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These are two single volume works by Arina Tanemura, a mangaka whose work I’ve heard both good and bad things about. I’ve been meaning to check her stuff out for a while, but keep getting scared off by the eyes. They make Tohru Honda’s look teeny.
I.O.N. is about a young woman named Ion whose father told her that if she spelled out her name as a chant, then good things would happen to her. She does this while fleeing her class president (who may be the student body president, actually, I’m not sure), who has a crush on her, and meets Mikado, a student who is trying to start up a club for psychic research. She falls in love with him immediately because he’s cute and has a dream. I think. Since Mikado and the class president hate each other, she tricks the class president into approving a club she created for Mikado. Later, she gains psychic powers while fooling around with his research, and accidentally burns down the shed he uses, and now has an excuse (psychic powers) to hang around Mikado. Later, random angst is added as Mikado’s ex shows up and Ion starts fretting over whether he likes her as a girl or a psychic.
Mostly, this one bored me. I tend to prefer shoujo fluff to the shoujo romantic angstfests (I prefer comedy, scifi, historical of fantasy, though), but I like a little substance to it, or at least interesting characterization. If nothing else, I like my heroines to have at least something on their minds than whether or not the guy likes her.
Short-Tempered Melancholic is a collection of four short stories. The title story is a two part story about a modern ninja girl (For the purposes of this post, I prefer “ninja girl” to “kunoichi,” ok?) who is in charge of protecting her family’s treasure. Reading this one went something like this:
ME: Ninja girl! Cool!
NINJA GIRL: *kicks butt while non-fighter male BFF looks on*
BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “Ninja girl, you should try to be more ladylike.”
NINJA GIRL: “OK! I will give up being a ninja girl and become a proper lady.”
ME: OMG WTF NO NO NO GET IT OFF!!!
NINJA GIRL: *tries and fails every stereotypical ladylike thing known to man*
ME: It’s infecting me it’s touching me I might get cooties HELP HELP HELP!!!
BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “Ha ha! I am secretly an enemy out to steal your family treasure!”
NINJA GIRL: “OMG! You suck! I’m over you!” *kicks his butt*
ME and NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF: “Whew!!”
ME: “Oh! Another chapter!”
NINJA GIRL: “Oh no! Non-Fighter Male BFF is walking with another girl! I shall fall to pieces!”
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF and BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “I love Ninja Girl! You love her too? We must duel like true men and she is the reward to be given out at the end of the fight!”
ME: Touching me infecting me get it off off off it’s touching mmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF to NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: “You must teach me to fight so I can claim true love!”
NINJA GIRL: “He loves someone else! I remain oblivious as to why I should care but am destroyed!”
BOYS: *fight*
NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: *pretends to kidnap Ninja Girl at fight*
NINJA GIRL: *saves self*
ME: MILD REDEMPTION!
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF: *was trying to save*
NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: “You win! I was going to give her to whoever stopped fight to try to rescue Ninja Girl! Let’s go toughen you up.”
NINJA GIRL: “I have as many problems with this as I did with being told to change who I was by the boy I liked.”
OTHER GIRL: “I was utterly irrelevant, wasn’t I?”
ME: TOUCHING MMMMEEEEE!!!!
And yet, there was not as much need to scrub my brain as there was when I read Special A a while back. Then again, Special A deceived me and initially made me think it had potential for longer than 5 pages.
Like I.O.N., I think the reason I stuck with the story was that was that with more substance and development and more ultimately going on than fretting about liking a guy, I suspect I could have really liked Short-Tempered Melancholic. The other three stories in this volume were enjoyable but normal shoujo fluff. This Love is Nonfiction started in a way that threatened to incite my shoujo rage (plain girl’s pretty friend apparently stealing plain girl’s cute penpal) but did a reversal (or rather, double gimmick) that ended up making it cute and my favorite of the collection. All the stories, though, still suffered from heroines with nothing on their minds but getting the guy, and all the guys in both books were fairly bland to me.
I have the first two volumes of Time Stranger Kyoko at home. (I got all four booksreally cheap a month or so ago.) It’s a series, instead of a one-off or short story, so can I expect more substance? Character development? (I’ve read single volume works and manga short stories with plot and development before, so I know it can be done!) Does the heroine have anything but boys on her mind?
I.O.N. is about a young woman named Ion whose father told her that if she spelled out her name as a chant, then good things would happen to her. She does this while fleeing her class president (who may be the student body president, actually, I’m not sure), who has a crush on her, and meets Mikado, a student who is trying to start up a club for psychic research. She falls in love with him immediately because he’s cute and has a dream. I think. Since Mikado and the class president hate each other, she tricks the class president into approving a club she created for Mikado. Later, she gains psychic powers while fooling around with his research, and accidentally burns down the shed he uses, and now has an excuse (psychic powers) to hang around Mikado. Later, random angst is added as Mikado’s ex shows up and Ion starts fretting over whether he likes her as a girl or a psychic.
Mostly, this one bored me. I tend to prefer shoujo fluff to the shoujo romantic angstfests (I prefer comedy, scifi, historical of fantasy, though), but I like a little substance to it, or at least interesting characterization. If nothing else, I like my heroines to have at least something on their minds than whether or not the guy likes her.
Short-Tempered Melancholic is a collection of four short stories. The title story is a two part story about a modern ninja girl (For the purposes of this post, I prefer “ninja girl” to “kunoichi,” ok?) who is in charge of protecting her family’s treasure. Reading this one went something like this:
ME: Ninja girl! Cool!
NINJA GIRL: *kicks butt while non-fighter male BFF looks on*
BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “Ninja girl, you should try to be more ladylike.”
NINJA GIRL: “OK! I will give up being a ninja girl and become a proper lady.”
ME: OMG WTF NO NO NO GET IT OFF!!!
NINJA GIRL: *tries and fails every stereotypical ladylike thing known to man*
ME: It’s infecting me it’s touching me I might get cooties HELP HELP HELP!!!
BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “Ha ha! I am secretly an enemy out to steal your family treasure!”
NINJA GIRL: “OMG! You suck! I’m over you!” *kicks his butt*
ME and NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF: “Whew!!”
ME: “Oh! Another chapter!”
NINJA GIRL: “Oh no! Non-Fighter Male BFF is walking with another girl! I shall fall to pieces!”
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF and BLANDLY CUTE BOY NINJA GIRL LIKES EVEN THOUGH NON-FIGHTER BFF IS CLEARLY THE ONE FOR NINJA GIRL: “I love Ninja Girl! You love her too? We must duel like true men and she is the reward to be given out at the end of the fight!”
ME: Touching me infecting me get it off off off it’s touching mmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF to NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: “You must teach me to fight so I can claim true love!”
NINJA GIRL: “He loves someone else! I remain oblivious as to why I should care but am destroyed!”
BOYS: *fight*
NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: *pretends to kidnap Ninja Girl at fight*
NINJA GIRL: *saves self*
ME: MILD REDEMPTION!
NON-FIGHTER MALE BFF: *was trying to save*
NINJA GIRL’S GRANDFATHER: “You win! I was going to give her to whoever stopped fight to try to rescue Ninja Girl! Let’s go toughen you up.”
NINJA GIRL: “I have as many problems with this as I did with being told to change who I was by the boy I liked.”
OTHER GIRL: “I was utterly irrelevant, wasn’t I?”
ME: TOUCHING MMMMEEEEE!!!!
And yet, there was not as much need to scrub my brain as there was when I read Special A a while back. Then again, Special A deceived me and initially made me think it had potential for longer than 5 pages.
Like I.O.N., I think the reason I stuck with the story was that was that with more substance and development and more ultimately going on than fretting about liking a guy, I suspect I could have really liked Short-Tempered Melancholic. The other three stories in this volume were enjoyable but normal shoujo fluff. This Love is Nonfiction started in a way that threatened to incite my shoujo rage (plain girl’s pretty friend apparently stealing plain girl’s cute penpal) but did a reversal (or rather, double gimmick) that ended up making it cute and my favorite of the collection. All the stories, though, still suffered from heroines with nothing on their minds but getting the guy, and all the guys in both books were fairly bland to me.
I have the first two volumes of Time Stranger Kyoko at home. (I got all four booksreally cheap a month or so ago.) It’s a series, instead of a one-off or short story, so can I expect more substance? Character development? (I’ve read single volume works and manga short stories with plot and development before, so I know it can be done!) Does the heroine have anything but boys on her mind?
