skygiants

A few months ago, the new 7 Seeds anime launched on Netflix! I watched the first four episodes!

...then I fell headfirst into rereading all 35 volumes of the manga and have been spending most of my unscheduled time doing that for the last two months, finally actually getting all the way to the end, which the last time I did a massive 7 Seeds read had neither been written nor translated. I am happy to report: I love this manga even more than I did before! And I already loved it a lot.

(If you follow me on Twitter, none of this will be news to you, because I've been spamming my entire timeline with livetweets. Too bad! You're getting it again anyway!)

The premise of 7 Seeds: in the near future, the Earth gets hit with an enormous meteor. The government of Japan, in its infinite wisdom, attempts a number of increasingly absurd schemes to try to save humanity; unfortunately, the most absurd of all -- secretly freeze-drying small groups of unsuspecting teenagers in time capsules set to open after several millenia in hopes the Earth will once again be livable by then -- is the one that sticks.

Three of the five groups of kids are chosen through a combination of "which kids are famous?" and "which kids' parents have influence?", which yields a mix of confused and resentful piano prodigies, politician's daughters, tech-start-up wunderkind, and talented high school baseball players, but only one half-trained doomsday prepper.

The fourth group, Team Summer A, actually does get some doomsday prep; unfortunately, their preparation consists of a childhood of intensive paramilitary training followed by a brutal final exam that leaves them all possessed of great survival skills, zero social skills, and an enormous load of emotional trauma. This is understandably concerning to everyone else they meet.

And then there's Team Summer B, the control group -- a last minute afterthought by the designers of the project, who suddenly got genre-savvy and realized that the survival of the human race was absolutely going to depend on a plucky band of misfits.



Obviously, we start out with Summer B; gradually the rest of the teams are introduced and start bumping into each other, and plot unfolds from there, helped along by an assortment of natural and unnatural perils, an escalating series of really dramatic escape rooms, and everyone's colliding character development. Sometimes it is very funny! Sometimes it's emotionally devastating! Yumi Tamura loves bugs, bacteria, and dehydrated dinosaurs! ( Here's a collection of random panels I gathered during my reread, presented without context )

Horror and hijinks aside, though, the manga does some incredible long-game character development, as well as some of the most interesting work I've ever seen as far as negotiating the complexity of consequence. ( Emotional arc plot spoilers, no details )

I also really like how Yumi Tamura generally handles relationships. Obviously when you have 30 teens constantly getting into various high-adrenaline situations in different combinations there are going to be a lot of Intense Feelings all over the place, and certainly if you mapped it all out you could get a hilariously complicated love polygon diagram, but the thing that makes it work so well for me is that most of the relationships are undefinably intense -- most of the kids have at least three or four different dynamics that sit so exactly on the line between Romance and Intense Friendship that none of the participants themselves are sure exactly where they are, and it doesn't really matter in any case because the friendship is what's actually important.

Only six of the thirty kids in the cast end the manga in anything I would call a tidy pair. Everything else continues in a state of intense ambiguity where nothing is sure except that they Care About Some Of These Other Kids A Whole Lot, Maybe With Pants Feelings But Who Really Knows. Natsu happily pines after safely unattainable Arashi while accidentally becoming best friends with him instead; Ran has a perfectly fine co-dictatorship-with-benefits situation going on but the manga is way more interested in the fact that she's literally the only person her architect rival has ever cared about as a human; Hana and Aramaki both possess the fatal combination of being attractive, competent AND deeply emotionally needy and thus manage to trigger sparkly eyes and dokidoki hearts in literally everybody they meet (who doesn't want to murder them). That's fine! Go to town! It's the post-apocalypse and you're all seventeen and traditional monogamy has no place in the new world anyway; just ask Ayu, who's got a shortlist of candidates to co-parent her first and second children.

( For the five people who've already read the manga, I have more shipping opinions. )

I've spent the past several weeks zooming through a massive reread of Skip Beat!, my VERY FAVORITE manga about HIGHLY IMPLAUSIBLE SHOWBIZ HIJINKS!!!!

Skip Beat! stars sixteen-year-old Kyoko, who ran away from an emotionally abusive mother who doesn't care about her to go to the city with her childhood crush Sho ... only to find out that Sho ALSO is an asshole who doesn't care about her, and has just been using her to support him and cook and pay the rent so that he can Make It Big In Show Business!

KYOKO SWEARS REVENGE!!!

"Yeah, good luck with that," says Sho, "I am now a super famous pop star, you cannot get anywhere near me."

...KYOKO SWEARS TO SOMEHOW BECOME THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON IN THE JAPANESE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY AND THEN HAVE HER REVENGE!!!!!

However, as Kyoko attempts to launch herself against show business, she starts to love acting for its own sake -- and she also starts to develop goals that are about herself, and liking herself, and doing things for her own sake, rather than as an emotionally neglected kid's desperate attempt to please other people. Developing and embodying different characters becomes a way for her to embrace and come to terms with different pieces of herself!

Kyoko's character arc of self-realization and self-acceptance is incredibly satisfying, and the value of it is in no way diminished by the fact that the profession of acting, as envisioned by the author of Skip Beat!, appears to be mostly centered around incredibly method improv that leads to ACTING BATTLES!! (You win an acting battle if your acting is just so convincing and your line readings so well-calculated that the emotional impact of the scene always ends up where you want it to, regardless of whatever your scene partner thinks they're doing. Definitely normal acting stuff, right? Is this not ... how acting works .....?)

Kyoko's incredibly judgmental mentor in the SUPER SERIOUS METHOD IMPROV technique is Japan's Most Famous Heartthrob Actor, Ren Tsuruga. Alas for Ren, Kyoko has Sworn Off Love Forever Due To Her Past Traumatic Experiences, and is therefore completely oblivious that Japan's Most Famous Heartthrob Actor spends most of the series pining for her.

As a result, their romance progresses mostly through various rounds of Method Acting Chicken, which is all fun and games until the THIRTY-CHAPTER ARC when someone instructs these children to roleplay incestuous siblings as part of a job and forgets to teach them about safewords first.

(Meanwhile, as soon as Kyoko starts evidencing signs that she might have a life outside of obsessing over her hatred for Sho, Sho promptly becomes counter-obsessed with her and dedicates her life to making sure they are FOREVER NEMESES.)

Kyoko is probably one of my favorite all-time fictional characters. She's sweet, polite and respectful; she's a seething bundle of furious resentment who terrifies small children that cross her path; she loves fairies and princesses and flowers! ... and also voodoo dolls and curses; she's completely naive half the time, and completely cynical the other half the time. The only constant is that whatever she's doing, she is doing it at ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY PERCENT!!!! She's completely over-the-top in twelve different directions, but the bundle of personality contradictions at the heart of her makes her feel incredibly human.

I also love the fact that there are literally no unsympathetic female characters in Skip Beat!. Kyoko really does eventually befriend EVERY WOMAN. Her rivals are inspired by her terrifying determination! Sho's female managers LOVE HER and just want her and Sho to get back together! Her agency director's spoiled granddaughter bonds with her over curse dolls and then follows her around like a duckling! The two-faced costar who launches a vicious Mean Girl sabotage attack against her (ironically, while Kyoko is playing the villainous role of Mean Girl Natsu) -- well, Kyoko is just going to befriend her anyway:



And then, of course, there's Moko -- Kyoko's agency rival-turned-reluctant-best-friend who might actually be the real series love interest. (Moko defeating Ren for Best Giver Of Birthday Presents To Kyoko might be my favorite scene in the whole series.)

Even Kyoko's terrible mother -- well, I will talk about Kyoko's mother briefly in a spoilery follow-up post. The point of this post is, I love Skip Beat! There was a period of time when it seemed like it was going to be Ren's manpain forever when I thought I might eventually fall out of love with Skip Beat!, because Ren's manpain is super not what I am here for, but I am happy to report that is not the case. Please go on for another 300 chapters, Skip Beat! I'M ON BOARD. I'M READY.

Sooooo after several months of experiencing Attack on Titan secondhand on Tumblr, I finally decided to read the manga firsthand. I just wanted to get the jokes! I did not expect to get emotionally invested. THE MORE FOOL I.

For anyone who has escaped the phenomenon to date, Attack on Titan is a shonen manga, and, recently, anime series about a world in which humanity lives inside walls and is menaced by cheerful man-eating giants who make no biological sense. (The fact that they make no biological sense is a plot point.)



It is kind of ridiculous, and kind of nihilist (lots of chewed-up death) but I really like it! I have grown really terribly fond of all the asshole and/or idiot teenagers who mostly vibrate between being DEEPLY PERPLEXED and DEEPLY FULL OF RAGE at a universe that is terrible because a.) it makes no sense and they are likely to be eaten at any moment and b.) they are teenagers. Normally I get frustrated by stories full of stupid teenagers, but in this case it charms me, mostly because nobody is trying to pretend they are anything other than terrible. At one point late in the manga, one character attempts to curb her girlfriend's action suicide by shouting at her, "YOU'RE THE PERSON WITH THE WORST PERSONALITY IMAGINABLE! DON'T THROW YOUR LIFE AWAY!" This is completely accurate, except there are SO MANY CONTENDERS for "worst personality imaginable." I am deeply fond of all of them. Even the antagonists. ESPECIALLY the antagonists. ( spoiler ) (There are a few nice ones! Mostly they are developing into Machiavellian manipulation machines, though, so "nice" depends on how you look at it.)

The story also has a structure that -- I think is maybe common to shonen? This is the structure where you start out following one SHONEN PROTAGONIST with one fairly simple action goal in a secondary fantasy world of some sort that works by certain rules; then the focus starts pulling back, introducing more characters with more information, and it turns out that a.) there is some VERY LARGE AND SINISTER CONSPIRACY at work that means that the rules of the fantasy world are not what our protagonist or anyone else has hitherto believed and b.) our protagonist's fairly simple goal is not actually all that important at all in the grand scheme of things.

It turns out this is a structure I really like! It tends to feature large casts, puzzle-box worldbuilding, and universes that do not revolve around the protagonist, all of which I appreciate. It also applies to Fullmetal Alchemist and Claymore, which are the other two shonen that I've read all the way through -- but, I mean, I don't know a ton about common shonen structure, and I'm working off a very small sample size here. You guys who have more range, what would you say? Is this actually a common pattern with shonen, or did I just luck out?

(Non-shonen stories I would say follow this structure to a certain extent: the Steerswoman series, Gunnerkrigg Court. Now also taking recommendations for other stuff that fits this model!)

When izilen visited this summer, she left me a bunch of digital scans of Cat Street, so that became my Kindle manga test case! (Conclusion: great for being able to devour a ton of manga at once, terrible when it freezes up my Kindle.)

Cat Street focuses on Aoyama Keito, a former child star who got All About Eve'd by another child star and froze up on stage. Fast-forward ten years and Keito is a recluse who refuses to attend school, has no hobbies, and dislikes everything and everyone (especially herself.)



Then she gets introduced to a School for Socially Awkward Weirdos, and, for lack of anything else to do with her time, she starts going. Eventually she becomes friends with three other "stray cats": Rei, a soccer prodigy who bombed out due to being an asshole to his teammates; Momiji, a gothic lolita who dreams of starting her own fashion line; and Kouichi, a genius computer programmer who is even less interested in people than Keito is.



So the plot begins with Keito re-entering the world and learning how to interact with people, and then it becomes about Keito finding herself again without basing her identity on other people, and finally it's about Keito and her friends re-building their relationships based on their growth as people.



Which is a character arc I very much appreciate; becoming a whole person is a long and complicated and ongoing process, and it's never too late to start. I love that.

(I also really like the stuff about Keito's career as an actress because I have a huge weakness for behind-the-scenes stories about performance and meta about acting, see also Skip Beat!)

I also like how the eventual romance goes, for a couple of reasons ( that could count as spoilers. )

So basically it's adorable, and my only complaint is that Momoko -- the one other girl in the group of four -- doesn't get anywhere near as much focus as the rest of the kids; her friendship with Keito is great, but there's clearly less time spent on its development than on Keito's relationships with the guys, and she doesn't get as much of a serious plot and character journey of her own, either.

(But I do really love the development of Keito's relationship with her former child-actress-bff-turned-life-ruiner-turned-sort-of-friend-again. SHE'S AWFUL AND I LOVE HER.)

So here is the question: if you know the earth is basically about to be destroyed, and you're picking your team to rebuild humanity, who are you gonna call?

If your answer is 'a bunch of diverse and awesome ladies,' then you are not thinking like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (yes, I am still bitter), but you are thinking like Yumi Tamura! SO LET'S TALK ABOUT SOME 7 SEEDS LADIES.

( Click for PICSPAM OF AWESOME LADIES! )

And here's what I love about 7 Seeds, in the end: pop singers are awesome. Dancers are awesome. Action girls are awesome. Smart girls are awesome. Girls with social anxiety who love their cats are awesome. Maternal women are awesome. Women who never ever want kids are awesome.

And they all have something to contribute, to the world and to each other. AND IT'S GREAT.

I am reading manga online again! As we know this is a dangerous proposition and should probably have been saved for after final papers were due. BUT ANYWAY, I am now about four volumes into the sadly only-available-in-scanlations 7 Seeds, the currently-running manga by Yumi Tamura, the creator of Basara.

7 Seeds is not quite as precisely tailored to my tastes as Basara so far -- for one thing, there is no crossdressing -- but it does hit a secret button of mine from when I was a kid, which is 'plucky groups of teenagers survive the apocalypse and must rebuild society!' 7 Seeds is ALL ABOUT THIS. The basic premise is that government scientists, finding out that the world was quite possibly DOOMED, selected healthy teenagers and put them away in cold sleep storage in teams of seven kids (with one grown-up guide to explain things when they woke up) until some ambiguous time after the apocalypse was over and life was presumably sustainable again. What this means in actuality is groups of kids going to bed one night at home and waking up the next morning to find that everything they know is gone and they are in the middle of a DESERTED ISLAND FULL OF MUTANT INSECTS. I don't even have words for what a great plan this is.

There are apparently five teams, and so far we've mostly been following three of them:

1. TEAM SPRING, aka TEAM LADYFRIENDSHIP

Team Spring has one tomboy girl with survivalist training, one logical and scientifically-minded med student trainee girl, and one very ladylike traditional Japanese girl who's good at cooking and mending and taking care of small children, and a large part of the Team Spring arc is them bonding and being friends and figuring out each other's strengths! There are also some dudes. One of them is a twelve-year-old genius and another one is a concert pianist who is like "well, I clearly have the perfect skillset for this mission. THANKS, JAPANESE GOVERNMENT. >.<" They make him an ocarina out of a potato.

2. TEAM WINTER, aka TEAM BROS, aka TEAM THREESOME

The most prominent characters in Team Winter are two boys and a girl. The boys are teen-prodigy baseball players who have admired each other from afar and hoped to come up against each other in a match for years and are SO EXCITED to be in a survival team with each other that being stuck in a post-apocalyptic landscape doesn't even seem that bad. They can play catch! They'll keep in practice! The girl is a bossy dancer with an annoying laugh who says things like "oh, so if it's coming from a boy it's self-confidence and from a girl it's arrogance?" and "um, come on guys, we might be the last humans left alive in the world, I THINK YOU CAN GET OVER SEEING ME NAKED SOMETIMES, jeez," which pretty much guarantees she was destined to win my heart immediately. Their arc involves adorable puppies and ( spoilers )

3. TEAM SUMMER B, aka TEAM FAILBOAT

So when the government was choosing people for this project they made up four teams out of the most attractive, talented, socially well-adjusted kids they could find . . .

. . . and then someone in the project got genre-savvy and was like "wait, wait, hang on, guys. We've forgotten something important. What if all our perfect people aren't the ones who can save humanity? WHAT IF the only way to keep humanity alive is to create . . . a RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS?!"

Cue Team Summer B, the most protagonist-y team of all, which includes the girl so shy she can't raise her voice even if she's trapped on an island and menaced by monsters; the drug-dealing delinquent asshole; the boy who once nearly killed a few of his classmates; the teen-girl runaway; the weird psychic girl; and the boy who never talks. They'll have fun! Fortunately their guide is an awesome lady police officer who appears to be the only competent adult involved in any part of this operation.

I've read about up to where we finally encountered Team Fall, aka Team Mysterious Jerkfaces. We don't know much about them yet, but one of their dictates is totally hilarious to me: after learning that the project that stuck them in post-apocalyptic hell was intended to ensure the survival of humanity, and therefore no contraceptives were included in their survival kits, they placed a firm ban in their group on penetrative sex JUST TO SAY FUCK YOU TO THE (LONG-DEAD) MAN. No babies for anyone! HUMANITY IS DOOMED, SUCKERS.

I volunteer once a week at a nonprofit social-enterprise bookstore, which carries the simultaneous dangers and perks of being constantly surrounded by used books for which I have a 50% volunteer discount. Most of the time I stand strong - I live in the city! I have limited space and budget! I DON'T NEED MORE BOOKS no not even for super-cheap noooo don't tempt me - but a few weeks ago I was shelving in the graphic novels section and I realized that someone had donated the first ten volumes of Claymore, and that given the pricing and aforementioned volunteer discount I had an unprecedented opportunity to acquire all ten volumes for a total of twenty bucks.

And virtuous resistance is one thing, guys, but this was fate.

So now I have read the first ten volumes of Claymore! Claymore works on a fairly familiar premise - in a world where demons prey on humans, the only person who can fight them is a blonde girl who is part-demon herself, created for this purpose by a shady organization - except instead of just one girl there are about forty or fifty women, called Claymores because they use hella big swords and I guess it's as good a distinguishing factor as any. The inevitable fate of a Claymore is to go all-the-way demon, but most of them manage to get their friends to kill them before that happens. (At least such is the setup, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it eventually gets more complicated.)

(I should also say that it was very weird reading this manga at around the same time I was watching Puella Magica Madoka Magi.)

Claire, our protagonist, is a fairly young, quiet, stoic Claymore with a suitabaly angsty backstory. The first few chapters pretty much follow the "lone gunman rides into town, cleans out evil, rides out" model; fairly rapidly she acquires a small-boy sidekick who follows her around and makes shiny eyes at her. The story starts getting interesting with the addition of other Claymores, all of whom have their own individual personalities and tragic backstories and SUPER SPECIAL ATTACK, and the whole almost-entirely-female cast is pretty awesome, I won't lie. It also gets more interesting once we get to the more powerful villains - the ordinary demons kind of flail around and monologue a lot ("You can never defeat me! - ACK, you chopped off my arm! Why did you do that? Gah, gah, gah!" is a fairly standardish line of demon dialogue) but the super-extra-hardcore demons are fascinating characters in and of themselves.

I keep trying to pick out who my favorite Claymore lady is and having a hard time! Is it Miria, the queen of long-term planning? Long-suffering Ilena, the ultimate in stoic mentorly hardcore? Undine, the hilariously shouty super-muscly one? Deneve the calm and snarky one, and her BFF Helen, the lulzy one?

(Helen keeps throwing me off because whenever she makes :O or :D-faces she looks unnervingly like Haruna from High School Debut. I mean, look at these twin shocked faces:



And now I want someone to write fic swapping them out. LET'S SEE HOW LONG IT TAKES ANYONE TO NOTICE. Does this make me a terrible person? PERHAPS. But you have to admit Haruna is too much of a shonen hero for her own shojo manga anyway! Let's loose her at some demons, it would be awesome.)

In other notes, I would like to formally submit an apology to Hiromu Arakawa for ever having laughed about the number of severed limbs in her manga. I'M SORRY, ARAKAWA. FMA's wanton deployment of limb-loss-as-plot-point is a model of decorum and restraint by comparison with Claymore!

Previously, on After School Nightmare:

MASHIRO: I'm a boy, except I'm actually female from the waist down, don't ask me how that works. But I'M A BOY I'M A BOY I'M A BOY AND I AM GOING TO BE MANLY DAMMIT.

SOU: I am a jerkface playboy, and I am into you, Mashiro, and therefore I say you are a GIRL. And I will force makeouts on you to PROVE IT. I also have some darkly hinted-at Issues In My Past, but it will take a lot of work to make me sympathetic.

KUREHA: My issues are all actually there right in the first volume! I was raped and abused as a child, so I put on a fake cheerful super-feminine face while being inwardly terrified and furious all the time. But Mashiro being half girl makes me feel safe, so I've decided I'm totally in love with him.

MASHIRO: And protecting Kureha makes me feel manly! It's a great basis for a relationship.

CREEPY SCHOOL NURSE: Okay, kids, time to join the extra once-weekly class that shoves you into surreal dreamscapes, in a shape that reflects your deepest psychological issues, and requires you to destroy each other to find the key to the super-ambiguous and not-at-all-sinister 'graduation!' Once you've succeeded you'll disappear from the school and everyone will forget about you, but in theory you'll have achieved at least some kind of emotional catharsis, so . . . that's exciting?

MASHIRO: Wait, why does everyone else get to be things like disembodied hands and anonymous faceless knights and giant paper giraffes, and I'm just myself-as-a-girl so everybody in the class knows my deepest psychological issues? UNFAIR.

CREEPY SCHOOL NURSE: Sorry, kid, but you're the protagonist, so life's just going to have to be harder for you.

And then we launch into ten volumes of psychological surrealism, intense character development, gender issues being interestingly sort-of-explored and yet sort-of-weirdly-not, Mashiro being frustrating, KUREHA BECOMING AWESOME, and interesting characters rotating in and getting flung out of the series faster than you can remember their names. This is where the coherent bit of this entry ends. ( The rest is spoilers! DO NOT CLICK IF YOU HAVE NOT READ. )

This is a brief chronicle of how Basara won my heart in four volumes.

BASARA VS. BECCA: ROUND ONE

SARASA: My twin brother is the Chosen Child of Destiny who is going to lead us against the family of evil tyrants ruling right now, and I've always been overlooked because I'm just a girl. But now he and half my village have been murdered by the Red King and his men, so I guess I'm going to have to impersonate my brother so the people do not lose hope! And also for REVENGE.
BECCA: Obviously cross-dressing is highly relevant to my interests! And Sarasa, you seem interesting. The art style is a bit difficult to follow though; I do not know if I am sold yet.

BASARA VS. BECCA: ROUND TWO

SARASA: In between leading my people for REVENGE I will take a nice dip in the hot springs.
SHURI: Hello! I am a playboy who loves hot springs, and I think you're cute. >:D
SARASA: I think you're kind of a perv, but I will admit it's nice to talk to someone who has no idea that I spend most of my time running around LEADING THE REVOLUTION. And you are sort of cute.
SHURI: And I will admit it's nice to talk to someone who does not know that I am actually THE RED KING and spend most of my time scheming to overthrow my evil-er brothers and take over all of Japan for the greater good, when I'm not trying to kill the leader of the revolution! Want to start up a long-distance relationship via messenger hawk?
SARASA: Sure! I'll write you!
BECCA: Relationships between enemies that are doomed because of OPPOSING IDEALS is one of my weak points . . . and I have to say the long-distance-relationship-via-messenger-hawk thing also really entertains me. But the art is still hard to follow!

BASARA VS. BECCA: ROUND THREE

AGEHA: I am a very pretty and extremely smug one-eyed desert nomad who passes his time alternately being witty, coming to Sarasa's rescue, and cross-dressing as a beautiful dancer while I jaunt around with my troupe of performing ladies. In a past life, I was probably Francis Crawford of Lymond.
SHIDO: I am the Red King's right-hand man, and Ageha used to be my dad's slave. I was really nice to him when we were growing up, and I thought we had a great relationship - seriously, I really like the guy - so I really don't get why he's helping the rebels and keeps saying he wants to be there to enjoy the view when I die!
AGEHA: Man, can we please have a discussion about privilege?
BECCA: I will admit, I'm pretty impressed by the emotional complexity of this relationship. In fact, all of the characters are starting to develop interesting complexity, and the story is picking up on all these themes of responsibility and ruthlessness and . . . dammit, Yumi Tamura, I'm not ready to fall straight into love with another manga again! Skip Beat is still fresh in my heart!

BASARA VS. BECCA: ROUND FOUR
CHACHA: I am a morally ambiguous, totally hot and badass lady pirate. I've captured you, and now I'm going to sell you off as a slave. What do you have to say about that?
SARASA: What I have to say is . . . . OH MY GOD AN AWESOME FEMALE ROLE MODEL! *___* Let's be BFF!
BECCA: . . . OKAY, FINE, BASARA. YOU WIN.

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 and things I like less )

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