meganbmoore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
meganbmoore) wrote2008-09-04 10:56 pm
meganbmoore) wrote2008-09-04 10:56 pm
Entry tags:
manga: High School Debut Vol 1
All through Junior High, Haruna ignored boys and lived her life for softball, though she became a shoujo addict in the process. In high school, she decided to set that aside, be a “normal girl,” and get a boyfriend. Apparently, she thought you automatically got a boyfriend as soon as you got to high school. I UNDERSTAND! FICTION LIED TO US BOTH!
Except she’s never talked to a guy before in that context, has no idea what kind of guy she likes, and her sole experience with m/f relationships is schmoopy shoujo. She’s also tan, buff, and tomboyish. She likes frilly clothes, pale colors, see-through fabric, and anything she vaguely associates with girly clothing. Realizing that the reason one deals with one’s weaknesses and gets ahead in sports is because one has a coach. So she decides she needs a coach to get a boyfriend. She settles on Yoh, an upperclassman who seems to have good fashion sense, and can tell what will and won’t work for a girl. Yoh is unable to resist the full force of a cute little puppy begging for a bone in human form, so he agrees to be her coach, teach her how to act and dress, etc., as long as she promises to never fall in love with him. This is difficult, as Yoh tends to make girls fall for him without even trying, and Haruna has to force herself to not turn into a cloud of shoujo sparkles anytime he does or says anything cool.
Did I mention that Haruna is manlier than Yoh? At one point, a boy Yoh thinks is bad news asks Haruna out. She ignores his advice and goes out with the guy anyway, only to learn Yoh was right. Yoh still shows up to rescue her, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t need it. She also made him read shoujo manga. And beat him at arm wrestling. And opened the mayonnaise jar. And this is done without ever making her seem unfeminine (just awkward and tomboyish, with an extreme girly streak) or him seem feminine, or weak.
It reminds me of Pearl pink, only without him being a closet pervert. Or her climbing all over him. Or the monkey love. Or the childhood love. Or the badass actress mother who climbs through ceilings. Ok, there’s a long list. But it still reminds me of Pearl Pink. At the very least, it makes me want to bounce off the walls and squee over straightforward shoujo romance.
Except she’s never talked to a guy before in that context, has no idea what kind of guy she likes, and her sole experience with m/f relationships is schmoopy shoujo. She’s also tan, buff, and tomboyish. She likes frilly clothes, pale colors, see-through fabric, and anything she vaguely associates with girly clothing. Realizing that the reason one deals with one’s weaknesses and gets ahead in sports is because one has a coach. So she decides she needs a coach to get a boyfriend. She settles on Yoh, an upperclassman who seems to have good fashion sense, and can tell what will and won’t work for a girl. Yoh is unable to resist the full force of a cute little puppy begging for a bone in human form, so he agrees to be her coach, teach her how to act and dress, etc., as long as she promises to never fall in love with him. This is difficult, as Yoh tends to make girls fall for him without even trying, and Haruna has to force herself to not turn into a cloud of shoujo sparkles anytime he does or says anything cool.
Did I mention that Haruna is manlier than Yoh? At one point, a boy Yoh thinks is bad news asks Haruna out. She ignores his advice and goes out with the guy anyway, only to learn Yoh was right. Yoh still shows up to rescue her, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t need it. She also made him read shoujo manga. And beat him at arm wrestling. And opened the mayonnaise jar. And this is done without ever making her seem unfeminine (just awkward and tomboyish, with an extreme girly streak) or him seem feminine, or weak.
It reminds me of Pearl pink, only without him being a closet pervert. Or her climbing all over him. Or the monkey love. Or the childhood love. Or the badass actress mother who climbs through ceilings. Ok, there’s a long list. But it still reminds me of Pearl Pink. At the very least, it makes me want to bounce off the walls and squee over straightforward shoujo romance.
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A lot of the rime, though, I see people praise a manga for it's art, and I look and it's pretty pictures slapped on a page with no storytelling, or overly cluttered. The point of manga and comics is visual storytelling. If you aren't telling the story with your pictures, then you aren't doing it right, no matter how pretty the pictures are.
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