What I read in January: Digest Version (4 of 4)

Well, why not.  Let's finish out January today.

b Otomen 4, 9:  I had to schedule a special exercise session to read this the day it arrived because I knew I didn't have the self control to wait until the next morning when I was scheduled to exercise again.  Who said manga isn't healthy?

b Ouran High School Host Club 15:  Oh, Milord.  I hear the anime voice actors when I read this now.  It's pretty fun.

b Sand Chronicles 10: An ending in keeping with the tone of the series.  More of an epilogue since the actual story ended in volume 8, but I still found it moody and interesting.  A fitting farewell.  A reviewer I really like admired this manga but could never really like it because she's a happy person, and she can't understand why these people can't let themselves just be happy, dammit!  Because they just can't.  Because they know how bad things can go.  I love the series for the same reason it irritates her.  Viva literature.

b Sasameki 1:  Slippery.  I still don't know quite what kind of manga this is and whether I should expect absurdity in the end or whether some kind of storytelling with serious stuff will be accomplished.

b Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei 4: My nose hurts from snorting, as usual.  Brilliant social commentary and funny entertainment for those who like their humor acid-black.

b Seiho Boys' High School 3: I have to read this series at home where I can just crack up without people looking at me funny.  More stories about the boarding school in the middle of nowhere Seiho students.  You can count on them to usually say things in the worst way possible, which is endlessly entertaining.

b Time Stranger Kyoko 2-3 of 3: Well, I actually need to go back and read a different copy of 2 because someone really liked that book and cut out about 1/5 of the pages in the book. (Really?  Seriously?!  Who does that to library manga?!  How did the librarians not notice?  I mean, yes, they probably don't read so much manga that they can feel that somethings' not standard simply by the weight and thickness.)  It's embarrassing how long it took me to figure out that's why the narrative seemed so disjointed . . .  I apologize for all those mean things I thought about the author before I figured out it wasn't her fault big pieces of plot seemed to just be missing.

b We Were There 4: Whoa.  Well, then.  That was some honest stuff there.  Ladies, if you ask your gentlemen to tell you the truth and promise them you won't reject them no matter what they say, please stick to your guns.  It's brutal when you betray them by being too weak to handle the truth.  Truth is not for the faint of heart.  If you think you want to know the truth, figure out what it could be, figure out what the worst could be, and make sure you can actually deal with the worst being a reality before you ask.  If you think you can't handle it, maybe you should disengage before you get any further involved.  I'm glad we could have this little chat.

Next time we'll do some DVDs and maybe some February.

Quote roundup

Sometimes you just find quotes that tickle you, but they're too short to make a whole post, so you keep collecting until you have enough.  I think I have enough.

Sean Gaffney on Natsume's Book of Friends: "Natsume has gotten much better at this protagonist thing, but he still tends to be emotionally passive, and as an action hero he's fairly miserable. So there's a sense of genuine danger to the proceedings that works very well."

Kate Dacey on Qwan: "I have a bad habit of falling in love with commercially doomed series.. . .  I think narrative complexity was a factor. Though the story is a rich tapestry of political history and myth, Shimizu refuses to spoon feed information to the reader; we’re just as confused and disoriented as Qwan himself is. That kind of reading experience can be quite rewarding, but the absence of an omniscient narrator demands more of the audience, forcing us to pore over the text and make connections on our own. Shimizu’s artwork and characterizations are up to the task, but impatient readers will easily miss crucial details in their haste to get to the fight scenes."

Kate Dacey on Your & My Secret: "Yet for all the black comedy, Morinaga still allows her characters moments of vulnerability and decency, preventing the humor from curdling into pure meanness. She wisely avoids the trap of making her characters too dumb to notice the transformations in Akira and Nanako, allowing her to sustain the body-swapping premise without straining credulity or testing the reader’s patience."

Sean Gaffney on Seiho Boys High School: "Well, that was a bummer. Don't get me wrong, a beautifully told, well-written bummer. I enjoyed every minute of it. But dang. Thank goodness the volume ends with a wacky romantic farce, even though it pales in comparison to what came before.

Kate Dacey on Gun Blaze West: "Like many shonen stories, the hero is the least interesting member of the cast; he’s not much more than a reader surrogate, a collection of attitudes and skills, rather than a fully realized character."

John on Gundam: "Once again, the disabled and headless Gundam continuing to fight represents the Japanese spirit of perseverance and loyalty to one’s goal."

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith on 1001 Nights: "Maseru, Shahryar’s dark-skinned bodyguard who has the most adorable and sad subplot concerning a sheep that I have ever seen . . ."

Seiho Boys' High School: Boys Say the Darnedest Things

As High School Girls is to Maria Watches Over Us, so Seiho Boys' High School is to Hana-Kimi (or Invisible Boy or Princess Princess or God-help-us Gakuen Heaven): both inject a raunchy dose of reality into something clearly idealized.  However, Seiho probably has a closer relationship with Ouran High School Host Club or Boys Be than with HSG.  However you want to classify it, I love it.

In summary

If you haven't heard of it, Seiho is a technically shojo school comedy about the boys at an all boys' school that's a dead ringer for Bell Liberty Academy: on a remote island far from females.  The difference from Gakuen Heaven is that these boys are 95% heterosexual.  (The exception is exceptional, and when his girlfriend comes to visit, it's hilarious.)  These boys are far more realistic than the usual shojo/BL cast at an all boys' school because these boys

• are so painfully and hilariously awkward
• can be trusted to say the wrong thing at the worst possible time
• often sabotage themselves brutally simply by not keeping their mouths shut
• scare the girls away more than attract them
• can be relentlessly insensitive
• are sometimes so kind that it takes your breath away

Same old?

The stock situations are there:

• The class play where they con a real girl into pretending to be a boy at their school, so she can be in the play with unexpected results.
• The girlfriend who comes to visit with unexpected results.
• The sister who comes to visit with unexpected results.
• The girl who needs a fake boyfriend for unexpected reasons.
• The mousy school nurse's transformation.

You will notice the pattern.  Most of these stories revolve around encounters with girls, a thing that is rare when you live on an island of boys.  The difference between these and most other vaguely similar series is that these encounters pretty much always end realistically, poorly, and often hysterically.

Is it shojo?

The author even questions the shojo-ness of the work, at times.  I'm not sure why.  While it is more realistic in some ways in terms of behavior (played for comic relief more often than not), the dramatic subject matter is all shojo, though even that is handled less melodramatically than your average shojo fare.  There are some sad family and relationship situations, but the guys don't dwell on and contemplate them emotionally and endlessly.  And there's so much comic gold everywhere, no one has much of a chance to mope before the next egregious failure of good taste and sophistication.

I recommend reading this in the comfort of your own home because I think the other patrons at the bookstore thought I was insane because I kept having to break down and bury my head in my arms to muffle the laughs.  Boys say the darnedest things . . .