Sara E.M. | 
11 25th, 2010| 
My American beau and his family are celebrating Thanksgiving (I’m still in Canader), so I thought I’d write a light-hearted post. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I rarely watch anime anymore, so there are plenty of series I haven’t watched, but I thought I’d write about some of my all-time favourites.
Itazura na Kiss
This 2008 anime is based on the 1991 shoujo manga series by Kaoru Tada. It’s a romantic comedy about a highschool girl’s fight to be with her crush, who is apparently waaay out of her league—-she’s in the bottom of their grade and he’s the top of the class. It’s a cute series, but sometimes it’s hard to watch the fixation she has on the guy she loves—-reminds me of how stupid I was in highschool!
Saikano (Saishuu Heiki Kanojo)
I haven’t seen this series in a long time, but I remember really loving it. The art is adorable and if I remember correctly, the series is only 13 episodes long.
Fushigi Yuugi
This series has a special place for me because it’s the first anime series I watched–sort of my gateway drug into anime. I think it was the first time I saw a girly heroine. The main character, Miaka, cares about boys, clothes, and all sorts of other “girly” things, but isn’t stupid or completely useless. I’m a big fan of Yuu Watase’s work; she combines shoujo themes with some pretty great action sequences. Although it’s nice to have a very feminine main character at the center of a story, I wouldn’t consider Miaka a terrific role model. She’s completely obsessed with leading man, Tamahome, and has an unsettling fixation with eating (isn’t being skinny but constantly obsessing with eating large quantities of food a warning sign for a eating disorder?). Also, I’m not comfortable with the main premise of the story—-since Miaka is the Priestess of Suzaku importance is placed on her remaining a virgin to satisfy the god of Suzaku. And so, it was nice to be exposed to a girly main character back when I was still a tomboy, but the series isn’t exactly an example of a story that empowers women.
Ayashi no Ceres
Another Yuu Watase series, but this time, there is an element of critique towards the impossibly high standards when it comes to the portrayal of love and relationships in storytelling. A lot is said about the treatment of women in what the series has to say about masculinity.
Rurouni Kenshin
This shounen series is another one of my “firsts”. This series has some of the most beautiful fight sequences in anime (although they can be frequently interrupted with monologues). Kenshin is a great character and the series has a nice story. It’s a bit long at 95 episodes, but to be honest, I lost interest in the mid 60s when the the first story arc ends and then stops following the plot of the manga. There’s a weird second arc about some lame Christian character—-he’s not lame because he’s Christian but because he’s sort of another Battousai, like Kenshin, and is trained in the same style; this was pretty much the key plot point of the first story arc with Kenshin’s nemesis Shishiwhatever-zombieman. Dudeman, if you’re a Kenshin fan don’t send me angry emails—-you know just as well as I do that long-haired crucifix man is boring and redundant.
Lovely Complex
This series is just adorable and hilarious and you should watch it!
Peach Girl
I loved this series—-OH NO WAIT, I forgot…I hated hated hated this series. This series is frustrating horrible fluff. Horrible fluffy CRACK. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop watching and ended up seeing the entire series. The ending made me hate it even more. Arrrgh~! I dare you to watch all 25 episodes of crappyness. Look, Funimation offers an even more annoying version online—-the entire series, translated into an annoying dub.
NANA
All girls need NANA. This is the motto of the series’ website. This is absolutely my favourite series. Storytelling at its finest! The creator, Ai Yazawa, is a genius of character and plot development. It has a very honest feel about it. I find quite often that many anime series make an attempt to be meaningful and mature storytelling simply end up feeling pretentious. Either that, or they layer the plot with absurd amounts of symbolism so they can impress fans in a post-modernesque faux-academic manner. NANA doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not—-anime, after all, is entertainment. But it entertains while presenting its situations and character interactions in a wonderfully believable manner. Yazawa has a knack for making you relate to her characters. With the incredibly successful manga still ongoing, the anime awaits a second season.
Anime I’m still planning on finishing:
When I do find time to watch some anime, I continue to watch Honey and Clover. I remember liking but not finishing Skip Beat and would really like to finish Paradise Kiss, another Yazawa title. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave it in the comments.
I was introduced to “Love*Com” when Viz licensed the manga and ran a preview of it in Shojo Beat. The story revolves around two classmates–Koizumi, a girl who is much taller than average–and Otani, a guy who is much shorter than average. They both have trouble finding a boyfriend/girlfriend because of their height. I’m a sucker for cute highschool romances and this series has the added charm of being incredibly funny. I’m pretty sure the live-action movie version of the series was licensed by Viz and released here in North America, but I would love to see the anime available. It’s on my must-buy list.
“ItaKiss” would seem like a fairly stereotypical shoujo anime series if you didn’t know that it’s based on an 11 year old manga series, which was fairly revolutionary in its time. A lot of what happens can seem a bit cliche, but I think it has been the manga’s influence on other shoujo series throughout the years that has made them now seem cliche. The manga series was left incomplete when the mangaka, Kaoru Tada, died do to a moving accident. The ending of the anime series was said to be based on the planned ending she had told her husband. The story is about a highschool girl in class “F” who develops a crush on the #1 student, Irie, a guy in class “A”. Unlike many highschool shoujo romances, Itakiss follows the two main characters after highschool and into their adult lives. Though I didn’t much like how dependant the main character, Kotoko, is on her love of Irie for her own happiness, the series was fairly addictive.
This (first) manga break is of my absolute favourite manga series, NANA. The series creator is Ai Yazawa and it’s still ongoing and serialized in Cookie (a monthly manga magazine in Japan). NANA is a hugely popular shoujo series; Volume 19, released last May, broke 2008 sales record by selling 780 000 copies in one week (the previous record was held by Naruto Vol. 42, which sold 505 000 copies in the week of May 2nd). The series gets its name from the two main characters; both named Nana, which means ‘seven’ in Japanese. The two girls end up living together in apartment 707, in Tokyo, and become good friends despite their opposite personalities.
NANA is more mature than the typical shoujo series you might find licensed here in North America. Personally, I would consider NANA more of a “josei” manga-geared more towards young adults than teens. I can imagine American promoters comparing it to popular teen TV dramas like the O.C. or Dawson’s Creek to try and market to the audience of those kinds of shows, but I don’t think that comparison would do it justice. The story deals with breakups, cheating, drugs, pregnancy, and other familiar drama themes, but none of it feels like it’s been dumped in-nearly everything that occurs in the plot feels necessary to the story-everything feels natural and, again, believable.
