it with her face and body in mind. Yukari herself inspires the art George believes he's creating, and Yukari herself embodies and imparts the meaning of that art for the audience when she walks down the runway.

Thanks to the fashion show and Yukari's success, George himself realizes he cannot design for ready-to-wear clothing lines. Yukari too discovers that modeling isn't something she can just do. It's something she can work hard at, succeed, fail, and still enjoy. Unlike the grind of studying endlessly for exams she'll never pass, Yukari finds fulfillment in trying and failing in the fashion industry, and this self-realization lets her redefine what it means to succeed and fail, as we all come to understand by the end of the manga.

Given that Ai Yazawa studied fashion, it's no surprise that clothing, design, and the industry's connections are all important for Yukari's coming-of-age. Modeling and wearing George's clothes aren't all butterflies and roses. As we later see by the end of the manga, fashion leaves Yukari feeling dehumanized at times, which Yukari outright states in an inner monologue by calling herself a 'doll.' The liberating potential of modeling becomes a prison, in the right context. When another woman -- particularly one who rejects modeling or being a man's muse and instead aims to be a designer herself -- enters George's life, Yukari feels helpless. The autonomy she gained by modeling bites back in a mocking display of her own shallow disregard for other women's agency. Indeed, she acts vile toward Kaori (the aspiring designer in question), solely because she's threatened by how George sees her as an equal. The potential of self-fulfillment comes crashing down when the implication here is that, as his muse and model, Yukari will never be his equal.

I'm going to take a second and point out how brilliant this brief love triangle is on the part of Ai Yazawa. We are so used to shoujo protagonists who are sweet, understanding, and unfailingly good. Yukari is a surprise, to say the least. She's not afraid to be mean and flaunt her beauty to intimidate her competition, and at the same time, she's not afraid to own up to her faults and wallow in self-pity when humbled. Although George is the intermediary in the love triangle, you can also see how the fashion industry itself pits women against each other. Yukari can't measure up to Kaori, the talented and mature designer with true compassion for her peers and classmates. The culture festival led Yukari to believe that she, as their model, takes center stage, but with the show over, her status as model reduces to her one of the many cogs that prop up designers' creativity and will. If God is the designer in this paradise, then Eve is just a shell of and for his designs, just as Yukari recedes to a doll when George no longer respects her. Life, it seems, is difficult for a fashion model who seeks to affirm her existence and purpose in a world that devalues such traits in the first place.

Spoilers: George and Yukari's relationship lasts only 6 months, but Yukari's relationship with fashion lasts much longer: 10 years. In the manga's epilogue, Yukari is nearing retirement, and she mentions 'plateauing' in her career as a model. Although as a teenager she aspired to be a world class super model, her work only takes her to other cities in Japan, and she is content to end less with a bang and more like a firm sense of dignity and pride at her work.

It's also no shocker that, rather than confirm her retirement, the manga ends with an announcement of her engagement and imminent marriage to her Tokumori, her high school crush and classmate. The last panels mock the sense that first loves are more powerful than the present love they experience (which is so amazing and Part 2 will be about that), and while these lighthearted panels tell us it's a joke, you can easily see how those words apply to Yukari's love affair with fashion.

Her crush and first love spur her to 10 years of a successful career. Perhaps she never realized her ambitions of modeling in the West, but she nevertheless finds and declares herself successful. This is what first love is. You might start out believing it needs to be 'happily ever after,' but you can end it and grow and realize that 'remembered ever after' is just as good, for the role it had in your life and your growth.

Yukari isn't just telling us the story of her first love with George. She's also telling us the story of how she fell in love with herself through fashion, and how her job as a model helped her live the many lives she otherwise would've never experienced if she had stayed on her mother's preplanned course.

Fashion isn't just about the clothes, the romance, or the glamorous lifestyles. Fashion is looking back and basking in being looked at. Fashion is making meaning out of how others perceive you, and fashion can be a cruel reminder that those meanings are already preordained and predetermined. Yukari doesn't necessarily fight against that. She embraces it all and learns from it.

I'm going to stop here, because I don't think an essay about ParaKiss and first love is complete without talking about George's own implied ending and Tokumori's constant presence in the beginning, middle, and end of Yukari's story. There's still so much to say, so I'll save it for Part 2. For now, let me conclude with the argument that Paradise Kiss is so unique in so many ways. It takes on the typical rhythms and beats of a shoujo manga, but it also embraces the flaws, ugliness, and messiness of love as it manifests in romance and fashion. You can't appreciate and love ParaKiss without understanding how Yazawa carefully crafts and packages a coming-of-age story into a seemingly typical love story. To use the jargon of the trade, we come into ParaKiss believing the firm and distinct boundary separating haute couture from ready-to-wear. Fashion is both, and to fall in love with it is beautiful.

[thefloatingstone]

Hi C-puff. Since you know your manga/anime, do you have any suggestions for a person feeling nostalgic for Chobits but not looking to re-read it?

hmmmm~ 🤔

I think it depends what it is you liked about Chobits itself. A Magical Girlfriend anime (not to be confused with magical Girl anime) that I quite like but which is a little all over the place with its anime adaptations is "Oh My Goddess" or "Aah My Goddess" depending on how it's translated. it's a lot lighter than Chobits in tone, but it does have a weird mix of magical girlfriend romance... and a SEVERE interest in motorcycles. The laborious detail the manga has on its machinery is ridiculous. Fujishima Kousuke just completely indulging himself. It's great. Also it has one of the most interesting concepts for how its whole "Goddess" system works. I recommend the movie from the 2000s (which wasn't attached to any specific anime at the time) which if only in aesthetic is one of my favourite "easy to watch" anime movies. It also had a proper anime tv series made for it around 2005 I think?

For something a little grittier that really explores relationships and especially heartache a little more in depth, I'd recommend "Video Girl Ai" which is a 6 episode OVA which is based on the manga Denei Shoujo. It's far more mature (in themes, not in adult content) regarding loneliness and relationships as experienced by normal Japanese teenagers in a way that focuses on the emotional side of things. So if you need something a little less wish fulfillment and a little more personal I'd recommend it.

If you don't mind an ecchi, there is Mahoromatic: The Automatic Maiden which I still have to watch myself past the first 3 episodes, but I find the plot synopsis extremely juicy;

Mahoro Andou is a powerful combat android designed by Vesper, a secret organization protecting the world against alien invaders. Unfortunately, her remaining operational time is running short. If she continues to fight, she will shut down in about one month. However, if she chooses to avoid combat, she can live freely for over a year.

Suguru Misato is a high school boy who lives alone in a large house left behind by his late parents. Like any other boy his age, he has trouble taking care of the house on his own, so he decides to enlist the help of a maid. His problem is solved in the most unexpected way: when a couple of thugs hijack the bus he is riding, a young, beautiful girl wearing a maid outfit saves the day. It turns out that this girl is Mahoro, who has chosen to live her remaining days as Suguru's new maid.

Mahoro makes the best of her remaining time and develops bonds with Suguru and his friends during their peaceful yet lively everyday interactions. However, Mahoro is hiding her true intentions behind becoming Suguru's maid, that being that she is the one responsible for his father's death.

Again, just be aware it IS an Ecchi and as such has a lot of adult humour, however if you're familiar with the Chobits anime it's about on par with that (although the Chobits manga is not as sexually focused as the anime is). Mahoromatic is also a show created by Gainax around the same time as Chobits but before the studio had made FLCL. (it also has some INSANE sakuga in it). Just be aware you're in for a lot of anime tiddy.

Then there's DearS but I wouldn't recommend DearS because it's literally a Chobits ripoff. They have the exact same plot except DearS is even more of an ecchi than Chobits with none of the interesting meta-human commentary and more "look at my hot alien waifu who has the intelligence of a child" thing.

I see a lot of people on MAL also recommend an anime called "Plastic Memories" but I am not familiar with it myself. It's got a pretty decent score tho, and the premise seems interesting as another Android/human love story which also has the plot point of the robot girl's lifespan being on a short timer.

I hope one of those might be what you're looking for!

[kurisus]

So you love noragami we all love it any reading recs of things like it? Or that you just like?

YES!!!!!

So I have to preface this by saying there's nothing quite like Noragami. And there is nothing wrong with rereading Noragami over and over. But I still have a lot of recs that give Vibes or in general make me Feel Emotions, so here's a non-exhaustive list.

Anime/Manga:

Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. I've been saying for years that Fruits Basket is Noragami if it was a shoujo. It deals with the same cycles of abuse and an outsider who tries to break them with pure compassion that Noragami does, although it's much more of a drama than a fantasy. Just watch it and think of Yato as the Zodiac cat. I rest my case.

Fullmetal Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist) by Hiromu Arakawa. Chances are you've read or seen this already but it's objectively a masterpiece by any standard you care to use. Whether you like shounen fights, deeply emotional interpersonal relationships, political dramas about war and revolution, fantasy based on Greek myth, or anything else, FMA balances them all perfectly (another thing it has in common with Noragami). I love it so much.

Code Geass. This may seem like a wildcard pick but I rewatched Code Geass a few years ago and realized there are a lot of shared elements (like, Suzaku and Kazuma are the same guy). I may be delusional but it's hands down one of the most insane anime I've ever seen, in a good way. Like how FMA and Noragami balance a bunch of genres, Code Geass is a mecha action anime, a school slice of life, a political drama, and a Shakespearean tragedy all at the same time.

Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Again this may be one you're familiar with, but after I caught up on Part 1 of the manga I was so deeply wounded I had to start thinking about Noragami again (which is a worse idea). Chainsaw Man is much more of a Shounen™ than Noragami is, and I still maintain that the saddest parts of Chainsaw Man are like happier Noragami chapters, but it's a very good story and one that also has a lonely, cast-out protagonist who craves human affection but has no idea how to get it (and when he does, it's ripped away from him).

Durarara by Ryohgo Narita. In the anime adaptation, pretty much the entire voice cast is shared between it and Noragami (in the Japanese dub). It is a very weird story about a lot of weird people who are competing to be The Most Normal Person In Ikebukuro, a task which they all fail at spectacularly. It doesn't have much in common with Noragami aside from the voice cast but I love it so I recommend giving it a watch (or reading the light novels if you're feeling adventurous).

Link Click. This is a donghua (Chinese anime) about time travel and it steadily drives me more insane the longer I think about it. The three main characters have such lovely relationships with each other and the emotions go OUCH every time. It's a little harder to pinpoint the connection with Noragami here, but it is a story about the things people will do for love. The writing is crazy good especially considering it's not based on a novel or comic; I haven't seen an anime-original with writing this good since Code Geass.

Not a specific anime but the other week I thought about, what if Yuki Kajiura had been the composer for Noragami? Her style suits its aesthetic so well so now whenever I watch something she wrote for, I yearn.

Books:

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir. If you've looked at my blog at all in the last 2 years you'll know I am very sane over this book series. I actually made a Venn diagram comparing it to Noragami a while back, but the gist of it is that they deal with a lot of similar themes such as love, death, and the curse of immortality. It also has soooo many messy and complicated relationships and twists that leave your jaw on the floor. You can also use the worldbuilding to put your blorbos into and it's very fun for giving yourself Thoughts. For example I've done it both ways by putting the Noragami characters into the TLT universe and the TLT characters into the Noragami universe. Both are very painful.

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint by Sing-shong. I'm not done reading this yet (about 2/3 through), but the further I get the more I realize it's about all kinds of love, the same way Noragami is. The narrator forms a "party" of people in the apocalypse, and they go through life-or-death scenarios together, and the way they grow to love and care for each other is so natural and feels so earned whenever it pays off. If you want romantic relationships, queerplatonic relationships, parent/child relationships, or any other type of relationship, ORV has it. There is also a webtoon adaptation but I'm reading the novel because it's completed; the webtoon will take many more years to get there.

Miscellaneous:

The Adventure Zone: Balance. This is a DND real-play podcast and it doesn't really have anything in common with Noragami but, like Noragami, it made me feel every possible human emotion, so I recommend it. It has a slow start but it grows into something so beautiful and creative and by the end of it I was sobbing in my car. Listen to it if you can, or at least listen to the music (it gets music later on and all of it is soooo good).

Okami. This is a video game heavily inspired by Legend of Zelda and much like Noragami it's a retelling of Japanese mythology, so the storyline will def have some familiar elements. I recommend playing it for yourself (it's available on Steam for PC and pretty much every other platform you can name), but a playthrough would be good too. It's nearly 20 years old and has withstood the test of time because the creators decided to make it look like a classic Japanese painting come to life, and the gameplay involves drawing, so it's very artsy and fun (although the controls are really weird).

Thanks for the ask! Hopefully you found something new, and I'll be sure to share if I find anything new to add to this list because I am always on the prowl for Noragami-adjacent things ❤

[rei-caldombra]

Yubisaki to Renren - Anime First Impressions Review

This review is based off the first 3 episodes of the anime and does contain spoilers. Please be aware that I have not read the manga and am not spoiled. 

It's been a while since I've watched a proper Shoujo romance anime. It's not the most common anime/manga demographic for me to check out but I have watched or read quite a few of them over the years and have loved most of them. Some of my favorites are Ore Monogotari!!, Kimi ni Todoke, and Ouran High School Host Club. As of now Yubisaki to Renren absolutely has the potential to be one of my favorites. I'm loving this show!

I really enjoy learning about the experiences of different people and am not super knowledgeable in the life experiences of deaf people. I am glad we are seeing more anime like this and Ranking of Kings that help enrich people's perspectives on disabilities. To me this show is incredibly engrossing and informative towards the deaf experience. In the first 3 episodes we have already gotten so much rich characterization and details into Yuki and her experience as a deaf and mute person. It brings up a lot of detail surrounding basic interaction as a deaf person. Such as how things that could are normal and inoffensive between friends like going up to someone from behind could have a different impact on someone deaf like Yuki. Her having that feeling that people are talking about her, even if she is not reading lips or was communicated.

I have to imagine this is a relatable feeling. Most people seem to be able to pick up on that type of thing to an extent, but I imagine people with disabilities like deafness are more receptive to it. Likely out of getting more attention towards them for being different and feeling excluded. Her wondering how Rin asked for his number and having trouble doing it is very sad, because she is unable to approach it in the same manner. It's great seeing how she goes about tackling problems differently. I appreciate them bringing up how she has hearing aids but still can’t hear. I was wondering about that as I figured you would not bother to wear them if they weren’t working, but I can see how there is still value in it even if Yuki only hears noises she cannot properly understand. I imagine there could be emotional reasons for wanting to wear them as well as well. I also did not know there were separate schools dedicated to teaching the deaf and hard of hearing. I had really only thought of individual tutoring, but it makes sense proper institutions dedicated to it exist. These would provide much higher quality of education to those hard of hearing, but it’s also understandable that it would make someone feel like they are in a protective bubble. Which is how Yuki felt. Another informative detail I like is how one girl in the deaf school called to Yuki verbally, reminding the viewers that there are varieties of deafness. Some have the capacity to speak clearly, some do to the best of their ability, and some like Yuki cannot or choose not to speak at all. It’s easy for people to stick to a simple idea of disabled people, so it’s great that this show is addressing the complexities of the condition. It’s especially great that it accomplishes this by showing rather than telling. I also like when Yuki brings up how the way people sign conveys emotion outside of the words being signed. It’s very cool to learn about how body language also comes through with signing. I had not properly thought about how signing would show bodily expressions the same as any other bodily movement until I saw it here. Such as how Oushi’s signing is aggressive while Itsuomi’s is soft. Yuki can read into someone’s personality based on how they sign. Just within these first few episodes this anime is filled with rich detail that get help you understand Yuki's experiences and empathize with her. It strongly succeeds in engrossing you in Yuki's world. All of these glimpses into how deaf people communicate and intake information is very informative and interesting. This on top of the sweet nature of the show makes it a lot denser than a traditional romance. I'm greatly looking forward to learning more about the life experiences of deaf people through this show.

I also think a strength here is that it takes the experiences of deafness with great care while also using it for jokes. I like the simple miscommunication humor of her not reading lips perfectly leading to her taking something the wrong way. This fits very well and is great for adding comedy in between the dialogue.

The romance side of things is also starting off strong. Itsuomi has me swooning over here with his smooth moves.

I can see the chemistry between these characters already. Both of them are people who desire to gain new experiences. Expanding your world seems like it is a central theme of the show. I really enjoy these early interactions. They feel fairly natural, being awkward in a way that doesn't feel forced or strange. It is natural for him to not know exactly how he should act around her, where it doesn't come across as negative when he acts how he normally does. I like seeing characters' dynamics and feelings toward each other grow. They are still feeling each other out and going with the flow. This really encapsulates the early stages of falling for someone. And these interactions are just so sweet. I love Itsuomi's personality of being very curious. Just within the first few episodes I can tell he has a lot to him and really like him. The fact that he head pets her too makes this feel even more like it was made for me. Watching these episodes really warmed my heart. I'm very interested in seeing the overarching theme of expanding your world be explored as the story continues.

I also really like the other two main characters so far, Oushi and Rin. Oushi seems like he will be the rough person who acts out of strong care. I like his interactions with Yuki, their catty rapport being funny while laying the groundwork of his overprotective behavior having the effect of being demeaning. I like this set up so far, feeling positive that there will be good execution for this issue. Rin feels like a good supportive friend. Her also having a crush at the same time as Yuki adds a lot to their interactions and gives her more to do than just be a wingwoman. I look forward to seeing how her relationships develop and if each of their crushes will cause any conflicts with each other in the future.

From my perspective the anime production seems to be very respectful and taking great care to portray the manga as great as possible. This is primarily shown through the animation quality for the signing. It comes across very smooth and has the finer movements portrayed well. Stiff animation would greatly harm the signing coming across properly in animation. I cannot speak for any removed or added detail compared to the manga, but I feel that the production truly believes in the importance of the visuals. And this elevates the show greatly.

I hope this show continues to be a sweet romance while getting into the serious issues it is setting up. I hope we get a lot of great growth for these characters and for the character interactions to continue feeling natural, rather than leading to forced melodrama. At the very least if it continues to be rich and enlightening, I will continue to love this show. Thanks for reading! I hope I talked about this topic well, please let me know if I came across negatively at all.

[psychewritesbs]

hi! i didnt have much success when looking through ur blog to see if uve addressed this alrdy so apologies if u have.

i was curious to know ur thoughts on jjk's portrayals of gender, esp women/femininity. if u have particular insight from a psych or philosophy bg, id be interested in hearing that (warning, i have a v feminist critique lens)

ik u love gege's writing 😅 but his handle on female characters/femininity has given me such a difficult relationship w jjk, and its v difficult to have discourse on it. on one hand, we're introduced to sm interesting realistic women, tbh i actually never stanned a woman in manga before jjk. but imo it cant be denied that gege is a sexist writer. despite how realistic jjk women r theyre all .. halfwritten? i cant think of a single one who isnt underwritten, not fully explored, not utilized substantially in the plot, etc. and there r sm ex's of extremely minor male characters in jjk who r given more thematic relevance than frequently recurring women that just underscores that gender gap imo

this isnt solely a gege problem ik but what bothers me in particular about jjk vs other mangas is how gege addresses strength, even in the light of nb/androgynous characters, and how it feels as if gege's def of strength is inherently masculine? even despite going so far as to give us a philosophical battle shonen w diverse reps of gender and emphasizing individuality that encompasses both femme/masc traits

how a reader interprets whether a jjk woman is strong or not is obv subjective. like, i think shoko is strong but shes not depicted as such bc she doesnt have a combative technique whereas yuki maki nobara or mei r depicted as "strong" bc of their battle abilities. but it also feels as if those women r strong bc they take on "masculine" traits/mindsets whereas there r no clear depictions of "femininity" making women or men stronger. even utahime who falls into v classic shoujo girl tropes is seen as weak despite teaching her students v proficientally in battle strategy (mechamaru v mahito is a good ex of that imo), as compared to how gojo teaches his (ie dumping them into missions for experience). but thats not what gege ever chooses to highlight

femininity also doesnt even seem to make men/nb characters stronger. the ex's i can think of r naoya as a vagina (lmao), geto as a mother to curses, yuta as highly attuned to his emotions, kenjaku as yuji's mother -- those r things that support these (mostly) men's strong sense of individuality but like, those arent really the things that lend those characters their "strength", u know? like geges just sprinkling in androgyny for the spice 🧐

what is feminine vs masculine, how an individual embodies those traits in their gender identity r already complex topics. im obv generalizing a lot here, but i just, idk despite how many other nuanced philosophies gege explores, what is strong/desirable in jjk still falls down to all-out fighting abilities/physical prowess, emotional detachment, isolation, extremism, etc -- all things we harp on toxic masculinity for. and even when he critiques that, theres no cogent counter solution/way to be strong that gege provides, much less one that incorporates "femininity" and women

maybe im just asking for too much from gege after having read so many great representations of women and gender by female (and male) mangakas/writers but.. i shouldnt be 🙄 he can utilize his female characters more imo, esp when he can clearly set them up so well. and im sure theres things ive misread about jjk and its portrayal of femininity, theres plenty of holes in my thoughts ^^ anyways, this is obv not a great topic to bring up in a fandom that is so polarized between dudebros and women w unaddressed internalized misogyny.. so i welcome any and all thoughts and interpretations on ur end! (also omg im rlly sorry this got so long)

I love you feminist anon, if I may call you that lol, I just always name my anons 😂. I am so grateful that you sent this.

I feel like you've very eloquently explained the deeper reason as to why I personally can't relate to the female characters in jjk. If I'm honest, I like them and think they are fun and good enough representations or attempts at depicting the archetypes that rule their personalities.

As you say, however, some of them remain rather superficial and underutilized... and please forgive me anyone who loves them, but some of them feel like they are basically dudes wearing skirts.

No offense to dudes who wear skirts or people who like men who wear skirts or anyone for that matter. It's just that, as a personal preference, I like female characters that wear skirts, pants, leggings, etc and have equal amounts of masculine and feminine energy.

So, even if I find they are good enough, I've never necessarily loved jjk female characters, because, as you also say, I've read/seen one too many amazing and iconic female characters by other authors...

And it's not like I think you're asking for too much from Gege in wanting better female characters, it's just that, as you also said, I like his writing and I read jjk precisely because of what it's doing for my masculine psyche. Like... quite literally.

So perhaps I'm more forgiving than you are because of it? Because in all reality, there are female character moments in other manga that I have to give the bombastic side eye to, and jjk isn't one of them.

Let's taco'bout it more under the cut.

So, that said, I have to admit that you might not find a lot of "feminist oriented" content in my blog because my feminist lens is reserved for dealing with lame dudebros in my real life, and also, I honestly do not know how to wear the lens on the same level of depth as you do.

Also, since my blog's lens is depth psych, I very much focus on femininity and masculinity as psychological qualities that exist on opposite ends of a continuum regardless of biological gender. You'll see me refer to femininity and masculinity like this throughout my answer.

So because of this, I'm coming at the whole issue from a slightly different angle than you are. The way I see it, I think the way the jjk female characters are written and thematically utilized (basically everything you said), ultimately comes back to how Gege's exploration of femininity is limited by his own sense of self, and very much likely biased by the sociocultural landscape he grew up in.

I don't know how much you know about Japan, but Japan has one foot in the future, and one foot in the past...

And like... ok I'm totally oversimplifying the whole thing. All I'm saying is... Gege is a man who grew up in a man's world, sharing his view of the world through jjk, which is a story about initiation of the male psyche that is published in a magazine for young boys.

Do you see the pattern there?

So If you feel like his female characters are underutilized and underexplored, and that thematically jjk focuses way too much on masculinity and masculine definitions of strength at the expense of the feminine archetypes he does present (like Naoya as a vagina LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL)... well... to me, we're basically looking at the limits of his own relationship to his femininity, which, this relationship is in turn an imperative precursor for psychospiritual development in depth psych. More of this in a bit.

Anyways, that's my anticlimactic reasoning for why I am more forgiving about the issue than you are. To be honest, I've been so consumed exploring my masculine psyche through jjk (because personally my feminine psyche is more developed in certain aspects) that I just never focus on the female characters (that is not to mention what I shared earlier).

ANYWAYS, I fucking love what you wrote about Gege's exploration on power from a masculine perspective because you're 100% spot on. What I'll say to that is that, to me, from a depth psych perspective, that's kind of the whole point.

I invite you to look at it from this other level of perspective (in addition to the whole "Gege's psych is a product of his upbringing"): the whole idea of individuality and focusing on the sense of self as a measure of "The Strongest" is being shown as an incomplete part of the equation...

... that leaves "the strongest" ultimately feeling dissatisfied.

This is a sentiment echoed by several characters because ego strength (masculine definitions of strength) is ultimately an unbalanced measure of strength precisely because it ignores feminine values and measures of strength.

Who knows where Gege is taking jjk at this point, but I will admit I am hoping he is going to explore this in more depth because, central to Jungian thought and depth psych is the idea of the Buddhist middle path and union of opposites.

In Jungian psych this means that, when you have an unbalanced ego attitude like that, something has to give so that the pendulum swings in the opposite direction, which gives the ego the experiences it needs to integrate the "opposite" attitude. This ultimately results in a more holistic and balanced perspective for the ego.

That to say that I'm wondering if Gege is going to make the pendulum swing in the opposite direction with the whole "individuality" idea since self-preservation is a "masculine" trait. Again, psychologically, it's all about balance, and right now, the story is out of balance in favor of the masculine traits you mention.

But... to bring it back to Gege's possible limitations around his perception of femininity and how developing a healthy relationship to his anima (femininity) is a precursor for psychospiritual development... what if, on a meta level, jjk is depicting part of Gege's journey towards integrating and deepening his relationship to his femininity and what you're seeing is the beginning of that journey?

Hint hint Tsumiki! maybe I'll write about it someday

This is the thing... In depth psychology, more specifically what is called "the psychology of fairy tales", fairy tales and myths are stories that depict the thinking patterns of a peoples through metaphor and symbol. The characters in these myths and stories are thus characters playing out dramas in our own psyches. So basically, think of jjk as an objective exploration of Gege's subjectiveness (psyche).

Admittedly, even if the pendulum swings in the other direction (more feminine definitions of strength), you might find that his exploration is rather shallow or that it falls short of your expectations for what you'd like to see from a feminist perspective. And you wouldn't be wrong for it, it's just that Gege is probably not on the same level of understanding that you have about femininity because he's, like you and I, a human on a journey of self understanding and growth reflecting on how his environment has shaped who he is.

The same goes for women with internalized misogyny. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know, and coming to an understanding of it is a process that doesn't take place overnight.

So I think the only part I'll disagree with is that Gege is a sexist writer. But that's perhaps because I'm being a bit too technical in what sexist means? i.e. masc supremacy or hating women and perpetuating stereotypes. I think that rather than being sexist, his unconscious biases are showing, which is why someone like you can pick them out.

I do understand where you're coming from though, and admittedly perhaps I am being too forgiving of him.

Last thing I'll say is that I've said a couple of times that wanting for jjk to have these iconic female characters feels like an exercise in futility. In retrospect, I now understand that it's not that anyone shouldn't want for jjk to have iconic female characters, but that doesn't change the fact that jjk will probably remain the wrong manga to look for them, and that's something to make peace with because it is what it is.

So, here's to hoping we get a chance to see a deeper representation of feminine values in jjk or Gege's next manga. Because, if he's done such beautiful work with the masculine psyche, like you, I'd be curious to see what he makes of a deeper exploration of the feminine psyche.

Between you and I, I'd actually love reading a proper battle bl from Gege. And I mean proper. Like... gays so canon that even the dudebros can't deny it.

ANYWAYS... giiiiiiiirl what an ask 😮‍💨. I don't think I've done it justice tbh. But hopefully I made sense? I really do love what you wrote. It was very eye opening to see this age-old argument spelled out the way you did it. So thank you again for sharing your thoughts!

If you over have any other thoughts on the topic I look forward to hearing from you!

I rambled too so... hopefully I made sense 🤣.

[kimium]

What are some manga you wish got more love and attention?

Thank you for the ask! I have so many manga to talk about. I'm also probably going to date myself with a few of my picks, but that's fine.

Manga that I wish got more love and attention

Phantom Tales of the Night by Matsuri

Without a doubt the first manga on this list is Phantom Tales of the Night. To sum up the story: we follow the Owner of an inn located in the spirit world. Spirits and humans who stumble into the realm of the spirits can stay. The only thing the Owner wants as payment are secrets. However, unlike Yuuko from XXXHolic who is benevolent, the Owner is not. While they aren't outright malicious, the owner is presented as a supernatural being that folktales would tell cautionary stories about. I highly recommend this story if you enjoyed XXXHolic's premise and Japanese foltakes/myths.

Our Dreams at Dusk by Yuhki Kamatani

This manga is a lovely LGBTQA+ slice of life series where as main protagonist Tasuku Kaname frets over being outed as gay, he meets a mysterious owner of a shop. There, he meets other people of the LGBTQA+ community going through similar dilemmas/problems. Through experiencing and learning more about the others and his identity, Tasuku learns to grows more comfortable with himself.

While the manga can tackle a few heavy topics/experiences from the LGBTQA+ community, the overall warm, slice of life element makes this manga a delightful experience. It's also a short series with four volumes!

Grand Guignol Orchestra by Kaori Yuki

While I could sit here and name every single Kaori Yuki manga I've ever read, I'm picking this one because I think the world building is unique.

In this world, there is this mysterious illness that causes people's skin to slowly harden like porcelain. They then lose their minds and become zombie-like. The only way to counter this and protect yourself is with music. Enter the Lucille and the Grand Orchestra who travels from town to town saving people.

If you haven't read any Kaori Yuki manga, know that she usually tackles dark, almost gothic topics in her manga. While I think this series is tamer than some of her other ones (see: Angel Sanctuary, The Cain Saga/Godchild), you can double check any warnings if you're curious.

Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden By Yuu Watase

If you've watched or were into late 90s early 2000s shoujo anime, then you may be familiar with Fushigi Yugi, a reverse harem isekai series. While the original series had more wide spread success, this manga is the prequel. In it, you meet Takiko, the priestess of Genbu and the first one to ever appear.

The first series is near and dear to my heart, but I enjoy Genbu more simply because I feel there is less soap-opera like drama (romantic). There certainly is romance, it is Fushigi Yugi after all, but I felt it took backstage to the challenge of Takihiko finding her seven warriors so she could summon Genbu.

As a last note, you do not need to know anything about the original series to enjoy this one, though there are many fun Easter Eggs and continuity nods present within. I want this series to have more attention so badly because I physically NEED an anime adaptation of it.

Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle by CLAMP

Now, you may be saying "But CLAMP is super popular!" and you're right. However, their most mainstream successes were Cardcaptor Sakura and Chobits (I think). Yes, Tsubasa (and its sister series XXXHolic) had anime adaptations, they didn't follow the manga/adapt long enough to get to the meat of the series. Even the OVAs only adapted some later parts of the anime and are fragmented.

I hope someday we will have a full reboot... but in the mean time I beg people to read the manga. There is nothing quite like the beautiful, fluid art of CLAMP. I adore their character designs, outfits, and the worlds present within this series. I love all the twists, turns, and characters. I still am not over the Acid Tokyo Arc and the shift in Kurogane and Fai's relationship. I want everyone to experience the full story of Tsubasa so badly it hurts me.

(I suppose in the same vein as this one, I want people to also experience XXXHolic. They are sister series and some story elements near the end assume you've read XXXHolic too.)

Dr. Stone by Riichiro Inagaki and art by Boichi

I love the anime adaptation. It's bizarrely a "comfort" anime for me and has been rewatched multiple times. I think the anime has done an amazing job adapting this series. I also think that the manga's art is stunning. I am in love with Boichi's line work: the weight, the thick/thin tapering, the panelling... it is amazing. I want more people to experience it badly.

The Promised Neverland by Kaiu Shirai and art by Posuka Demizu

In my mind the first season adaptation of this manga is nothing short of a masterpiece. The pacing, the camera angles, the lighting/colour, the sound design are all perfect. It is a shame that the second season (that actually doesn't exist in my heart) completely botched what should have been an anime masterpiece.

If you haven't experienced the manga I cannot encourage you more to read it. The artwork is breathtaking. The pacing and the tension developed in the story left me on the edge of my seat. Some of the best story beats and arcs are locked behind the pages of the manga, waiting for you to explore it. I cannot encourage enough people to go read this manga. Maybe, we can get a reboot and give this series the justice it deserves. Until then, I highly recommend this manga.

And there you have it, friend! I hope you like my list! Let me know what you think!!!

[loversgothic]

What's princess tutu??

OH BOY YOUVE OPENED THE FLOOD GATES NOW LET ME TELL U ABT MY FAVORITE SHOW, PRINCESS TUTU (take 2 bc i lost my old writing abt this.)

I think it’s a bit funny this is one of my OTHER obsessions other than Ultrakill considering how different they are, but eh. I can’t guarantee this will be everyone’s cup of tea. 

Princess Tutu is an anime released in 2002 (it had its 20 year anniversary recently :D) and is somewhat well-known (but also kinda not..) among fans of mahou shoujo. It has only two seasons and is one of my favorite animes ever. It also has a manga series that was released I think alongside it however its story is different from the anime and I hear it isn’t as good as the anime. While it is not action-packed or full of bright colors it tells a story that resonates with me so deeply and made me rethink what makes a good story. It has a very soft and delicate look to it, and while it can get very fucking dark it can be very sweet and cute. It also inspired my love of ballet and returned a love of classical music to me that I had lost, and is what inspired my Ultradanse AU in MANY fucking ways. My partner Valentine is the one who showed it to me and it changed me fundamentally, and I showed it to Dex and it ruined his life (positively). So now I hope by dumping about this, it interests you in watching it!

VERY LONG WRITING UNDER THE CUT. I AM SO SORRY.

The story follows the heroine Duck, and three other characters named Fakir, Rue and Mytho. It takes place in Gold Crown Town, a place where fairytales become reality. However, Gold Crown Town is only like this because it is under the influence of Drosselmeyer, an author of immense power who died before he could finish writing his story The Prince and the Raven and is now using the town and its residents to orchestrate his story to give it a conclusion.The Prince and the Raven from the book escape their story and come into reality, and to seal the Raven away he shatters his heart into shards that scatter themselves across the town. He succeeds, but the Prince is now without emotion or feeling, barely able to think for himself. He now studies dance at Gold Crown Academy, where the other three main characters study as well.

Drosselmeyer has given the main four different character roles, each one meant to end in their demise or a tragic end. They’re meant to play the roles, submit to the fate of the character, and fully believe that they were that character from the beginning even if that wasn’t true. Drosselmeyer may or may not have influenced and altered their histories and memories, and probably altered their feelings as well so it can be brought into question how much is under Drosselmeyer’s influences.

Drosselmeyer wants this story to end in tragedy, to end in sadness, as to him that would be the best ending. The characters within it though are very complex people, and rather than to succumb to their fates, everyone is trying to escape it. Princess Tutu plays a lot with defying destiny.

Duck plays the role of Princess Tutu. While the title of the role she plays is the title of the series, in Drosselmeyer’s story and in his plans, Princess Tutu is a minor character who is only meant to return the Prince’s heart shards to him, confess her love and then immediately die. It’s a cruel fate, as Duck wants nothing more than to do the right thing and help the prince and others by returning his shards to him where they belong so he may feel and think for himself again. Being Princess Tutu is conflicting for her, because it doesn’t just affect her fate and others but if she wasn’t Princess Tutu she would no longer be able to dance so exquisitely as she wants. Not being Princess Tutu means a lot of things for her, it also means she could forfeit her ability to be a girl. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention? Duck is not even a human girl. She was born a duck and ends the story as a duck. She’s not particularly skilled in much and isn’t very special at all. And yet, what makes her so great is her kindness and resilience. You don’t have to be particularly skilled or perfect at anything to change things or be loved, it’s okay to be average or “just a duck.” It’s fine to be flawed, you can still move someone's heart and change your fate.

Rue plays the role of Princess Kraehe, I don’t think I can really call her an antagonist as she isn’t really one to me. Princess Kraehe is the daughter of the Raven, and she desires the prince and actively works against Princess Tutu to stop him from regaining his heart shards, or just to mess with the process and use it to further her goals. However, Rue makes me SO FUCKING SAD. The Raven leads Rue to believe Mytho is the only one who’d be able to love someone as ugly as her, and only believes she is ugly because she is human in appearance instead of a bird. He gives her this insecurity and desperation that makes her easy to manipulate as he plans to “help” her secure the prince for herself. But she really does love Mytho, and has loved him for all her life. I wish I could go on and on about her, she’s one of my favorite characters ever and she makes me CRY. SHEEE ONLY WANTED TO BE LOVED THATS ALL SHE WANTED AAGGHGHHH

Fakir plays the role of the Prince’s knight, and while I thought he was the antagonist when I first watched the way he develops over the course of the story really makes that idea fade fast. Hell, I even forgot I hated him when I first watched, and now he’s on my top 10 favorite emo boys. He seems like a total dickweed at first and has some.. Kinda vaguely gay scenes with Mytho at the beginning, but he’s far more than that. He admires Mytho and when he was younger, swore he wanted to be Mytho’s knight to protect him, and doesn’t want Mytho to get hurt. Having emotions means he’s susceptible to getting hurt, but there’s more to that. Fakir, playing the role of the knight and believing in his fate, he fears that fate and what is to befall him. Similar to Princess Tutu, he is also destined to die, to be sliced through the chest in battle. He was even born with a birthmark that resembles a scar across his chest. If Mytho has his heart shards returned to him, the story goes into motion, and the closer he gets to his fate. He wants to protect Mytho and keep him safe, but he also doesn’t want to die.While everyone plays a very important role in the story’s finale, he plays a very big one howweeever I don’t wanna spoil what that is or some abilities he has. :]

Mytho, my dear sweet boy and his fucked up haircut, is the prince. He doesn’t play a role, he IS the prince from the story. He exists as this heroic figure that is meant to be perfect, and he has a desire to protect and save others. For most of the story though he lacks his emotions and gains them back slowly, but kinda just gets get pushed and dragged around by Rue and Fakir who are both, for different selfish kinds of love and in different ways, keep him from regaining feelings and dictating what he does. Maybe I’m silly for this interpretation, but he is kind of used like a tool or a doll sometimes rather than a person. Regaining his emotions can hurt him in more ways than one and yet he still wants all of his emotions back. He kind of goes from holding no opinions or thoughts of his own at all to forming ones can be conflicting in the moment. He also gets hurt when Kraehe taints a heart shard with raven’s blood which gives him a touch of evil and flaws he did not begin with. I don’t think he gets the same amount of a transformation of character as the other three, but in the end when his emotions are regained he becomes a bit of an imperfect prince.

I love the characters, a lot. A totally normal amount. BUT. I gotta say, Princess Tutu has some of the prettiest but also the coolest scenes, and they’re good art inspiration for me. I really gotta go out of my way to clip my favorite things, because some of my favorite things haven’t been clipped and put on Youtube somewhere. Here’s some gifs from the series that I like

okay thanks for hearing me ramble have a nice day

[charlie-and-brown]

When I read the first few chapters of Naruto, it occurred to me. If Sakura is a not female character of Naruto, would she successfully land Sasuke in that manga?

Well, it depends on the person she pursues.

There is one successful shoujo manga called Mirmo de Pon!, giving some vibes of the whole dynamic.

As you can see, it’s an anime about the bond building of human and muglox (like fairies with no winds). The love story of Kaede Minami and Setsu Yuuki is the start of everything.

The anime takes four seasons for Setsu Yuuki to fall in love with Kaede. Of course, most of the stories are about Kaede and her fairy, Mirmo, bonding and saving the world. Yeah, that’s shoujo manga. The canon Manga is not that ambitious but I like anime better. Manga is too shoujo.

The Anime tries to make the love between them realistic. Setsu wants to be a novelist and he reads everyday to broaden his views. He also studies well and is good at sports.(Sound like someone we know in Naruto, right?)

Kaede is not smart. She is not good at schools and she is shy, liking Setsu for a year without saying a word to him. Although she is nice to his classmates, that’s it. No other good qualities could be found.

In the first episode, her rival, Azumi Hidaka, is beautiful, bold and brave. She likes Setsu in the first sight and starts to pursue him boldly.

Kaede feels small but then Mirumo comes to her world. The fairy inspires her to stop being lazy and fantasizing her loved one. She needs to do things on her own or it’s meaningless.

Then, she starts to change. She starts to make moves, understand Setsu’s dream and support him in her ways, which include her trying to read the books he likes. During the process, she does anger him for some times, but as a future novelist, this boy has seen her true nature and starts to fall for her.

In the final season, Kaede experiences heartbreak from loving Setsu, but she realizes that she just wants him to be happy. If he is happy, then everything is fine. Heartbreak is a part of loving him and she doesn’t want to let the memories with him to go.

That’s how you writes Shoujo anime. (Hn…)

I love this series very much. It makes it realistic. If women don’t have big dreams and just want to be with her men, that’s okay. They could support them to pursue their dreams with full hearts and try to understand them in their ways. They could care for them whenever they need love and passions.

For Sakura, I think she is more like Azumi Hidaka. She just likes Setsu for some qualities he has and igores bad sides. If she can have him, she doesn’t care whether he is happy or not at that moment. She focuses on herself more and she really is more book-smart than Kaede. She is a model from times to times.

It’s two kinds of love and that’s totally fine. I do root for Kaede but if Azumi wins, I am fine. She is an elite in the real world and there is some men who do like that kind of dynamic. Unfortunately, Setsu isn’t and he wants someone who cares for him and others, who puts everyone before herself and devote to others’ happiness like it’s her own.

Does it sound familiar? If I am not wrong, I think Kishmoto is planning something. The dynamic in Mirumo de Pon! Is common in shoujo manga from 1990 to 2010.

[nflstreetsanimereviews]

Spring 2023 Anime First Impressions

Below is a list of eight anime that I am watching this season, and my impressions of them so far. I'd also like to say I'm watching the second season of Mahoyome, but I don't think it's necessary to write about it, considering it's a sequel.

Oshi no Ko

To say that Oshi no Ko is the anime to watch this season would be an understatement. The first episode, which has an extended runtime of 82 minutes, is quite possibly one of the best first episodes of an anime that I’ve ever seen. Of course, with around four times the time to air–Oshi no Ko had to justify its feature-length first episode. If it was just average, then what was the point? Thankfully, Oshi no Ko more than justifies the dramatic entrance. The sky-high average rating (89%), while a good omen, seemed like a bit much considering the show just started, but after finally watching it, I can understand why someone would rate it that high. I’m saving my rating until the anime finishes however.

The long run time is only part of why Oshi no Ko was so well received. The stylistic choices (a part brought over by the manga) set it apart from the onset. It really captures the vibe of what an ‘idol’ idealistically is. Considering that Hoshino Ai is the ideal idol, it’s a perfect match. Art isn’t what the only thing that Oshi no Ko has going for it. The story contained within the first episode is a whirlwind. It’s astounding that Oshi no Ko can contain so many various themes and time skips and still maintain to be gripping. It’s not easy for a show to be compelling while essentially being Rugrats at the same time. Oshi no Ko also ‘keeps it real’ in relation to the entertainment industry, and isn’t afraid to show the dark side of fandom. Wrap it all up together, and you have one the best first episodes to an anime in recent memory. Oshi no Ko is from the same mangaka that wrote Kaguya-sama: Love is War–I never got into Kaguya-sama, but Oshi no Ko had me drawn in within the first twenty minutes.

The synopsis for Oshi no Ko does it no favors–I had no idea what the show was going to be about from reading it, which, if you think about it, was actually a good thing. Maybe I’m just a moron. If you really care, you can read it here. As for the time being, it seems that the story has calmed down in the sense that time skips aren’t going to happen as frequently. I don’t know really since I’m an anime-only. With that comes the inevitable coming back down to earth, which is not all that surprising considering that not every episode can have the budget and runtime the first episode did. This isn’t Band of Brothers unfortunately. That being said, the fact that I was spoiled on the ending of the first episode and it still managing to be something that upset me says a lot about the quality of Oshi no Ko. If I had to pick one anime this season to watch, it would be this. It’s the only anime this season that I like enough to pick up the manga.

Skip to Loafer (Skip and Loafer)

Mitsumi Iwakura is born to lead!...no wait, sorry, that sounds too presumptuous…Mitsumi Iwakura wants to lead the charge to make the world a better place…or at least her dinky rural hometown that doesn’t even have a train station. Mitsumi is already a straight-A student, but being from rural Japan, she needs to move to Tokyo if she wants any chance of achieving her goals. Before she attends Tokyo University and becomes a politician/bureaucrat, she moves to Tokyo to go to high school.

On her first day, she gets lost on her way to school in the Tokyo subway system. Being not accustomed to ‘city life’, her only saving grace is Sousuke Shima, fellow classmate, who is late as well. He offers to show her the way to their school, which is the beginning of their rather unlikely friendship.

Shima, who’s a former child actor and has the ‘aloof shoujo male lead’ thing down pat, finds comfort in being friends with someone like Mitsumi–someone who’s good-natured, albeit being very naive and a bit of a square as well. Their friendship, while seemingly unlikely, isn’t hamfisted in any sense. Skip and Loafer is a coming-of-age story that has left a smile on most viewers' faces, mine included. It’s an overused word, but Skip and Loafer has been genuinely wholesome so far, which is good since I don’t know if Mitsumi could handle being in a more melodramatic show. The anime sites seem to compare this to Kimi ni Todoke, which I understand at first glance–they’re both similar shows, but they aren’t clones. Mitsumi is a book-smart dunce–you know, like most teenagers that aspire to a future in politics. However, unlike most teenagers that aspire to a future in politics, Mitsumi is a good person, which is why someone like Shima and many others at Mitsumi’s new high school are friends with her. Skip and Loafer is a good watch.

Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia (Insomniacs After School)

Ganta Nakami suffers from insomnia, which causes him to act irritable and antisocial at school. One day, while scavenging cardboard boxes from the abandoned and ‘haunted’ Astronomy Club observatory, he finds Isaki Magari, sleeping inside a toppled locker inside the clubroom.

Magari, as it turns out, also has insomnia, and the observatory is her getaway. It’s the perfect place to hide away, since sounds from the outside world are blocked out, and because it has a reputation for being ‘haunted’, meaning that it most likely won’t get used as a hang-out spot by other students. Together, they decide to transform the vacant observatory into the perfect place to sleep…that is, until they get caught. In order to keep their ‘secret’ place, they restart the Astronomy Club.

For a slice-of-life, Insomniacs After School manages to be interesting while not having needless drama. The romance seems to be intended to be more of a slow burn–which is perfectly fine with me, considering there’s already romance anime I’m watching this season that has gotten to the point where the main couple is engaged. This anime, while sharing the same theme as Call of the Night, doesn’t share many other themes. The romance, while being a slow burn, does have an obvious path, unlike Call of the Night. I’m honestly really liking this show so far if not only because each episode I’ve seen so far has managed to be interesting in different ways. While Call of the Night was mainly about vampires, Insomniacs After School is going all in on Ganta and Magari taking astronomy seriously. Photography as well. Since I haven’t read any of the manga, I don’t know which of the themes will win out. One thing is that I’ll be watching, since I’ve really liked it so far.

Ao no Orchestra (The Blue Orchestra)

Ao no Orchestra’s entry in this list is a miracle of modern technology. Due to it not being licensed to release in America, the only way of watching it right now is through watching fansubs. And not those ‘fansub’ groups that rip subtitles from Crunchyroll/Funimation/etc. and call it a day–this is the first time I’ve downloaded an anime from a ‘group’ that was formed ad-hoc for an anime in a very long time. It’s a shame too, since I think Ao no Orchestra deserves better than that.

Ao no Orchestra stars violin prodigy Hajime Aono, who stopped playing due to personal reasons. One day at school, he hears the sound of the violin being played horribly. He discovers that Ritsuko Akine is the one polluting the air with her noise. She uses the school infirmary as a practice room–a room that Aono is familiar with himself, being a frequent visitor. Through their mutual love for the violin, Aono finds himself being drawn back to playing. Akine, who is only a beginner, wants Aono to teach her how to play. Aono, who isn’t too thrilled by her forceful attempts to get him to play, nonetheless starts teaching her how to play.

Despite the show being uniquely difficult to obtain, it maintains to be worth the hassle. The British slang does take you by surprise, yes, but maybe if you wait enough, a company will license it and you can watch it on Crunchyroll. Or maybe you can wait until someone else decides to translate it. Or you could just learn Japanese, so you wouldn’t have to deal with this anyways, but that would be too much work. Ao no Orchestra 

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Bakuen wo! (Konosuba: Megumin Edition)

If you hated every other Konosuba character except for Megumin, are interested in her backstory, or just find the series funny, then Konosuba: Megumin Edition (calling it this because there’s no separate abbreviation for this spin-off and calling it  ‘Konosuba Season 3’ would be lying…wait, how about Konomegu? No? Okay…) is right up your alley.

This spin-off takes place a year before Kazuma and Aqua are isekaied into the Konosuba world and follows Megumin in her studies to be able to cast Explosion magic, an extremely offensive magic that has little utility other than blowing areas up into smithereens. Anyone whose seen Konosuba knows what I’m talking about. With Megumin is fellow Crimson Magic Clan member Yunyun, who shares a main role with Megumin and is together with her in being the two top students in their class.

Even if this is the first Konosuba-related thing you’ve watched, I believe that you’ll have a good time. It’s way less of a bait-and-switch than the first episode of Konosuba was. Pure comedy with none of the lewdness. Megumin is probably the funniest character in my opinion as well, making this a must watch.

Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru

Imagine being dumped for a girl that your boyfriend met in a video game–Akane Kinoshita doesn’t have to! Being a novice gamer, her sour experience with the MMO Forest Of Savior (FOS) is almost enough to put her off of gaming forever…that is, until she meets Yamada; fellow guildmate who also happens to live in the same area as Akane. He’s also a pro gamer (in a non-descript FPS game), which makes him somewhat of a celebrity among gamers locally.

Yamada-kun is shaping up to be your prototypical shoujo anime–it’s something to watch if you’re into that sort of stuff. I’d like to see more about what Yamada does, being a ‘pro gamer’ and all, but I doubt we’ll ever get to see anything more than surface-level. It’s a shoujo anime, so the romance is what the people are here for. If it does that well, then there’s really nothing else it has to do. It is what it is.

Not much to say about the show since it’s pretty straightforward with what it is. I’m having a good time with it, and I’m not the target audience. 

Kawaisugi Crisis! (Too Cute Crisis!)

Too Cute Crisis! is a very straightforward anime–Liza Luna, who is a research scientist and a higher-up in the invading alien empire (I forgot the name of it) discovers Earth. She wants to destroy it, but not without doing reconnaissance first.

She arrives in Japan, where she is ‘attacked’ by the cuteness of Earth’s creatures. Liza is mesmerized by the cuteness of cats (and dogs too), so much so that it paralyzes and makes her docile to the cat she adopts. In all of her time conquering planets, she has never seen anything as cute as a cat before. The cuteness of an animal that can’t be controlled makes her believe that cats are the secret rulers of Earth…and she might just be right.

This is by far the most lighthearted show I’m watching this season–anything with cats or any other furry pets really is cheating! The fact that everyone seems to chill with an alien race potentially razing Earth a la General Sherman is a bit odd, but it’s not like Too Cute Crisis! is focusing on that. Liza being an alien has made for good gags so far. I’ve had some laughs from Too Cute Crisis! so far, but I have a feeling that this show is going to end up being forgettable. It’s the catch with these types of shows. It's a show reliant on the jokes hitting. And currently, they're hitting often enough to justify continuing watching.

Otonari ni Ginga (A Galaxy Next Door)

Mangaka Ichirou Kuga is barely making ends meet–ever since their father died, he’s had to support his two younger siblings on his own with the earnings from drawing manga. He’s also the landlord of a social apartment (an apartment house with a common area), where he, his siblings, and several other people live in. There are no bad landlords in anime, unless if needed to advance the plot.

When he’s just about to miss a deadline, Shiori Goshiki applies to be his new assistant (his last two left to pursue their own dreams). Goshiki, despite only knowing about manga for a year, is excellent at her job as a manga assistant–excellent to the point where it’s otherworldly. Funnily enough, turns out that Goshiki IS from another world…well, from a shooting star but you get my point. They’re both unwillingly betrothed to each other when Kuga accidentally touches her stinger.

The fact that she’s an alien seems not to phase Kuga that much. I guess it’s okay when the alien is great at her job and a sweetheart to boot. Of the two anime I’m watching this season featuring a conventionally attractive alien woman, A Galaxy Next Door is by far the more serious one. Like Too Cute Crisis!, A Galaxy Next Door might end up being forgettable. It’s the way it’s shaping up so far. It isn’t that bad–just a bit dull so far. A standard supernational romance anime. Take it or leave it.