#there are shoujos with male povs

[tae-shimura-is-my-wife]

They aren't shoujo but...

Originally I wouldn't post it because I didn't wanna to cause controversies and thought it was silly, but this has been annoying me for a while so here we go...

The idea that shoujo is any mang/anime containing romance is annoying and tiring when it's a diverse demographic, and is even worse because a lot of people use the "romance" aspect as a way to dumb down the demo, so I really understand shoujo fans frustrations with it but there's certain mangas that folks get PISSED OF when most think they're shoujos even insinuating it's a completely crazy statement which in my opinion isn't fair.

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Apothecary Diaries

Let's start with this one, that actually is the one which makes me more annoyed (and novel fans too)

Apothecary Diaries is a light novel that was published digitally, since LNs don't have demographics like mangas, they're categorized as joseimuke (for women/girls) or danseimuke (for men/boys), and guess what? It was written by a female author aimed at a female audience oh wow! "But the manga adaptation is a seinen!" yes, but this isn't a strong argument when code geass manga is a shoujo and we know very DAMN WELL women aren't the target audience for it 💀. Also an interesting thing to note is the (printed)novel beloging to square enix and they don't have a josei demographic, so it didn't have much chances of getting labeled as their og target audience.

Also it's kinda funny that people got kinda pissed at the notion of elements that could intend it being for women like Maomao herself or Jinshi (there's plenty of Jinshis in joseimuke medias so why they got mad) and it's especially funny because jp otaku men hated it when the anime aired, calling Maomao ugly and annoying, saying that Jinshi is too unrealistic and it's a female power fantasy why this is a bad thing help .

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Horimiya

Recently I discovered a lot of people hate that anime/manga and hate the fl, welcome back Toradora! Now to our shounen or... not exaclty? It was published in Monthly G Fantasy a manga magazine known for their bishounen characters and fanservice for fujoshis; some of their titles are Black Butler, Jibaku Shounen and they also do the manga adaptation of Twisted Wonderland a joseimuke game,

Despite being a shounen jp sites sell them in the joseimuke category and some of their titles can be found in the female aisle alongside with shoujo and josei and most of the information of the magazine is focused on it young female readers, which is ironic since other magazines don't keep ofuscating their male readers y'know, but looking at what is published there is kinda obvious the actual male demographic is almost inexistent.

Now to the actual manga, let's be for real Miyamura ALONE is a reason to why most wouldn't think this is for men yeah bishounens exist in male demographics but not in romances, it's literally a recurring joke on how shounen romance girls look stunning meanwhile the men are average as hell, but in Horimiya is the opposite, look Hori is super pretty but compared to Miya she gets overshadowed to the point HE is the main selling point of the series.

Since i talked about Miyamura being the main point, this is also a reason why much wouldn't think this is for men, generally the idea of shounen romances is getting a perfect waifu, she's the main point, a girl that a guy would dream have, but when Horimiya launched actually the girls were fantasazing about Miya and they still do! Miyamura has more merch than Hori and look it's basically IMPOSSIBLE to have anything of a male character in a male targeted romance, since the idea is to you collect and appreciate your 2d gf, just search for popular shounen and seinen merch of that genre and see what I'm talking about.

To finish Horimiya most jp sites tag it as "for girls" manga and it's not even because of being a romance as many would think, since Blue Box and Kaoru Hana are sold as shounen in the same stores, so yeah maybe people weren't that crazy about calling it shoujo 😆.

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Skip and Loafer

And last but not least Skip to Loafer you probably would be thinking "this chick gonna say this shit is secretely a seinen shoujo?" but no! It magazine is pure seinen, so if this isn't from a proto-shoujo magazine, neither having the a adaptation being joseimuke why is it here? Simple the content, Skip to Loafer is a coming of age story about a high school girl that focus on growing up, female friendships, characters emotions and has realistic deciptions of girlhood, hmm where did these things are more common? Which demographic would have something like that? It's obvious guys c'mon! The only thing that makes it not be a shoujo is the label, to the point where a lot of shoujo fans thought it was one and it's constatly compared to kimitodo, also the author already wrote bl and josei before so it's not like people are completly crazy thinking this could be for girls, and let's be honest, do you really think this is a series which the target audience are adult men? SERIOUSLY?

And yeah there's some men that said this is better than shoujo and stuff, but if it was shoujo they would say the same shit, saying "it's not like the other shoujos" how they did with Yona, Fruits Basket, Rayearth and even Sailor Moon recently and please stop letting dumb dudebros that don't even know what shounen or seinen is affect you that much, most of the fans are women both in jp and west, and most of them already watched shoujo before.

Just to conclude that part and also adding some things seinen and shoujo line sometimes can be very blurred, a lot of shoujo authors are or were seinen writers, also Kageki Shoujo were a seinen before moving to Melody and Orange moved to a seinen mag.

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And to finish I understand the frustration of people recommending this series instead of actual shoujo ones (except Apothecary Diaries bc it is for women), especially because the manga community tend to snob shoujo series and see them as lesser just for being targeted at girls, demographics do matter! But I don't think is fair to get pissed off at people interpreting these works as targeting girls, considering they do have a female appeal and were purposely created that way by its women mangaka. I still think the real enemies are the ones calling Nisekoi, My Dress Up Darling, Rent a Girlfriend a shoujo💀.

[ventique18]

IQ 200 * 0 wisdom = 0 INT stat

Conclusion: certified dumbass

But seriously though I'm actually very impressed with how twst manages Malleus' vastly different POV on basically everything. Instead of making him an omniscient, omnipotent god like those male leads in shoujo manga, they made his omnipotence his flaw. He is so powerful that it never crosses his mind to use anything else apart from his natural gifts. I've explained his mentality in greater detail here.

[miyamiwu]

To my shounen fandom mutuals who crave complex female characters in a shounen-esque setting, I absolutely recommend you watch Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master

It’s not shounen, but it has fantasy, mystery, and some action scenes, so it will give you a thrill similar to what you enjoy in a typical shounen that you usually won’t find in a shoujo (where the actual focus is on women).

The story is set in ancient times, and it involves court intrigue and a selection rite featuring four noble ladies vying to be the Crown Prince’s wife. However, the two protagonists are male (the Crown Prince and his attendant), so we mainly see their POVs.

But even then, the story does not brush aside the ladies/reduce them to mere caricatures, nor does it make everything to be only about the men—and this is what makes it so great.

I had thought I would be irritated with the women for all revolving around one man, but that wasn’t the case at all. They actually have a life outside of being “love interests,” and they are not one-dimensional at all. You don’t get to label any one of them with a typical character archetype and call it a day (a tendency I’ve noticed in stories featuring one man and multiple love interests is that the latter tend to represent just one Personality, e.g. the Tsundere, the Quiet, the Strong+Independent one, etc.)

So in the end, I also enjoyed watching their drama play out on screen.

And if you’re not up for straight ships (as this show inevitably has because of its premise), the double male protags’ dynamic is also quite cute~

Edit: I forgot to mention… but the Crown Prince doesn’t visit the ladies at all until it was time for him to choose. So we’re following two different stories separately (the ladies’ side and the men’s side)

[vees-genshin-blog]

Ok I know I said this blog would focus on Genshin/other Hoyo games, but I need to get this out of my system or my mind is gonna go INSANE.

I randomly decided to check up on a manhwa I gave up on because the plot and "romance" was going nowhere with the male lead, and in general, all the characters were annoying me EXCEPT for the female lead's sister. Her crush on this other dude was the cutest thing ever and at that point, I was just reading it for them but they only showed up in like, 4 chapters out of 70 and I gave up.

So I check up on this manhwa's most recent chapter and IM DYING because there might finally be DEVELOPMENT for the FL's sister and I AM ALL FOR IT!!!! Dude she has a crush on has a ridiculously stoic face and I can never know what he's feeling but like, in the scene I saw, there might be something there?!?!?! I have seen enough manga analyses to know that framing is important and literally, there is a frame of the sister smiling with her hand in her hair and the leaves in the background and it's most likely from the guy's POV and I CAN SEE THE IMAGINARY SHOUJO BUBBLES!!! I can't be imagining this right?!?!?

So of course I check the raws like the maniac I am and THEY FRIGGING KISS LIKE 3 CHAPTERS LATER!! BUT ITS UNTRANSLATED SO I DON'T KNOW THE CONTEXT 😭😭😭😭😭.

I want to be happy and I am, but what if they get drama like the main characters 😭😭😭. I will cry and just flop on the floor. THEY FINALLY HAVE DEVELOPMENT AND THIS IS AFTER ALMOST HALF A YEAR SINCE I STOPPED CHECKING.

JUST LET MY FAVES BE HAPPY

[icyday]

After a bit of vague-ing about my 'maybe queer' status earlier this month, I thought I might explain 1) why I feel ambiguous about my sexuality and 2) how I accidentally acquired a wife. The post is long, but it ends up covering about 18 years altogether.

(Shared with the permission of the wife in question @muusudgoi)

Warning: certain titles/referents might get ambiguous in places. The person referenced has read this and agreed that it reflects how she identified/how our relationship was perceived at the time.

Let's start with 18-year-old me. Call it a prologue of sorts.

Like the me of now, she has no clue of her sexuality. She's had a couple of boyfriends who were okay for a while. She's also interested in lesbians, at least at conceptual level. At least, she's read everything in her town's public library about lesbians, and while yaoi/shounen-ai seemed quite boring to her, yuri/shoujo-ai seemed a lot more interesting. However, she'd also never met a specific girl IRL that she had sapphic feelings for, except maybe in an idle 'if they were interested, I wouldn't say no' sense. They weren't interested. It wasn't an issue.

(in retrospect, she may have had a crush on her 5th grade teacher, but that's neither here nor there)

So to a certain point, she came into her university years being clueless about her sexuality to herself and deliberately vague about it to others. Was she gay? Bi? Straight? Ace? If you couldn't tell, why should she. She was also not really doing much to perform gender in any direction, so she didn't really project anything.

Her freshman college experience was one guy she met briefly, set up a casual date with, got stood up by, and then sort of walked away without giving too much of a damn. And then a (probable) egg whom she met-up with, and didn't jibe with chemistry-wise, and then just kind of relegated to a casual acquaintance. She might have been interested in the concept of girls but figured 1) she was too plain and slovenly to attract any and 2) despite not being any kind of religious, she was living at a Catholic dorm and was a little wary about being too open about any interest she might have had in that direction.

(It was very close to campus and reasonably cheap.)

Then, the meet cute happens. And the PoV switches into first person.

At the beginning of my Sophomore year, I had started playing an MMORPG that a friend of mine was into. I joined the group she was part of, and my future-wife was also part of that group. We both played female characters, though at the time she was not. While that might have been foreshadowing, the fantasy race we both played was female only, and enough male players played them that there was both a specific term to refer to them and it was the assumed default.

My wife was not immune to this. During the first interaction we both remember, she absolutely assumed I was a dude until I told her otherwise.

Anyway...

We didn't interact a lot for the first few months. I was a newb, and she sort of drifted in and out of the game. Left, played something else, came back for a bit etc. Springtime eventually rolled around, and she came back again. This time we were of similar levels on our main jobs, so there were more reasons for us to interact and tag along on each other’s quests. (Hey! You need a chest from this dungeon, and I need a chest from this dungeon! Let’s party!)

Her impression of me in retrospect: "You didn't annoy me."

Truly, love was about to blossom.

No, what happened then is that my laptop died because apparently being constantly logged into an MMORPG on a student-grade laptop for months on end isn't great for it. No laptop, no MMO, but I could get to my dorm's computer lab and post to a popular forum to let people know what happened, with some snarky, but sentimental goodbyes. The message basically went "[Specific people], I love you and miss you. The rest of you can go get bombed by goblins. [jokingly]" Not those words exactly, but that sentiment. My wife-to-be was part of the 'rest of you' group, and she took that as a challenge.

She responded to my post with 'Aw, Jais, I thought you loved me too."

And then used her google-fu to find my AIM handle (this was the mid 2000s, if you couldn't tell), and sent me a message. The whole interaction started with me being like 'Who TF is this person and why are they messaging me' and ended up a week later with us watching the sunrise together in our respective locations and realizing (for the first time?) what love was. I hadn't really been searching for my person, but apparently, I had found one.

I was twenty. She had just turned twenty-four. We were both babies.

There's a lot to skip over here. I think the important thing is that as this point, my wife is boymoding it up full-time. Just before my 21st birthday, she moves from Florida to Illinois to be with me, since I'm attending University there and she isn't. We move in together after about a month. (U-haul joke?) Everyone treats us like boyfriend-girlfriend. We treat each other like boyfriend-girlfriend. Any signs that point to something else are treated by both of us as plot-irrelevant. I graduate, and get a fast food job in the college town. We adopt two kittens to go with the one she brought with her. I get into grad school, and we and the three cats move to Seattle. Eventually we get engaged and married. (Before same-sex marriage was even legal in Washington state, no less)

Somewhere on the other side of marriage, twenty started to feel very...young for me to have met the person I'd eventually marry. Like why did I not try meeting up with women? At least to see whether I liked it or not? How can I say I really know what I am for sure, if I've never had any serious sexual or romantic interaction with anyone outside of a single partner? But also, I wasn’t terribly interested in either polyamory or leaving my spouse, so I dismissed those feelings as plot irrelevant.

Also, whatever is up with her gender gets more relevant. We attend our first Pride parade (as allies), which she may have cross-dressed for. I know there was definitely at least one Pride she cross-dressed at, because I had to be there to go, "Honey, no, try this instead." More signals are coming through (and I am, for plot-irrelevant reasons, much savvier to them) to the point where I do wonder if we're going to end up being old lesbians one day after we're done having children or whatnot.

But then dental insurance happens, and I think that ends up being the breaking point for my wife.

Between bad luck and poverty, my wife has always had terrible teeth, and not a lot of means to fix them. But two things happen in 2013-2014. One, we finally obtained decent dental insurance thanks to my job hiring me full time, and two, one of our cats ended up accidentally clawing her face in such a way that she ended up with an infection that the tooth issues aggravated. So after living years accepting that her terrible teeth were just a fact of life, she finally started getting them fixed. And mayve taking care of that problem led her to realizing that another thing that had bugged her her whole life might also be fixable.

(That whole gender thing.)

My feelings on her coming out at the time were extremely complicated. On one hand, I was a lot more educated on trans issues in 2014 than I was in 2005. The news didn't exactly surprise me. On the other hand, it was also the first time in our relationship where having a kid might not have been a total disaster, and the timing of the her news meant that we probably wouldn't get an opportunity to try. She offered to go back into the closet if I wasn't willing to stay with her, and I flat out refused that, the reasoning at the time being, "Now that you've told me your truth, I'm not going to let you lie to me." I told her I couldn't guarantee that I'd stay, but that I was willing to see what happened.

As an aside: There's a distinction between respecting someone's choice to stay closeted and being the reason someone chooses to stay in the closet. The first is a good thing, but I'd rather not be the second if I can help it.

There were a lot of changes. I don't know how deeply I want to get into them when this already feels so long, except to say, feelings get extremely complicated. I felt very isolated at points. Major changes were happening to my wife, and she wasn’t out to the world yet. Not only could I not talk about them, I also felt restricted about what I could talk about with others in a casual sense. It's like when people in same-sex relationships are told not to 'flaunt' it by well-meaning bigots, and that means not talking about any topic where their partner might come up. There was also the small issue where she came out to my mom and aunt by saying "Your daughter's a lesbian" as a joke, without actually checking in with how I felt about it (either the label itself or 'being outed' as it were).

But the changes were good to her. She was more confident and more open with herself and I liked the person she was becoming. She liked the way she looked which led to her paying more attention to her appearance, so she was definitely looked better. She was also 100% committed to our relationship, which meant that she was willing to be patient while I tried to keep up with her on her journey. It's hard to say whether I'm more or less attracted to her now as opposed to before she came out. If I had to simplify it, I'd say there's a bit less of a sexual connection, but more of an emotional one, and I'm definitely a lot more handsy with her now.

Anyway, it's been about nine years since she came out and started her transition. Our relationship is more stable than it's ever been. Therapy, economic stability, and not being in our twenties any more will do that to people.

I still don't know my own sexuality. I just accidentally married a woman.

(Have you tried living on one income while paying rent on a Seattle apartment?)

If I were pressed to label myself, I might go with 'vaguely bi' until I have more evidence in either direction. 'Bad at heterosexuality' is a fun way of putting it much in the same way that I sometimes refer to my wife as 'my boyfriend at the time', or 'my ex-husband' in contexts where the joke is obvious to anyone who might see it. (As when she posts our wedding photos, asking where she got that picture of me and my ex-husband from). But I'm also pretty sure that I don't project queer vibes IRL until the fact of my wife is known. Most of the queer spaces I've been in have primarily focused on gender-type queerness. This means I've always functioned more as a guest or an accessory to my wife, rather than a person who belongs there in her own right.

I keep thinking about labels. What fits me. If I even count as LGBTQ+, queer, or if I’m just in the penumbra that exists between the straight world and the rainbow one. I’ve learned a lot about what I don’t want in a label. I’ve adopted ‘bi’ over ‘pan’ mostly out of spite for the cohort that considered (considers? Is it still a thing) bisexual a transphobic identity. But I still haven’t figure out what I do want in one. Maybe I’m just one of those ‘problematic’ people who just doesn’t need a label.

[engshoujosei]

The Full-Time Wife Escapist

11 volumes (digital only as of 5/12/2023)

Licensed by Kodansha, also on Azuki and INKR Comics

25-year-old Moriyama Mikuri has an advanced degree, but has had no luck finding a permanent position. She's been living with her parents and doing temp work, and her latest job is doing housework for a single salaryman, Tsuzaki. Mikuri longs to start a career in her field, and her Aunt Yuri, who has had success in her professional life and who regrets never marrying, also wants Mikuri to find love. When Mikuri learns that her parents are planning to move to the country, she realizes her time is running out. She still has had no luck starting her career, so it seems she will have no option but to move to the country with her parents. She finds another option in moving in with Tsuzaki, who doesn't want to lose his housekeeper. To deal with the scandal of their living together, they get married--though just on paper. Now Mikuri starts her unusual new life, as a woman looking to start her career and as a new "wife". Note: Won the 39th Kodansha Manga Award for the shoujo category in 2015.

Status in Country of Origin

11 Volumes + Guidebook (Complete)

Tags:

Adapted to Live Action

Alternating POV

Award-Winning Work

Awkward Male Lead

Blunt Male Lead

Boss-Subordinate Relationship

Cheerful Female Lead

Cold Male Lead

Contract Marriage

Daydreamer

Emotionally Confused

Emotionally Strong Female Lead

Expressionless Male Lead

Hard-Working Protagonist

Housewife

Impulsive Female Lead

Insecurity

Introspection

Jealousy

Job Hunting

LGBT Character in Non-Yaoi/Yuri Manga

Love Triangle/s

Low Self-Esteem

Marriage of Convenience

Misunderstanding/s

Older Female Younger Male

Older Male Younger Female

Passive Male Lead

Pragmatic Character/s

Pretend Lovers

Relationship of Convenience

Restrained Love

Salaryman

Sexual Tension

Shy Male Lead

Slow Romance

Social Commentary

Straightforward Female Lead

Unexpected Feelings

Virgin/s

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Hi....Do you mind if I ask you some random thing? I used to love shounen and shoujo manga equally....But ever since I found BL manga 3 years ago, my interest in shoujo decrese a lot, and what I search for is just the dynamic between mc (male) and male lead...I don't want to read mc (female) and male lead or mc (male) and female lead...My interest in het romance also decrese....

What do you think happen to me? Sorry for this weird ask....

I mean, I don't know you, Anon (or if I do, then I don't know who you are), so it's hard to say.

But BL manga appeals to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons. I don't think it's in any way a replacement for shoujo manga, but it is often targeted at the same female market, so maybe it makes sense that one fills a need the other was trying to.

After all, shonen manga tends to have really awful romance stories that are really not engaging. Shoujo and BL tend to have much more similar romantic narratives, tbh, and much more focus on it. And yet I know a lot of people who prefer BL because as sketchy as some of them are, they tend to avoid some of the issues straight couples in fiction are prone to or are more relatable for one reason or the other.

I know a lot of queer people whose first step at self discovery was with BL--just because it's the most popular and easily accessible way for many of us to find any non-heteronormative stories. BL and m/m romance is popular, and far outstrips other queer stories in terms of sales and marketing, etc.

I remember someone I knew back in the day on fictionpress who was a straight women who only wrote straight romance from the POV of a woman or M/M romance because they simply couldn't stretch themselves to imagine being attracted to a woman. Now, I think there's a number of. Hmm. Things to discuss with that statement, but it's certainly. An option, I suppose.

Could it be misogyny? Yeah, it could be that, too, but I don't know you, Anon, and I don't know your heart.

It could be a lot of things, and you might not even know what it is yourself for many years, if you ever do. You should just enjoy the media you like and maybe trying to stretch your boundaries a little to keep yourself engaging with new ideas and concepts. But don't force yourself to spend your leisure time with something that completely doesn't interest you.

[mixelation]

TBH I like a lot of shoujo titles, and there's a lot of thematic overlap with shounen (friendship, fighting for your dream no matter what, defending others, saving the world level stakes for many series, etc), but the overall approach to conflict, plot, character development, etc tend to be pretty different (although shoujo vs shounen is basically marketing, so there's no universal rules about what goes in what). Shoujo is NOT "shounen but with girls," and it's unhelpful to tell people who want "shounen but with strong female leads" to just go read shoujo instead, because that's not what they want.

Again, there's no universal template to shounen because it's basically "manga aimed at boys," but probably what people want is a lot of training arcs (shoujo characters tend to get their power-ups via emotional revelations, with the emphasis on emotional growth over physical training/practice), a few tournament arcs where the goal is basically just cool fights where we learn about cool characters via the power of beating the shit out of each other, maybe some Wise Mentor Characters and a dash of rules lawyering your magical powers (shounen characters tend to get more creative with their powers in my experience, but this is probably not a universal pattern). I can think of a few shounen jump titles with female leads, but those tend to be either gag manga, or the female leads are meant to be normal-ish POV characters for the audience and share their lead status with an action-oriented male character. It's also a pretty recent development in shounen that female characters get to beat the shit out of each other, instead of being sidelined for every single fight.

There's also a lot of titles which are not shoujo or shounen that have cool female leads fighting people.... but again, still not quite what people want when they say they want "shounen with female leads."

friend was lamenting the lack of girls in the shonen she was watching so I had some advice for her

[asphodelical]

The Great Anime Rewatch of 2024 - Part VII

Lovely Complex

First watched: circa 2008 Rewatched: March 2024

Original rating: 6 New rating: 6

Lovely Complex was a surprise in two big ways: 1.) I had a really enjoyable time revisiting the first half. I forgot how goofy shoujo could be back in the day. It was fast paced and addressed topics and situations a lot of romcoms don’t—being shallow, being rejected, being able to see people in a different light, etc. 2.) The show really wore out its welcome in the second half. The pacing seemed to grind to a halt, the stuff with the young male teacher was quite uncomfortable, and it kept introducing character left and right at the end. It falls to the Kimi ni Todoke issue of relying on new characters for conflict, since there’s so little to them. The other main issue is that Risa is not a very interesting character, and the fact that she’s the main POV character grows weary. 

There are still a lot of things I think Lovely Complex gets right: It keeps the supporting cast as a supporting cast, and immediately sidelines the least interesting couple. Even the weird teacher stuff was only an issue for a few episodes. There’s also a canonically trans character, Seiko, who was done surprisingly respectfully for the early 00s. But the ending is bogged down by forced conflict and character assassination for Risa that leaves me disappointed. 

It turns out teenage me was dead on with my original rating. Finally, the first opening song is far better than the second. 

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica

First watched: Winter 2011, original airdate Rewatched: April 2024

Original rating: 10 New rating: 10

Second full rewatch. There were a few things I forgot—admittedly, I forgot almost everything that happened after Madoka ascended. But man, this show is still fantastic. 

__________________________________

Millennium Actress

First watched: July 2011 Rewatched: April 2024

Original rating: 9 New rating: 9

The only reason why this film isn’t a 10/10 for me is because I don’t think Chiyoko is a very memorable or nuanced character. 

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Clannad, Clannad: After Story, Tomoyo Chapter, Kyou Chapter

First watched: Circa 2008 Rewatched: October 2024

Original ratings: 7, 8, 8, 6 New ratings: 4, 4, 5, 5

I’ve been meaning to rewatch this for ages, and I was terrified to do so. My opinion on Key has always been pretty low, and it’s lowered even more as I’ve grown older. The melodrama, the infantilization of teenage girls, the eyes that are half the size of the character’s faces, ugh, it’s too much. Plus, the only thing I really remember was thinking Tomoyo was the best girl. 

After watching the first season, I had this whole write up about how painfully infantilized the girls are, how their rides on the trauma train are almost comical, how Tomoya is the only character who has more than two personality traits, and how bad the sense of humor is. After completing the second season, this is all I have to say: 

I don’t think I have ever seen a piece of media that was so desperate to make its audience feel sad. 

The only part of After Story I felt was worth watching was Tomoya reconnecting with Ushio. (PS. Considering how much Tomoya and Nagisa simply struggled to hold hands, I cannot fathom how they managed to have sex.)

Tomoyo Chapter was still my favourite, and Kyou’s was…whatever, but still better than anything involving Nagisa. 

__________________________________

Sakamichi no Apollon

First watched: April 2012 (original airdate) Rewatched: October 2024

Original rating: 8 New rating: 6

Unfortunately, I had to watch the English dub. Considering how Japanese this story is, I wasn’t thrilled. Then Ritsuko’s voice actress woefully mispronounced Kaoru’s name and I almost lost it. (And then “Brother Jun” kept happening and I couldn’t take it seriously. At that point, just say “Jun.” Please.) But beggars can’t be choosers. 

There are a lot of things that didn’t work for me this time around. The author has an annoying tendency to rely on bullying scenes to initiate conflict. Ritsuko is still a tragically boring character, and the drama is a bit overwrought. The love pentagon is so painful. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is really bad; Hardly anything sounds natural. 

But all the music stuff? Yeah, that stuff still worked for me. By episode six, I lost almost all interest in the dramatic shit and just wanted to skip to the music bits. Peak Sakamichi no Apollon for me: 

The first jam session in the record store

Sentarou and Kaoru’s make up medley

Sentarou and Jun’s last session

The friendship/unrequited love between Sentarou and Kaoru

[leeyanyanyaaan]

bored as heck but not bothered to use any braincells... time to listen to some music!

honestly ive been dying w my first sem of uni LMAO so i wish i could be writing or literally anything else for that matter but nooo im swamped w schoolwork QwQ

anyways, artist of the day: seventeen :D

im not too much in the kpop scene (and ive been kinda out of the loop in terms of music in general these days), but i have listened to some seventeen songs i would come across eg dar+ling, home, dont wanna cry, rock with you, and im was super in love w each and every one of those songs, so im actually surprised i didnt check out svt any sooner XD

so bingelistening thru their discography in spotify, i think ive formed some thoughts that i neeeed to get out of my head AHAHAJKSDB so pls dont mind my brainrot <3

genuinely, im disappointed i never got into them any sooner. fr. AHAHA. LIKE... THEY CHECK OFF THE LIST OF EVERYTHING I LOVE??? edm/lofi type music (THIS SPECIFICALLY), self produced(?), amazing singing skills! theyre literallyyy my type of music im kinda disappointed w myself like, i shouldve known from the songs ive alrdy listened to that theyre my type of group?

atm theyre fr up there next to skz, i just cant call them my favs atm bc i havent listened to them long enough nor have i learned any of the members yet or watched any content, so id feel fake to call them my favorite just yet XD but absolutely love them yes!!!

if we put in my writers pov into this, svt most definitely has songs that make me wanna go into writing mood LOL, in terms of romance at least, like the very shoujo doki doki vibes/falling in love w the male lead vibes, which i also enjoy abt listening to them too

when i have the time, ill definitely go into trying to learn each member and watching their gose content XD i remember watching one of their horror episodes(?) and my god that was a trip AHAHAHASKJBDA

anywaysssss yuh dats all ma brainrot abt svt atm tenkyu por listening to mai tedtalk ive ran out of brain cell energer goodnightttt

[thoughtfulstudentsalad]

As a shoujo manga, it’s perceived and advertised primarily as a romance, appearing in recommendations like "anime romances" or "romance anime with princess and childhood friend". I understand from the author's pov this is a marketing strategy - you gotta make it seem like a fluffy romance manga otherwise it doesn't appeal to the audience and drive sales.

(if Yona was published as a shounen/male demographic it honestly would not need to do this, alas it cannot get that without pretending to be a mainly romance manga)

But when I read the current chapters, I don't know how you can just overlook the intense and heavy topics being explored and shove this in the "primarily romance bin" at all... I feel like people who not interested in romance will also read this series.

akayona destroyed my mental stability i can't anymore this is psychological horror i can't

[asnowperson]

Takemiya Keiko's Hensoukyoku

During a Takemiya discussion in a homo thread, an anon made an excellent post, after which I had to read Takemiya's Hensoukyoku (変奏曲, Variation).

"Don't read if you don't want spoilers!" is what I want to say, but I'm making this post for noting things down for myself and giving spoilers anyway, so go ahead or leave.

I'd like to thank anon once again for exactly knowing how to get me interested in a title. I hope we cross paths again.

I'm a basic newcomer old shoujo fan and I have only read part of Kazeki from the original, so I was pretty optimistic going into Hensoukyoku. Well, it was harder to read than I thought it would be. In particular, I wanted to kill myself every time Bob (aka "this guy") opened his mouth. Maybe that's because I was trying to translate things in my mind while reading it, which I shouldn't have done. Assuming that my linguistic skills would be enough to translate Takemiya is ridiculous.

I like volume 1's cover so much that I eventually want to buy this edition. By the way, a strange thing I noticed about Takemiya's works: Not all of them are available on regular e-book sites. I wanted to buy the digital editon because it'll be some time before I can import something from Japan, but it was on sale only on EBJ, and EBJ doesn't even let baka gaijins like me to register to their site. So your only chance is to ask someone who already has an account there, or go physical. We are being forced into piracy here, Japan.

But what's it about? You have this Austrian child prodigy, Wolfgang Richter, and this Spanish rebellious violinist boy, Eduardo Soltie. Their love for music brings them together, and we accompany them on their journey for about 20 years in 3 (in the bunkoban version, 2) volumes. While the two has the BL attraction towards each other, but to me, it felt like theirs bordered on bromance as Eduardo is very much in love with Anette, Wolfie's sister, and constantly busy being gay with Bob, and Wolfie marries his childhood friend before anything goes anywhere between those two and dies (of course, he has his own obligatory Bob phase). I expected to see a tragic love story between Wolf and Ed just looking at the random images from the manga, but was denied. But forget them, and just remember this: Every boy in this story wants Bob.

If you are a male under the age of 20 and you can resist the charms of this man, congratulations. You probably have some sort of disease, because this man is a walking bishounen magnet.

"Please, don't say anything to my mother." - Yes Nino, if I was your mother, I wouldn't want to know that the guy who boned my dead brother and my cheating, failure-of-a-father husband also boned my precious son. Poor Anette.

The story is not a conventionally constructed one. We know right from the beginning Wolf died young, and with each chapter, we are presented with a different part of his life. Especially the first chapters can be overwhelming because of this narrative choice, because most relations are established from the get-go, we get no classic character introductions. Personally, I had a hard time processing how the Spanish Revolutionary movement fit in this story and why we suddenly got a cholera epidemic. But as you read on, all the pieces get together and you see the whole picture. Some of the same events are told through different characters' POV throughout the story, a technique I like a lot. If I had to choose, I'd say "Andalusian Love Song" is the most important part of the story. It had the most amount of Wolf, and feels like a "main story" the most while the others (especially the ones in vol. 2) have this "side story" feeling. They are so much fun to read though. I liked Rimbaud to Verlaine no you ni in particular which was about Bob being salty about the newlywed Ed hitting on every girl in Paris.

godiwishthatboywasme.jpg

Speaking of parts, based on the digital edition, they are:

Volume 1

1974: Virentz Monogatari (ヴィレンツ物語-Virentz Story) - This chapter is scanlated by Golden Roze Scans, and is the only part available in English to readers.

1976: Hensoukyoku (変奏曲-Variation)

1976: Andalusia Koiuta (アンダルシア恋歌-Andalusian Love Song)

Volume 2

1978: Koutei Enbukyoku (皇帝円舞曲-Emperor Waltz)

1978: Variation (ヴァリアシオン)

1979: Itoko Doushi (いとこ同志-Cousins)

1981-2: Kanon (カノン-Canon)

1979: Nino Alexis-Sono Tabiji (ニーノ・アレクシス　その旅路-Nino Alexis's Journey)

1975: Tsubakiyakata no San Akunin (椿館の三悪人-Three Enfants Terribles of the Camellia Mansion)

1977: Rimbaud to Verlaine no you ni (ランボーとヴェルレーヌのように-Like Rimbaud and Verlaine)

At times, it felt like Takemiya crammed a 10-volume long story into 3, and the timeskip kind of feels out of place, now that I think about it. But hey, don't think I'm complaining, we've got lots of bishounen and 70s melodrama thanks to this manga being what it is. Although I would have liked more tears and angst in my drama, I still very much enjoyed reading Hensoukyoku. Here are the examples of the content I want to see in my manga:

-"I will never forgive you if you die." - I wish all kabedons were sad like this one. Also yanderEduardo is precious. Wolf is preciousness itself <3

-"If you are going to die anyway, die in my arms!" - Okay ngl, this really pulled at my heartstrings. I'm a sucker for this kind of drama. Also I must mention that Takemiya didn't give Wolf the "mysterious shoujo heart disease", commonly known as "SHINZOUBYOU", but an actual heart disease that fit his situation. He had tetralogy of Fallot. I asked a doctor friend what this condition was, and she said the exact same things the doctor in the manga said. It made everything extra sad.

Takemiya did a nice job in writing her characters into the existing world, and I can't believe I'm not reading a fictitious story. This is Wikipedia-level knowledge, but seeing how Takemiya drew this manga based on Masuyama Norie's (who later wrote Kazeki's spin-off novel, Kami no Kohitsuji) experiences as a music student, this makes sense. My only gripe is that, although the story is taking place in the 1960s and 1970s, things almost felt a little bit 19th century to me at times. But that's 70s shoujo for you, Europe was the fairytale land at the time and no one wants to see the modern world in there.

"Can I stay over tonight?" - It was almost unsettling how much Ed reminded me of Gilbert (and sometimes Marion). But then again, mon pauvre Gilbert didn't get to live until his age ;_;

Once my brain recovers from reading this, I hope to read another Takemiya BL I have my eyes on.

[illiniana]

POV: Arsenik is the male lead in a shoujo manga and ur a side character being bombarded with his bishie sparkles

Happy Valentines Mr. Arsenik! For your gift this year, I give you another portrait with your likeness, but this time with significantly more clothing ;) 

I hope it’s to your liking. If it’s not, you can totally use it as kindling, it’s fine :’)

✧ ⁂✦ Keep on dazzling  ✧ ⁂ ☆

@poisonappletales​

[citybops]

I've always thought that horimiya would be Nothing without miya :/ like he's such a treasure of a shoujo male protag and he just carries the whole series

im only starting the manga but if my opinion counts ... so true bestie. in a way it feels like the prime focus is on him despite the story being mainly from horis pov !!! and while i love a shojo manga that kinda subverts ??¿¿ the structure of the genre. .. hori is still our heroine why would u make her so plain and boring -̩̩̩-̩̩̩-̩̩̩_-̩̩̩-̩̩̩-̩̩̩

[shazzeaslightnovels]

Tasogareiro no Utatsukai 1

Author: Kei Sazane (Author of Sekai no Owari no Encore and Kimi to Boku no Saigo no Senjou, Arui wa Sekai ga Hajimaru Seisen/Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World)

Illustrator: Miho Takeoka (Illustrator of Bungaku Shoujo/Book Girl)

Label: Fujimi Fantasia Bunko

Release Date: 1 January 2007

This is Kei Sazane’s debut series and, more importantly to me, it appears to be the origin of Sazane’s fictional language seen in Sekai no Owari no Encore and plenty of Sazane’s other works. When I first reviewed Encore, I mentioned that I was very curious about the language that was used but that series never really went into it (it was mostly just used for aesthetic purposes, iirc) and I was still curious so I thought that reading Sazane’s debut series was my best bet to finding out more. And it looks like it’ll be a pretty good fantasy series, based off this volume. The world and plot are quite orthodox but it’s interesting and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes and, of course, I love finding out more about the language. Recommended for fans of fantasy series.

Story:

Genre: Fantasy, Magic school, Action

The series takes place in a world where Song Users exist - people who are able to use special objects called “catalysts” and songs to summon things of a certain colour. Most Song Users specialize in a certain colour and the standard colours are red, blue, yellow, green and white. (so i.e. a white user would be able to summon a pegasus, if they had the right catalyst) The series begins with two Song Users: Ehvemerry, who wants to create a new type of colour and Xins, who wants to master all the colours. The two make a deal that they will meet in the future and show each other that they have met their goals. Time passes and a girl named Kluele, who is training to become a red user, meets a self-proclaimed “night colour” user named Neight.

The worst thing about this volume was probably that the explanations of how the magic system works weren’t really clear and I got confused several times and had to reread some stuff to make sure I understood it and I’m still not sure if I got everything right. The series also doesn’t take many risks and is ultimately an orthodox girl-meets-boy fantasy. I don’t think this necessarily a bad thing but it does mean that it doesn’t stand out over other fantasy series.

(I do want to quickly note that I do not know much about what the light novel market was like in 2007, when this was first published, so it’s possible that what I think of as “orthodox” was not considered as such back then. Still, given that no one really talks about this series anymore, I’d be willing to bet that it didn’t start any long-lasting trends in the fantasy genre.)

This was a pretty interesting first volume and there are several intriguing plot-lines that I’m looking foward to seeing develop, especially with Ehvemerry. The world was interesting and I liked that a lot of the plot in this volume was told from Kluele’s POV, instead of Neight’s. As for the fictional language, I’m having a lot of fun learning more about it. There is furigana provided with the songs that are done in that language and it’s fun to see the patterns in it and learn the words. I’ve always admired authors who are ambitious enough to create their own language and Sazane’s is certainly interesting and I’m looking forward to more of that.

I’m not sure yet if this series is going to have any proper romance in it. Sekai no Owari no Encore didn’t end up having any, despite teasing a few potential pairings. Neight and Kluele could make a good pair but I’m always happy to read series that have male and female leads that stay in a platonic relationship.

Character:

The characters are fairly standard so far, as are their dynamics with each other but they’re likeable enough to follow the story with. So far, Kluele and Ehvemerry have interested me the most and I want to know more about them. I also really liked Arma, a talking “lizard” (acording to Kluele) who accompanies Neight.

Recommended for:

People who like fantasy series and don’t mind if they’re on the orthodox side, as well as people who find fictional languages interesting.

The entirety of this series is up on BookWalker’s Kadokawa subscription service so I plan to finish it.

[pekorosu]

a summary of the banana fish bits from the yoshida akimi + gackt interview in this malice mizer book (1998). i don’t think there’s a complete english t/l out there yet (please correct if i’m wrong) but there is a chinese one, so do check it out if you’re interested (thanks @vashak for the link!)

- Gackt once claimed to have read the series more than a hundred times and that he would love to meet the author. His wish finally came true and the meet-up took place at Yoshida’s home.

- Why was Gackt drawn to the series at first? Because of the art, especially the eyes.

- He has the tendency to go into different character POVs as he’s reading a story. For BF, he started out with Ash’s POV, then Eiji’s, and so on. He did it even for characters who die almost immediately, so once that happened he would go back to the beginning and start reading again from a different POV, repeating it until he’s done with all the charas.

- Yoshida says that she’s interested in how male readers view the story, because after all, it is a woman’s fantasy. She wonders if it’s hard for them to get into the story. Gackt says that he got really into it though. Yoshida concedes that there are men out there who like the series, but it is still a shoujo manga and the magazine it’s published in is also for girls, so she has never once thought about a male audience as she was drawing it. That’s why she’s curious about how it’s being read by them.

- Someone told Gackt about the manga, which is how he found out about it. He really liked the art style and the convos, and from then on, it felt like he got sucked into her world and couldn’t get out.

- For some reason, he also thinks that their collarbones are nice…? He talks about how the characters wear T-shirts and how the collarbones would just casually peek out and he thinks it’s nice. Yoshida’s like, huh, that’s a first. Lol. She also mentions that she’s not really the type to be particularly fussy about her art.

- Gackt asks what inspired her to want to draw BF. Yoshida says that during her college years, her generation was exposed to and was heavily influenced by drug culture, so everyone around her including herself was quite knowledgeable about the topic. And as she was reading all sorts of books on it, she came across something that mentioned that the CIA planned to use drugs for mind control and that apparently the Soviet Union had something similar in mind as well. She thought that was interesting. She also talks about how there are many weapons of war in this world, the main three being: nuclear weapons, food supply and oil... with drugs being said to be the fourth. Thinking about it now, that’s probably where the idea for the story was conceived.

- Editor(?) asks if she wasn’t just bringing in dramatic elements for the sake of creating more hurdles for Ash? Yoshida agrees that there was that too.

- Yoshida also talks about how she initially wanted to portray the main character as a more lively boy, since the ones she drew in the past were all kinda gloomy. She was aiming for something more positive or more shounen manga-esque, but it didn’t turn out that way in the end lol.

- Gackt says he was intrigued by certain words that came up in the series too. When he got to the word “Aslan,” a lot of stories started springing up inside him. At the same time, he got an inspiration for a song. That was when he came up with “Asrun Dream.” He didn’t know how to spell the word, so he had to do some research.

- Yoshida says that she doesn’t think the way he pronounced it is right… she thinks it’s supposed to sound more complicated? She talks about how she took French as a foreign language module in college, and she learned things like how the “h” is silent. For example, you’d pronounce hotel like “otel.” Anyway she thinks that there might be something like that as well when it comes to “Aslan.”

- Gackt asks about her readers’ reactions. Yoshida says that the most common one among girls is that they often identify with Eiji. They want to be Eiji, and they want to save Ash. And upon reaching the end, there was a lot of “Please don’t kill him.”

- Gackt asks if she’s thought of writing a whole story about Eiji and Sing after Ash’s death. Yoshida says that that story (GoL i guess) was supposed to be much longer... about how the two of them are going through life in present-day New York. But because of page restrictions and stuff when it came to compiling it into a volume, it had to be cut short. She says that the original story on its own was as long as an entire volume.

- Gackt says that he’s mentioned liking BF in a newsletter to his fanclub and that he’s drawn a portrait (of Ash? idk). Yoshida asks to see it and he’s like “sure” lol

- Editor says that BF feels very much like an American movie. Yoshida mentions that she had given the rights for a movie adaptation to Sakamoto Ryuichi, but for various reasons it ended up not happening. “Plus, River is no longer here too.” It was something like that.

- Gackt is asked if there’s any character he wants to play, and he says Shorter. Editor asks if that means he’s willing to cut his hair. Gackt says he would; he’d turn it into a mohawk, and then he’d shave it so that he can say this line in the movie: “I’m growing it out!”

- He also mentions wanting to play Arthur. Yoshida says that role might suit him better… the sad young man from the gloomy villains’ side. (t/l note: /raises eyebrow at “sad young man”)

- Initially, Gackt thought that he could do Ash or Arthur. But he felt that Shorter would be the toughest to play, so that’s why he prefers Shorter. Especially his final scene where he says, “Kill me.” What kind of expression should he make for that? A smile would be the toughest, wouldn’t it? And Shorter smiles a lot. Just what kind of feelings would there be behind that smile?

- Yoshida says she feels honored as a mangaka to know that he reads that deeply. Usually, she disappoints people because she always ends up saying “I never thought that far.” Editor says, but that means you’re writing it subconsciously right? Yoshida says well, I guess so.

- Editor says that, with such passion for the series, Gackt would be able to come up with a soundtrack or an image album, wouldn’t he? Gackt says yes, and that he’s come up with so many songs as he was reading the series. 

- He talks about how “Asrun Dream” has its own story behind it. Ash wakes up in the morning while Eiji is still asleep in bed, and he goes to lean against the window, looking out. That’s the scene inside him that evoked the song. Yoshida says that she would like to listen to it. Gackt says that it’s not released publicly and no one knows about it, but he still has it as an old song.

- Editor says that he should release it as a solo album, with the jacket art done by Yoshida. Yoshida’s like, wait what’s going on? lol. Gackt says of course, when the time comes he will request for it. If she refuses, he would do a dogeza all the way ‘til morning. Everyone laughs. He’s like, I’ll even quit my job. And she says that she feels the pressure mounting now lol.

- Gackt says that he’s always wanted to write down all the songs that come to him as he’s reading a story, and then compile them into an album bundled with a little book, like “please listen to this while you’re reading the book.” If there’s a chance, he’d definitely like to try it out. He says that he would always be waiting for that chance until the day he dies.

here’s a pic of her workspace: