Tag: abuse in shoujo

Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 23

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, Manga2 Comments

This Week
Boys Over Flowers vol. 21
Dengeki Daisy vol. 14
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 13 (conclusion!)
Fairy Cube vol. 1

There’s been one kind of curious consistency across the worst of the worst I’ve looked at – the tendency to declare the abusive boyfriends, “gentle.” This never made sense to me – how can you call someone gentle right after he slapped you across the face? “Gentle” is a way of behaving and treating others, not some innate quality. It is the antonym of “rough”, which is how one would describe a man who shouts and hits. After seeing it come up again and again, I figured it must be a quirk of translation. Sometimes a particular way of translating a word or phrase becomes standard practice, even if it doesn’t totally make sense in English.

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 21

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, Manga4 Comments

This Week
Boys Over Flowers vol. 19
Dengeki Daisy vol. 12
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 11
The Earl and the Fairy vol. 3
Flower in a Storm vol. 2

Where’s the josei?

It’s time to answer yet another question absolutely nobody has asked!

As I go through the Shojo Beat catalog (which has many good titles I’m looking forward to reading), there’s been a few that I’ve skipped even though they are available. I chose not to cover series like Crown of Love and Everyone’s Getting Married, nor will I be reading Nana or Honey and Clover. These are all great series that I enjoy, but they’re josei rather than shoujo, i.e. series aimed at an adult female audience rather than a teenage audience.

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 20

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, Manga1 Comment

This Week
Boys Over Flowers vol. 18
Dengeki Daisy vol. 11
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 10
The Earl and the Fairy vol. 2
Flower in a Storm vol. 1

Spring 2017 Shoujo

As I said last week, this coming season brings an unprecedented eleven shows clearly and explicitly aimed at a female audience, not counting shows that could go either way or appear to be aimed at a general audience. I’ve been eyeing the databases, looking over what shows I’m anticipating most. I don’t have the best track record for keeping up with current anime – I still have one episode each of Sakura Quest and Code: Realize to watch – but I’m still eager and excited to see female viewership being explicitly marketed to. What are these shows?

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers Week 19

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, MangaLeave a comment

This Week:
Boys Over Flowers vol. 17
Dengeki Daisy vol. 10
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 9
The Earl and the Fairy vol. 1

The spring anime season fast approaches and with it comes an avalanche of female-oriented new series. Looking at the spring chart, I counted no fewer than 11 series unambiguously aimed at women and girls, which is unprecedented for as long as I can remember. Not all of them appeal to me, and some of them will probably even be bad. But in a landscape where we get this much variety, it doesn’t feel like just one or two series have to represent your entire marketing demographic on their own. It’s okay for some of them to be bad, because you can easily find something else that appeals to you more.

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 18

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, Manga7 Comments

This Week
Black Bird vol. 18 (conclusion!)
Boys Over Flowers vol. 16
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 13 (conclusion!)
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 10
Dengeki Daisy vol. 9
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 8

So… much… data…

I’ll keep this short, because this installment is already long enough.

Two series finish this week, one that I’ll miss and one that I definitely won’t. In the past, when series wrapped up, I just posted the total points for wrap-up. But I’ve been taking much more granular data than that, counting up how many instances of different forms of abuse occur. And this week, as I finished up Black Bird, a series that has been a thorn in my side since the very start, I thought, “What’s the point of that granularity if I don’t actually do anything with it?”

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 17

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, Manga3 Comments

This Week
Black Bird vol. 17
Boys Over Flowers vol. 15
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 12
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 9
Dengeki Daisy vol. 8
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 7

Prestige Shoujo

Have y’all checked out Children of the Whales yet? Netflix is still holding the anime hostage, but the first volume of the manga is out in English. It’s good, solid fantasy that builds up a world I’m interested in exploring more, with an interesting magic system and plenty of mystery. The character writing is a little stiff, but the intrigue more than makes up for it.

It’s also the first shoujo series to be published under the Viz Signature line. For the uninitiated, Viz has a few imprints: Shojo Beat for their shoujo titles; Shonen Jump for, well, Shonen Jump; Viz Select for smaller digital releases; and Viz Signature, which they define as “Bringing classic and cutting-edge graphic novels to an audience of discerning readers hungry for sophisticated stories and superlative art.” This is great, except the line reminds me more of the tastes of old-school comic book guys that blocked shoujo out of the US manga scene for much of the 80’s and 90’s. Yes, it does have some complex, challenging series, such as the various works of Naoki Urasawa and Inio Asano. But, other than a couple of Fumi Yoshinaga works and Children of the Whales, it’s almost universally seinen.

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 16

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, List, Manga2 Comments

This Week
Black Bird vol. 16
Boys Over Flowers vol. 14
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 11
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 8
Dengeki Daisy vol. 7
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 6

There’s no one way to read a story

Last week, Anime Feminist had an interview about mental illness in Japan and anime with a former Aokigahara volunteer go up. It’s a really lovely interview and a great read – I highly recommend it if you haven’t checked it out yet. Makoto Kageyama speaks touchingly about their own mental health struggles in the context of how such things are regarded in Japanese culture. Their discussion of how anime and manga treat depression and anxiety like things that can be cured through the power of friendship contextualizes quite a few series. Continue reading “Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 16” →

Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 15

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, List, MangaLeave a comment

This Week
Black Bird vol. 15
Boys Over Flowers vol. 13
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 10
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 7
Dengeki Daisy vol. 6
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 5

I just finished rereading Fruits Basket, one of my favorite series from when I was in high school. It’s a flawed work, but overall it holds up really well for when it came out and for a mangaka’s first major title. The story is explicitly about abuse, portrayed both literally and through metaphor, and it handles the subject better than most fiction. Most of the characters are victims of abuse, and the story admirably portrays how they’re unable to connect to others healthily. The series ran over 20 volumes, and it’s not until close to the very end that the main couple are ready to connect romantically. That got me thinking – for the highest-scoring series I’ve covered, what is at the root of their trauma?

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Abuse in Shoujo by the Numbers: Week 14

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, MangaLeave a comment

Last Week:
Black Bird vol. 14
Boys Over Flowers vol. 12
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 9
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 6
Dengeki Daisy vol. 5
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 4

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Black Bird vol. 14

Sho is finally making a direct move against Kyo, and the battle between them is a close match. Will Sho’s recent feast on Misao’s blood give him the power to overcome Kyo? Or does Sho hope being killed in front of her will add to the pain of betrayal Misao already feels? (summary by Viz)

9 points

The Sho arc of Black Bird draws to a close and Misao returns home. Kyo apparently hypnotized her parents into thinking she was only gone for a night, when really he had spirited away their daughter for months. This strikes me as remarkably scuzzy, and I don’t think it was every explained previously exactly what he was doing and how he was isolating her. She also has been out of school all that time and is terribly behind on her schoolwork, so of course Kyo — ahem, Mr. Usui — has to tutor her. None of her friends seem particularly concerned about her months-long disappearance either. “Isolating from family and friends” is a major sign of potential abuse and, though Misao chose to go with Kyo voluntarily, she was effectively cut off from everyone outside Kyo’s tengu clan, with no one to support her if things went sour.

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Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 12

On By CaitlinIn Analysis, List, Manga1 Comment

This week:
Black Bird vol. 12
Boys Over Flowers vol. 10
Dawn of the Arcana vol. 7
Demon Love Spell vol. 6
The Demon Prince of Momochi House vol. 4
Dengeki Daisy vol. 3
A Devil and Her Love Song vol. 2

Although shoujo has been around in Japan about as long as manga in its current form has, it took a long time to find an audience in the US.

Actually, no. Scratch that. The audience was always here. It took a long time to for it to become accessible to its audience here.

A long, long time ago, in the strange era knowns as the “80s and 90s”, manga was first starting to come to the US, but it was a far cry from what we know today. The industry was controlled by comic books guys and intended to appeal to other comic book guys, so most of what came over was what was already in their wheelhouse: seinen and shonen. And while they imported many classics in that time, such as Maison Ikkoku, Akira, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, attitudes toward shoujo ranged from “inconsequential fluff” to “unmarketable.” It wasn’t until the late 90’s, when Sailor Moon became a modest success, that companies started considering teenage girls a viable audience. And when Tokyopop, for all the things they did wrong, embraced that audience, they ushered in a manga boom that would change the face of the US manga industry forever. Continue reading “Abusive Relationships in Shoujo Manga by the Numbers: Week 12” →