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October 06, 2004
a real bloomer
I meant to be good...but dangit, it all came at me at once. I went to Suncoast tonight to get the new Anime Play with the Stan Sakai interview. I swore that I'd be good since AnimeUSA is coming up at the end of the month. But no, I had to look in that damn box beside the counter. Final damage: Negima #3, Wallflower #1, Descendants of Darkness #1 and... XXXHolic #3! Yayyy! Plus Anime Play, and the "special DVD edition" of Aladdin. (I wonder if it has the original lyrics for "Arabian Nights."
)
So far Wallflower (nee Yamato Nadeshiko) is a winner. I'd picked it up on a whim, having only heard the bare bones of the plot. Imagine a reluctant Cinderella with four impossibly hot fairy godbrothers who have been tasked with turning her into a lady (not to be confused with making her a woman, you hentai pervs) in exchange for free rent. Yup, it's a shoujo manga all right.
Sunako, our agoraphobic, socially dysfunctional Cinderella, is weird in a sweetly quirky way that any teenage girl can identify with (though those quirks are exaggerated - eg. her penchant for watching horror movies alone in her room with only mutant dolls for company). An incident in her youth convinced her that she's an ugly slug, but she has taken it a step further by refusing to cut her nose-length bangs and dressing in shapeless clothes.
The four guys are... well, certainly bishounen archetypes, all total sweethearts but somewhat bland. The only one with any discernable personality is the angry one who's playing the key role in bringing Sunako out of her shell - but boy are they pretty. (Amusingly, Sunako is prone to nosebleeds whenever she sees beautiful things.)
It remains to be seen, though, just what the manga-ka considers to be a Yamato Nadeshiko. Sunako is one hell of a cook, and is likely to be a looker (to the manga-ka's credit, she is not immediately a flawless beauty once the guys get a peek beneath her bangs, although there is definitely potential). This could go in the Ai Yori Yoshi direction (yeesh) ...or, it could surprise us all. The way things are going, I'm rooting for the manga-ka to know better.
Posted by Innocent Sidekick of Evil at October 6, 2004 08:39 PM | Posted to Manga Manga
