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This blog is a storage space for various thoughts, observations and musings centering on shōjo manga (少女漫画, Japanese comics for girls), josei-oriented manga (Japanese comics for women) and manga created by women (in the widest sense). Topics from other fields of relevance, such as music, art, literature and film may be discussed here as well.

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Viewing all posts with tag: publisher: shueisha



[Review] Mutsu A-ko: Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya

The cover of the bunko version of Mutsu A-ko's Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya published by Shueisha Every year, I’m getting a little giddy with anticipation as February 14th is drawing nearer. And not for the obvious reasons of impending showers of chocolate, flowers, jewellery and all that stuff Valentine’s Day is supposedly made of if a whole industry dedicated to it were to be believed. No, it’s close but it’s not quite the reason. That feeling usually gets really strong in January, with the warm lights of Christmas long gone and the cold cruel wind blowing, as I’m making my way through snow (or even just rain). But I put that feeling of longing and excitement off, until on Valentine’s Day or one day later, on February 15th, I grab a certain volume of short stories from the shelf and – indulge in warm, fuzzy shōjo manga nostalgia!

The book that I blew imaginary dust off yesterday for its big moment is called Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya by Mutsu A-ko, a small bunkobon released in 2005 by Shueisha as one of three volumes in the Ribon Otometic Memorial Selection (the other two being short story collections by Tabuchi Yumiko and Tachikake Hideko, respectively). And it’s the very same title story from it, which roughly translates to “The Candlelit Night When Even The Angels Dream”, that is such fantastic material for annual re-readings in synchronicity with the outside world.

It’s Monday, February 15th, in the quiet neighbourhood of Asahigaoka, the day after Valentine’s Day. The two angels Spinet and Vivace are a little exhausted from their work the previous day but still they manage to watch over the love lives of a handful of girls and young women who are all connected to some degree on that fateful snowy night of candles lit and stories told during an electricity blackout in the small residential area.

For example, there’s Sasae celebrating her 17th birthday with three of her friends on that Monday evening. She is in love with her childhood friend Shikawa-kun who told her recently he needed some time to see her as anything more than just a friend. The girls dream about their future lives, their ideal partners and marriages, when in the present, love is something bittersweet and hard to reach for most of them, even for Olive who has a boyfriend but has to keep a long-distance relationship with him because he goes to university in far away Tokyo. But there is quite a bit of hope for Sasae herself who happens to meet Shikawa-kun when the girls go out into the dark of the blackout, the hope that his feelings for her finally might have changed when he greets her with a present.

Kari, a young woman with an inferiority complex caused by her boyfriend’s all too perfect ex-girlfriend, meets an alien girl named Piin while she’s sitting on a park bench in the snow during the blackout. The alien seems to know Kari from the inside out and takes her on a ride in her spaceship. From this higher viewpoint, Kari sees her world in a completely new light and realizes there is no reason to worry so much about her boyfriend and his dedication and earnestness towards her.

The school girl Kimako has been secretly watching her mysterious new neighbour, a boy called Haneo who has the whole school buzzing with gossip because of his excentricities, through her window. She learns he’s obsessed with extraterrestrial lifeforms and finally gets to meet Haneo in person in the snow during the blackout when he’s following a spaceship with an alien and a human girl on board through the neighbourhood.

And Banana, who has taken some time off after her graduation from university because she doesn’t know what to do for a living, daydreams about becoming an essayist when she suddenly gets the chance to win a trip to Paris and work as a professional travel writer through a competition in a womens’ magazine. But as the deadline is drawing nearer and nearer, she’s facing a massive episode of writer’s block, which she’ll finally (and successfully!) be able to overcome on the night of the blackout, remembering a trip to a lovely antique toy store in the north-east of Japan which brought back so many memories from her childhood.

This short voyage into Mutsu A-ko’s world provides an excellent introduction to the author’s early works: These bittersweet romantic comedies are decorated with cute details and settings (kawayui being the keyword here, yes, even cuter than kawaii) and follow girls in preppy clothes – most of them shy, some of them quite free-spirited – who are mainly focused on getting their crush to notice them, while the male characters range from the level-headed to the geeky.

The original tankōbon of the title story was published in 1982, the other 4 short stories also included in the bunko version date back to even earlier, so you’ll get a good impression of the sense of carefreeness both of youth and adolescence portrayed in shōjo manga in general but even more specifically during the prosperous times of Japan’s high-speed economic growth. The ideas some of the characters have about gender roles or romantic love might be a little dated. But in the end, what wins the reader over even today is Mutsu A-ko’s idiosyncratic mixture of slightly over-the-top comedic elements and beautifully nostalgic or melancholy romantic scenes with pretty artwork that has become the very definition of what clever editors of Ribon magazine once coined otometic. No matter how old you are, if you’re reading this for the first time or out of nostalgia, Mutsu A-ko manages to draw you into her very unique, charming, magical world, a universe you’ll want to revisit again and again, and not just once a year ;)

More about the author, whose birthday it happens to be today (February 15th), about a recent new edition (Best Selection) of her early works published by Kawade and about the otometic ‘way of life’ is soon to come! But for now, if you’re proficient enough in the Japanese language, buy your copy of this lovely little book!

Title: Tenshi mo yumemiru rōsokuya (天使も夢みるローソク夜)
Author: Mutsu A-ko (also: Mutsu Eiko, 陸奥A子)
ISBN: 4-08-618395-1
Publisher: Shueisha
Format: Bunko, 320 pages
Year: 2005
Additional information: Contains the 4-chapter (‘omnibus’) title story and four other short stories (“Kintarou-kun”, “Oshaberi na hitomi”, “Milky Sepia Monogatari”, “Magical Mystery Instant Coffee”). Published as part of the 3-volume Ribon Otometic Memorial Selection (りぼん おとめチックメモリアル選) celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ribon. More info @ Shueisha Manga Net.

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Categories: Manga Review.
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Posted on Feb 15, 2017 (Wed, 6:54 pm). .

Shoujo anime overload

This is such a great season for shoujo anime fans! The TV anime adaptation of Ouran Koukou Host-bu is excellent, I like it a lot more than the manga (which I thought was rather boring when I was still reading LaLa) because it’s so explosively fast-paced and funny. And colourful and heart-warming. Aww. I’m usually not that fond of comedy but this I like, yes.

And Bokura ga ita! One of the few Betsucomi manga I like. So far I’ve only seen the first episode of the anime adaptation but it seemed pretty well done.

There’s NANA, of course, which I’m still following, of course, because the anime doesn’t disappoint at all, of course. The runner-up for this year’s most hyped shoujo title must be Nakahara Aya’s Lovely Complex because of its movie adaptation. I hope I’ll get to see the film soon (most definitely when the DVD comes out), for now I’ll have to be content with the cool furoku in Betsuma *_*
(And then there’s also the HachiKuro TV anime II and the HachiKuro movie. Great year for Shueisha, ha.)

I’ve also been watching Jyuohsei, the adaptation of the same-titled manga by one of my personal mangaka goddesses Itsuki Natsumi (♥).

And then from autumn on, there’ll be TV anime adaptations of Kin’iro no Corda (another bishounen title running in LaLa, I’ll only get to see it if I survive the cuteness and sheer silliness of Ouran Koukou!!) and Yamada Nadeshiko Shichi Henge (which I, admittedly, don’t like all that much as a manga).

Speaking of the latter: one of my favourite Betsufure series, Life by Suenobu Keiko, received the Kodansha Manga Award. So happy!! I felt even more glad when I read some of the members of the jury’s notes explaining they’d voted for Kawahara Kazune’s Koukou Debut and that it was a tight decision between those two titles in the shoujo category. I was a huge fan of Kawahara’s Sensei! but Koukou Debut turned out to be such a huge disappointment to me that I’m sort of twice as glad Life got the award ^^; But no really, Life‘s such a brilliant series. It embodies so much of ‘classic’ shoujo, the drama, the emotions, the style, I’m glad it’s been getting all this recognition!

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Categories: Anime, Manga, Various.
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Posted on Aug 3, 2006 (Thu, 5:01 pm). .

Honey & Clover

Time passes way too quickly for me at the moment; the first week of May is already over! Which means it’s high time I started writing something about the new anime series that started in April. So here’s my impression of Hachimitsu to Clover, the new anime series I’ve been looking forward to the most this season.

The original manga series by Umino Chica is one of my favourite manga at the moment. I’m so in love with it! It’s been running in Shueisha’s Young You for slightly more than 3 and a half years now and it received the Kodansha manga award in 2003. The manga succeeds in combining light-hearted and often downright hilarious comedy depicting the everyday life of a group of art school students and some of their teachers with philosophical moments of bittersweet melancholy and romance that can move the reader to tears. Primarily, it is a manga for young women but it speaks a universal language that transcends boundaries of age and gender and thus appeals to both female and male readers from young teenagers to adults.

So last night, I watched the first two episodes of the Hachikuro anime TV series that is currently shown on Fuji TV. I was half-expecting something stylish but I was by no means prepared for something this perfect *_* Mind you, the first chapters of the manga were published in Cutie (before Young You picked it up), a fashion magazine for young women (and one of my favourite mags, too ♥), which means the series always had a artsy, fashion, lifestyle and music-related sort of background. So it’s no wonder that the anime adaptation is supported by fashion labels such as adidas, we and Levi’s. And the opening sequence is directed by Noda Nagi, an art&video director responsible for ad campaigns for a variety of fashion labels and music videos; it’s the weirdest anime OP I’ve ever seen. In a good sense :)
I don’t like the opening song too much because I’ve never been a fan of (ex-Judy and Mary no) YUKI’s voice, in fact I find it quite annoying ^^; But it fits the quirky, indie pop inspired atmosphere of the anime just perfectly.

The show itself is beautifully animated, the character designs are splendid and the voice acting is superb (though I don’t like the voice of Takemoto at all -_-). I’m really fond of the colours, they work very well together with the general atmosphere of the anime :)
The story follows the manga quite closely, though there are a few extra scenes and variations here and there.
They’ve preserved the hilarious slapstick scenes (oh my God, I LOVE Morita!!!) and even Hagu’s annoying-ness is just as bearable as in the manga. They could’ve made me hate her by giving her an overly cutesy voice actress but the voice she now has is quite alright. I’m also glad they introduced Yamada Ayumi right in the first episode and gave her a few extra scenes because she’s my favourite character (go Ayu!) and I think she’s the one most fans of the manga can identify with most easily.

And then, right in the first episode… a melancholic moment… a song starts playing – and it’s Hachimitsu by Spitz. ;__; (‹– Yuuya’s face during that scene)

That was the moment I decided this is my anime.

The ending theme song by Suneo Hair is much better than the OP, and the ‘insert song’ of the second episode by Suga Shikao came at just the right moment, just like the Spitz song.
The background music reminds me a lot of the Chobits BGM, with easy listening tunes that aren’t anything special but match the tone of the story really well.

The only weakness of the anime is the typical problem of books turned into movies. Things that are explained in the manga by a universal narrator who, unfortunately, isn’t present in the anime. Each episode of the manga ends with a philosophical little note that often foreshadows things to come. There is no such thing in the anime. So for example, when Takemoto’s stomach suddenly aches when he thinks of Hagu while carrying Morita on his back, it is left to the viewer to realise that this pain isn’t caused by hunger but by love, something which the narrator tells us in the manga (in a very sweet way).
But so far, this is the only negative thing I can note about the anime. And I’m so glad they’ve preserved the overall atmosphere of the manga and even enhanced it with elements such as beautiful colour schemes and (not so) indie guitar pop songs.

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Categories: Anime, Manga, Music, Various.
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Posted on May 8, 2005 (Sun, 10:21 pm). .




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