Nov

13

#04 - Koukou Debut by Kawahara Kazune

Filed Under Reviews, Romance, Shoujo | 8 Comments

Koukou Debut by Kawahara Kazune
Published by Shueisha
Serialized in Bessatsu Comic Margaret

High school’s not easy. For a girl who spent her life in junior high school as a certified jock, the mission to snag a boyfriend in high school is quite a tall task. But Haruna Nagashima is not the girl who gives up. She’ll do anything and everything to make her High School debut! Even if it meant getting a snobby yet handsome high school senior as her coach.

This is a completely hilarious romance about a boy and a girl who’s just starting to figure out what love is all about. Having studied all the formulas in shoujo romance, how can Haruna Nagashima’s go wrong? Well, Kazune Kawahara tells you that a romantic life ain’t no shoujo manga. But Kawahara also depicts a romance quite true to most girls out there. Koukou Debut serves a fresh tale on what it’s like to fall in love the first time.

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Nov

13

#03 - Tokyo Boys and Girls by Miki Aihara

Filed Under Drama, Reviews, Shoujo | 6 Comments

Tokyo Boys and Girls by Miki Aihara
Published by Shogakukan
Serialized in Betsucomi

It’s your first day in High School. You chose the school with the best school uniform so you could round up more boys. Everything looks great so far until a guy you can’t remember suddenly tells you that he’s going to get his revenge at you. And you try to remember all the things that you have done in your life, but you just can’t. What starts out as a beginning of a funny comedy, turns into a sappy high school romance. Miki Aihara takes the usual shoujo formula and expands it to a 5 volume teenage drama. God, if it took her four volumes to figure out what she has done to the guy, you wouldn’t wonder why the publishers considered pulling the plug.
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Nov

12

ARMAGEDDON AND UTOPIA IN NAOKI URASAWA’S 20TH CENTURY BOYS

Filed Under Features, Insights, Noteworthy | 1 Comment

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Armageddon and 20th Century Boys

This was a paper I submitted for my Japanese Literature class. I thought of sharing to people what I have learned about 20th Century boys using the fantastic theory in Japanese Literature.

It was at the summer of 1969 that Kenji, Yoshitsune, Maruo, Otcho, Keroyon, and Donkey made a pact of true friendship. In an open grassy field, the boys built their secret base. They tied leaves together and set traps along the way. In it, they shared mangas, music, jokes, and dreams. In crumpled papers, they drew fantasies of saving the world from a giant robot as well as saving the world from a deadly virus. They were nothing but children’s dreams, foolish childish dreams. In that base, they explored a world outside their limited reality. They had their own world inside that fortress. Anything of their world remained in that fortress and that very base protected the boy’s dreams of the future. At their hideout, they held a sign which became a symbol of their true friendship. Anyone who knew that sign was a true friend. Little do the boys know that 30 years after, the sign would haunt them again. A ‘true friend’ appears and asks the boys to play a little game — a game that would bring their dreams into reality.

In his 10th work, Naoki Urasawa explores the relationship of 7 boys and how their dreams and their realities all intertwine to create a new world, to the benefit of one, and to the horror of the six. 20th Century Boys (二十世紀少年, Nijuu Seiki Shounen) is a brilliant tale of how our actions in the past can completely change the future. Change is even an understatement. Change in 20th Century Boys brought about a complex revelation of how a forgotten face makes himself present by creating into reality the utopia that a band of boys created. It is this alienation and utopia that we will explore in this paper. Through the eyes of 20th Century Boys, we hope to see how modern writers today envision their utopian future. Could there be really a utopia? Or is one’s utopia another’s nightmare?

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