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.
No comments:
Post a Comment