12.13: Wahon and manga

[starlady]

lnhammer asked about my favorite Japanese book or poem.

I think the answer is still the Tale of Genji. I read the Tyler translation (which, now that I've read it in the original Japanese, I know is totally inadequate, but I still think it's the best single version available in English) in my freshman year of college; it took me four months. Genji is a world in itself, and when I started reading Proust several years later I realized that it is entirely true to compare the two writers--Murasaki and Proust both write a degree of psychological realism, and complexity, that few others have ever achieved. And I love how it's all about the women (Sidenote: Milan Kundera, you and your sexist, Eurocentric ideas about the world's first novel being Don Quixote can go fuck yourselves.) I also really enjoyed The Pillow Book when I read it three years ago. Sei was totally awesome, too.

meganbmoore asked about my five favorite shoujo.

# Revolutionary Girl Utena - my first anime, and still one of my favorite. Girls with swords! What more can you want? And speaking of girls with swords…
# Rose of Versailles - Girls with swords, in the French Revolution no less! 
# Princess Tutu - This is an amazing anime. A duck becomes a ballerina who becomes a magical girl who saves the world.
# Puella Magica Mahou Shoujo Madoka - This anime was an instant classic, and rightfully so.
# I think five is a tie between Sailor Moon and Nana. I really like Paradise Kiss, too, though that is really pushing the boundaries of 'shoujo'--if it were a book, it would be squarely in the emerging "New Adult" category.

Comments

[torachan]

I'm surprised you would include Nana but hesitate over Paradise Kiss. The characters in Nana are actually older and the material seems about the same to me.

(Also if anything is not shoujo on this list, it would be Madoka, which as a midnight anime is hardly something aimed at young girls.)

[lnhammer]

Paradise Kiss is usually described as josei rather than shoujo -- it ran in a fashion magazine that seems to have been aimed more at younger adult women rather than teens. So, yeah, in the category that New Adult is trying to emulate.

---L.