(no subject)

[skygiants]

In Phase 1 of Project: Read All the Shojo Manga Ever, I am now seven volumes (and therefore halfway) through W Juliet!

This is the hero and heroine of W Juliet:



The one on the left with the short brown hair is the heroine, Ito Miura. She is a tomboy who plays the male lead in most of her school plays; she has hordes of female fans and a slew of overprotective brothers and wants to be an ACTION HEROINE when she grows up.

The one on the right with the long blonde hair and the pretty dress is the hero, Makoto Amano. He wants to be an actor, but his SUPER-STRICT FATHER, who wants him to inherit the FAMILY DOJO, has decreed that he will only be allowed to FOLLOW HIS DREAMS if he proves himself to have TRUE ACTING TALENT by spending his entire high school experience DISGUISED AS A GIRL without anyone finding out.

As, you know, you do.

Anyway, Ito figures out Makoto's secret in basically the first chapter and the rest of the story so far is them scrambling around trying to protect it, fending off various suitors of both sexes, and ~*~FOLLOWING THEIR DREAMS!~*~

THINGS I LIKE:

1. Okay, you guys know I am a sucker for genderbending, do we really have to go over this? And I like that Makoto is totally cool and unembarrassed about playing a girl, and in fact seems to get enormous amounts of lulz out of being the demure and pretty girly girl to Ito's raging tomboy.

2. No will-they-or-won't-they! Ito and Makoto basically start dating in the first chapter, and proceed to have an established relationship and actually talk about their issues and stuff, which is nice. Admittedly, much of the time those issues are things like "YOUR FAMILY WANTS TO KIDNAP YOU AND HOLD YOU HOSTAGE TO FORCE YOU TO TAKE OVER YOUR FAMILY DOJO, AM I MAKING THINGS WORSE??" but still, a good effort!

3. W Juliet is essentially a realistic manga, but every so often Emura will throw in a secret time tunnel or an angry ghost JUST TO KEEP IT INTERESTING. Because WHY NOT.

4. Emura herself, The Littlest Mangaka! She was like nineteen when she started publishing this, apparently - which makes me forgive her a lot of the weird pacing issues and so forth, because, I mean, she was a teenager! - and she bounces all over the place in her tiny enthusiastic author's notes and it is totally adorable.

THINGS I LIKE LESS:

1. Okay, the genderbending premise is awesome . . . but it is not played with nearly as much as I want it to be. The general trend seems to be that Ito and Makoto make each other more gender-normative through their relationship; people keep commenting that Makoto seems more ~manly~ and Ito more ~womanly~ the more they are together, and while Ito is totally a badass in her own right Makoto tends to do more of the dramatic rescuing from whatever the plot-of-the-week is, and Ito's family and Makoto tend to do a lot of solemn talking about protecting her (FROM WHAT? WHO KNOWS. Just protecting her in general, I guess. Because she is a girl, and girls need that!) and and. And, I mean, people are free to choose whatever gender performance they want, but I thought the point of a gender-bending manga was to subvert this kind of thing!

2. Despite the fact that the story's generally from Ito's perspective, the focus is a lot more on Makoto's dream than on Ito's - though I am hoping that will become more balanced.

3. Hahahaha okay this is only half a complaint and half just a lolz, but this is so not a realistic manga about high school theater.

4. I kind of just keep looking at the panels of Ito having dramatic moments with Makoto in girly outfits, and being sad to remember that Makoto is not actually a girl and they are not really lesbians. :(

But all the same it is very cute and lighthearted and the library has it all, and I will be reading the rest!

Comments

[furikku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have found that manga is not the go-to source for fantastic gender stuff, just because it's mainstream and Japan does not have a great record as far as deviation from gender norms. (Although I suppose neither does the US; Japan seems stricter about it, but I'm not living there so I can't really compare.)

Though I have not tried out W Juliet and it sounds cute. I may see if I can obtain it somehow.

[skygiants]

It's - hmm. I suspect my perspective is a little weird because I started on things like Ouran and Utena, you know? All the stuff that's outstandingly weird and interesting wrt gender - so I know it can be done in Japanese media, which means that when something explicitly sets out to be a genderbending story I'm going to want to hold it to the standards of the ones I've already seen.

It is indeed super cute, though!

[furikku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you've started yourself out with the oddballs that managed success in spite of a conservative society. :/ The majority of manga is occasionally infuriating with its gender roles. ;_;

[escalove.livejournal.com]

Actually I love this one more for the actual romance angle of it then I am the genderbending because I am so glad to have a shoujo manga that is not will they or won't they and where there is actual communication.

[skygiants]

These are also the things I really do like about it! I am very appreciative of the fact that even after the first two volumes, it's just basically a given that they like each other and are together and whatever issues they have they will talk out. That level of trust and communication is all too rare in a romance.

[izilen]

Yeah, me too! I feel that the manga itself is more Romance (with Crossdressing) than it is ABOUT crossdressing and gender issues. I just really loved their relationship!

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

I was all "YAY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS" at the top of this post and then I got to the rest of the post and maybe not, oh well. But I am still happy that so much cross-dressing manga exists in the first place, even if not all of it is particularly good.

[skygiants]

There is still some genderbending definitely! Just not as much as I wanted there to be. :(

ALTHOUGH. IF WE ARE TRADING RECS. HAHAHAHA I MUST ASK: HAVE YOU HEARD OF STAR DRIVER? Because if not, oh do I have a rec for you!

Is that the one about the transkids? Because I have been eyeing that With Interest!

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, we are actually watching Star Driver in anime club! Which on one hand means that I am watching it but on the other hand means that I only get two episodes a week, so. BUT I AM GREATLY ENJOYING IT. THERE CAN NEVER BE ENOUGH MALE TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCES.

[skygiants]

We are watching it slowly too - I think we are only up to episode nine? - but it is the LULZIEST THING EVER, oh man. GALACTIC PRETTY BOY INDEED. (Also, most hilariously OT3 anime ever. EVER.)

DULY NOTED, then. :D

[jothra]

I thought you might enjoy this one! I agree, it's not as trail-blazing as Ouran or Utena, but it is off the beaten path. And quite cute.

And I did not know about the littlest mangaka, that is awesome.

[skygiants]

Every time she is like "and now I am 21! :D And could finally quit my waitress job and be a full-time mangaka oh gosh!" in her little sidenotes, I just want to ruffle her hair!

. . . I mean, she is still probably several years older than me now, but . . . she wasn't then!

[izilen]

I like how your complaints are my complaints! I NEVER LIKED the "and now you are more girly woooo awesome this is RIGHT!" thing that goes on and how Emura portrays Ito's gender expression as...a sort of thing she grows out of. But there you go. I did not hamper my enjoyment of the ridic.

#2 AGREED SO HARD

And on number 4: ALL I WANTED was more of them being apparently lesbians all over the place and scandalizing their classmates. I wanted it so hard.

[skygiants]

What frustrates me most I think is that there are all the bits where she smacks Toma down when he says he wants to feminize her, but it's okay when Mako does it because true love makes you girly, apparently? But the ridic is definitely highly enjoyable.

Also hahahahaha yes, scandalizing half their classmates, and providing THE OTHER HALF (i.e. Ito's giant girl fanclub)) with HOPE.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I confess without reservation and with pride that this is one of my favorite shoujo manga ever. It...is probably in my top 5, but I must sit down and ponder what my favorite shoujo manga are after Basara.

[skygiants]

I have the first volume of Basara out of the library right now! I keep meaning to get around to it, but then I got distracted by the fact that every time I visit the other library I walk out with two more volumes of W Juliet instead.

[hafl.livejournal.com]

This is going into the list of hundreds of things I want to read at some point.

Did you hear about Torikaebaya monogatari? It is a 12th century Japanese story, about brother and sister who switch positions. It ends very normatively, but that's was to be expected at the time. Probably the best recommendation is the verdict of a serious, respectable scholar from the beginning of the 20th century: "It makes me want to vomit." There is an English translation of it titled Changelings.

And I second the recommendation of Hourou Musuko. I only had time to watch the first episode of the anime so far, but it's pretty good and the manga is even better.

[skygiants]

*cracks up* I have never heard of it (sadly my ~*~crossdressing medieval research~*~ from the days of my thesis was mostly Western-based just due to time constraints) but it sounds like it might be worth reading just for the scholarly response! And, you know, hilarity.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Re 1) of "Things I Like Less"--did you get to the part yet about Ito's very femme crossdressing/possibly transgender younger boy cousin who has a mad crush on Ito, and their head-of-the-family grandmother's attitude toward this?* That makes the gender-normative subtext of Ito and Makoto's relationship seem almost Utena-ishly subversive by comparison. I think izilen is right that "W Juliet" is basically a relatively traditional romance with crossdressing, rather than a story that genuinely focuses on the crossdressing/gender issues aspects of the situation even to the extent that Shakespeare's crossdressing-heroine comedies "As You Like It" and "Twelfth Night" do.


*Actually, a younger boy supporting character who would prefer to live as a girl also shows up in, I think, volume three of "Maid Sama," a series about a feisty, formidable female student body president at a previously all-boys (and still majority-male) high school who secretly works as a not-terribly-subservient cosplaying waitress at a maid cafe to help support her financially-pinched family. The boy wannabe-gothic Lolita is the maid cafe-owner's younger cousin, but in this case his attitude toward the rather stern, "unfemininely" ambitious, bossy, etc., student body president protagonist is far from adoring, and his apparent gender dysphoria is played more as an obsessive craving for the much greater flattering attention he gets when dressed as a pretty girl.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

In other news, the last time I was at the Strand used bookstore, it looked as if they had most, if not all, of the volumes of "Girl Got Game," that girl-impersonates-boy-to-play-on-boys'-basketball-team manga I mentioned in response to your "Hana-Kimi" post several months ago--for less than half price.

[skygiants]

INTRIGUING.

[skygiants]

I did just get to that part! And at first I was like "yay, acknowledgement that actual transvestites-by-preference exist!" and then I was like ". . . . oh. :("

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

I kind of just keep looking at the panels of Ito having dramatic moments with Makoto in girly outfits, and being sad to remember that Makoto is not actually a girl and they are not really lesbians. :(

This is what made me stop reading four volumes in -- I kept going ;_; every time Makoto took his shirt off or whatever. At least let me pretend a little bit, Emura! *sadface*

[skygiants]

I KNOW RIGHT. Spend less time being manly, Makoto! More time in drag!