Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Love*Com Continued

Aaaand it looks like the author of Love*Com intends to do exactly what I feared by making her characters conform to gender norms despite their "flaws" of being too tall and too short. Awesome. Well at least I made it to Volume 3 without getting disgusted?

I was initially intrigued by the entrance of Risa's childhood friend Haruka, a boy with a girl's name who liked girls' things and was always getting picked on. I happen to like girly-boys very much, but manga is never, ever kind to them. Anyway, Haruka developed a crush/obsession with Risa because she always saved him as a child. He confesses this to her, but right as this happens a dog comes up and scares them. Ootani comes out of nowhere and saves them, yelling about how Risa is still a woman even if she's a giant and still needs to be protected. And Haruka ends up saying that even though Ootani is short, he's still manly and that he himself must become more manly so he can protect Risa like a good heteronormative couple.

Sheesh.

Well, it's still not bad enough for me to entirely put down, but it's not looking good. I'll keep on reading to see if it redeems itself or just gets worse. Stay tuned for more updates. 

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Quick Review: Love★Com



Something you may not know about me yet (but you could probably guess): I am not a fan of shoujo. I was a pretty butch kid growing up, and I preferred the manga directed towards men because of their epic storylines, epic battles and epic friendships. Romance has never been my thing, and unfortunately that is the target of most (if not all) shoujo manga. However, I've lately realized that if I'm going to have a go at manga from a feminist perspective, I have to read the things that are targeted toward women and girls. So I'm embarking on an epic quest to find a shoujo manga that (a) has a good, believable love story and (b) has a good strong female protagonist.

My first foray into this wilderness was the first volume of Love*Com, or Lovely Complex by Nakahara Aya. The premise is promising enough: the budding highschool romance between a girl who is too tall and a guy who is too short. The title comes from the complexes that each of them have about their heights. The protagonist, Risa, is rejected by boys because she is too tall and therefore "too masculine," while her friend Ootani has a similar problem with being too short. They argue constantly (a sure sign of romance to come for shoujo manga, somehow... I guess all that annoying highschool sexual tension), and consider each other enemies until they both find a common goal—each one likes the friend of the other. So they conspire to help each other get dates with the other people. Of course this scheme fails miserably, and Risa comes out realizing that she and Ootani are actually very similar, sharing the same interests, hobbies and love of adventure. And oh no, could this be... LOVE???????? I'm sure they'll get that far maybe 17 volumes later, but oh well.

So far I'm actually moderately enjoying this. I really like Risa's design, and she ends up making some hilarious facial expressions. Ootani is also ridiculously cute and effeminate looking despite his constant wish to be seen as "a man." I actually have some hopes for this though, because the manga revolves around two people who don't really fit well into the assigned gender roles. Of course the mangaka could easily destroy this by having them happily become a "man" and a "woman" by the end of the manga, resolving their conflicts by having them fit in with standards of femininity and masculinity, rather than realize how useless those categories are in the first place. For now I will continue, however warily.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Link Rec: The Decline of the Empowered Female in One Piece

Sorry I haven't posted at all in quite a while! I've been ridiculously busy this semester, as it's my last semester as an undergraduate and I have a thesis to complete. I don't have any completed posts to give you, so I'll link you to this really fascinating essay by bevinbaka about one of my favorite characters in all of Japanese comics, Nami from One Piece


Beware, there are spoilers for up to the last completed arc so if you haven't read it and plan to, you might want to hold off on reading this until you catch up!