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Feb. 2nd, 2011 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIn 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!
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!
