Of Swords and Parasols

When they were seven, Takishima Kei dealt Hanazono Hikari her first defeat.  Ever since then, Hikari has been trying to beat Kei at something.  Anything.  Unfortunately, Kei has a perfect photographic memory, and can remember every detail of a book and how to do anything after seeing it once.  Now they’re 15 and members of “Special A,” a class of the seven top students in their grade at a private academy.  They are, of course, the two highest ranked students, with Hikari always barely scoring lower than Kei.  They’ve been in the same class with the other five students in the class ever since elementary school, and everyone but Hikari knows that Kei is in love with her.

Even though she makes far too big a deal of everything, Hikari is adorable, especially as she applies herself to everything in life with as much energy as she does trying to beat Kei, and is utterly unaware of what enemies and ill will are.  The rest of the students in the Special A class are pretty fun, including a pair of fraternal twins from a family of gifted musicians, but whose own music is so bad it causes bad luck (and the girl, for unknown reasons, never speaks, but writes everything down on a notepad instead) their childhood friend, who’s almost their keeper, the school director’s wanderlust driven son, and a tea-obsessed girl who has a girlcrush on Hikari.  They’re a little flat, but it’s early yet.

But then there’s Kei. Kei is…aggravating. Granted, he’s supposed to be a little aggravating, but it’s a bit much. He isn’t just the best at academic and/or athletic pursuits, he’s the best at everything.  It isn’t that Hikari isn’t better at anything, it’s that she isn’t as good at anything, and it’s a serious imbalance that the series is based around. If they went fishing, he’d get more fish.  When they do something together as a team, he does it better.  And he makes sure she knows it.  Which is my main problem.  Every chance he gets, he drives it home, egging her on.  And he does it with an annoyingly superior attitude.  Though, to be honest, it’s not the attitude itself, but the why of the attitude.  For example, Ren in Skip-Beat arguably has a worse attitude in early volumes.  He, however, has the attitude because Kyoko is using his profession for revenge, and treats it with disrespect.  When Kyoko starts to take it seriously, he adjusts his attitude and helps her because then she was trying her best.

Kei’s superior attitude comes from the fact that Hikari is trying her hardest, and is used to make sure she never forgets that she’s “not as good as” he is.  He also tends to bring “because you’re a girl” into the equation at times.  (Granted, he has a point when she’s pushing herself too hard physically, but again, it’s how he does it.)  I know it’s the whole “pick on the girl you like” thing, but I think it’s taken a little too far.  The only time I really like him is when he gets angry (often violently so) when someone else indicates Hikari is second best, or not good enough, or seems to threaten her, or comes between him and the terrible food Hikari had to make for him after losing a bet.  I am very easy that way.  (One could actually argue that he has an abnormal fixation on Hikari, but given many of the things I like, I have no leg to stand on there.)  We’re obviously meant to sympathize with him for liking Hikari so much when she completely doesn’t “get it,” but, well, I’m not sure why she would. He pretty much digs his own grave.

Still, despite my aggravation with Kei (and really, the way his fixation tends to manifest does make up for a lot of it, much as it shames me to admit it) it is rather fun and cute, though not incredibly stand-out yet.  As long as the imbalance doesn’t get to me too much, I’ll stick with it.

Since I seem to be in one of my shoujo phases*, I decided to use rightstuf's sale to check out some of Viz's latest offerings.  As I try to read at least a bit of new manga before getting it, I have spent much of today reading bits of manga.  And so:

High School Debut:  A former tomboy who loves shoujo manga and spent all of junior high playing sports decides to become more girly and get a boyfriend in High School, except she completely sucks at being girly, so she asks Yoh, a guy who clearly hates being a bishounen, to help her because he has great fashion sense, and he agrees because she's like a helpless puppy who wants love and affection as long as she doesn't fall in love with him.  I was a goner when she said she was confused when she got to HS, because all the fiction she reads told her you got a boyfriend when you turned 15 and entered HS.  I completely understand this misunderstanding.

Special A:  Girl has been second place tyo a boy in her class since they were 5~, and has been trying to beat him in anything ever since.  He blatantly has a massive crush on her, but seems to show it by being a verbal pigtail puller, while she seems solely focused on competing.  I suspect this will be one of those where he does everything in his power except use actual words to get her to notice he likes her, and she remains dense as can be about it, but we'll see.

Kaze Hikaru:  Girl disguises self as boy and joins the Shinsengumi, where she falls in love with Okita Souji.  I actually checked this out when it first came out, and thought it was nice but nothing special, and I was being choosy at the time.  But it's been recced to me a few times lately, so I read the first couple chapters again and it seems worth giving a second chance.

Haruko Beyond the Stream of Time:  I actually looked at this at the store on Weds and not for long, but I like Heian era stories, and I haven't read a shoujo "girl in another time/world" series in a while.

Monkey High and Love Com I might check out at a later date(probably will, actually.)  Both look very cute, but didn't immediately grab me(which could be affected by the fact that I read them last), and I'm already adding enough titles to my reading list as it is.

Also, not shoujo, but I checked out Record of the Fallen Vampire.  The first 50 or so pages were kinda giggle worthy bad, but then we had things like   Oh, and the vampire lord has spent a thousand years searching for his own True Love, who was sealed away somewhere, and he keeps finding fake tombs.  For added kicks, the vampire lord tries to do the tall, dark and dangerous thing, but his image is completely ruined because he travels with this teeny girl who looks about 7 but is actually 70~(please, manga, do not make her the reincarnation of his True Love and go to the loli place) who he has trained to be a sniper, and she's always hanging on him and stuffing kittens in his cloak and ruining his image.  I have no idea how good this is, but once I got near the end of the first chapter, it was quite fun.


*This translates as a phase I go through at least once a year when my completely not secret need for a bit of mush and sap and cuteness wins out over all else and I start reading a bunch of new shoujo titles.  A couple volumes later, all the tropes I hate start jumping out at me and I want to strangle characters, and I remember why I tend to prefer shounen and drop all but a couple of the shoujo titles.  As these phases have resulted in Wallflower, W Juliet and Skip-Beat (Basara, Fruits Basket, Mars, and Yuu Watase stuff predates when shoujo started annoying me), I actually have no complaints...

Also, Kyoko, stop with this "eye level with Ren's chest" thing.  Do you know how hard that is to icon?  With most pictures, if I get you in the frame, then he has no head.  I get him in the frame and you're a forehead.  Height difference icons aside, it makes a girl shake her fist.  It's as bad as iconning Trick.  Go find a stool to stand on.  Cursed catered-to kinks being inconvenient.  You and Rukia should go bond over being kickass heroines who can fit in people's pockets while Ren and Renji bond over having massive crushes on girls half their size who seem oblivious to said crushes.