Anime romance for grown-ups

Anime

bluespringride

I’m watching Blue Spring Ride this season. (To be honest, I started because I love Futaba’s hairstyle, and I’m still debating with myself whether or not it’d be too awkward for everyone involved  to bring a picture of an anime character to a hairdresser.)

Blue Spring Ride is ostensibly a shoujo romance show, but I think Beneath The Tangles hit the nail on the head when writer JP summarized it as an anime about learning to be yourself. Like a lot of teens, Futaba tries on personalities she hopes are more “likeable” than her own. She is unable to discover whether or not she’s in love with handsome Kou until she discovers herself.

This is all well and good as a coming-of-age story, but for me it’s not a very satisfying romance. Stuff like Kimi No Todoke is endearing at first, but can you believe it’s been 24 episodes and they still can’t confess? As I’ve gotten older and gotten married, I’ve learned that romance is about a lot more than the butterflies in your stomach when you’re trying to admit you like somebody.

I’m not just talking about sex. There’s learning to trust each other, dealing with jealousy regarding other love interests, sharing each other’s identity and physical space, and learning to resolve the inevitable argument without saying something you regret.

In order to get stories like this, you have to move beyond the shoujo genre into josei, which is geared at older women (but I’d argue that my favorite josei anime and manga, just like my favorite seinen stuff, are for everyone). These all involve straight relationships, but if you know of one that breaks that mold, I’d love to hear about it!

karekano

My favorite is 1998’s His And Her Circumstances. Yukino and Arima are both seemingly-perfect students who find they can be themselves around each other. It’s a rare high school romance that answers the question, “What happens after the first kiss?” One reviewer called it director Hideki Anno’s “personal case study of relationships.”

Both of Ai Yazawa’s most well known works, Paradise Kiss and Nana, involve more mature relationships, too. The characters in these shows have sex and contemplate or commit to cohabitation. They have arguments, resolutions, and sometimes, amicable separations.

Moving on to manga, there’s Happy Marriage?, the story of an office lady who has to marry a man she doesn’t know in order to keep up appearances. Perhaps since they live together, they’re able to get beyond the “does he like me?” tier of the relationship into subplots about infidelity and reconciling each others’ obnoxious housekeeping habits.

At any age, that very first “I love you” is the biggest rush you’ll ever feel. But as we get older, we aren’t fooled that it’s all “happily ever after” from here. I have a craving for more anime and manga that smartly and wholeheartedly explores the messiness of a romantic relationship.

Do you have any favorite romance anime or manga?

Otaku Links: Grab your headphones

Otaku Links

tomoko_headphones

  • Real Life vs. Anime: Basketball. A video answer to people who ask me, “Why do you think Kuroko’s Basketball is interesting but not real basketball?”

Good news: starting next week, I can finally tell you about some exciting stuff I’m working on! Watch this space.

Screenshot via Watamote. 

Manga scanlations are bad. But what about doujinshi?

Fandom, Japan

doujin1

Sometimes you want to drop all your regular obligations and try something completely different.

At least that’s what happened to me this month. I’ve been blogging less, but I’ve been writing more. I’m working on a collection of fandom-inspired short fiction. And, since Otakon, I’ve been working hard to translate my new doujinshi, a Japanese term for fan-published manga, usually featuring characters and storylines from official anime or manga. Think fan-art.

First off, I couldn’t have done this without my childhood friend Kailer, who took Japanese for four years and knows a lot more kanji than I do. We spent a week texting, Gchatting, and finally getting together in person to construct an accurate English translation.

The doujinshi in question is G-rated, but no less trashy for that. It’s a moving tale about everyone’s favorite Yowamushi Pedal protagonist Onoda passive-aggressively convincing Imaizumi to wear a maid uniform—headdress, undergarments, and all. Of course, I realized the importance of sharing such a document with my fellow English-speaking fans.

However, it was only after we finished interpreting all 12 pages that I began to wonder, “Wait a minute, is it even legal to scan and share doujinshi online?”

Perhaps you’ve heard of September Scanlations, a doujinshi translation group that was recently asked by some doujinshi artists to take down their work. The group dismissed the artists’ concerns as racist, stating “most are very unhappy knowing that non-Japanese people are reading their stuff,” and blocked all Japanese IPs from their site. Needless to say, the translation group is having a difficult time earning sympathy from fellow English-speaking fans!

According to Ben Applegate, an editor at Kodansha Comics, doujinshi are illegal. However, unlike manga scanlations, which are always frowned upon, doujinshi scans often seem to be overlooked by anime and manga publishers, the way fan-art and fanfiction are.

Overall, there’s one thing Applegate stressed: never put something online without permission.

“To be 100% legit, you would need permission from the doujin author as well as the rights holder of the original work,” he said. “If you want to reach out just to the doujin author and offer to do an English version, that would be super cool of you. Even if it wouldn’t resolve all of the legal issues, it’d probably be the best you could do.”

Fast-forward to Kailer and I writing an email to the doujinshi author. I’m really proud of it since it even uses several kanji characters, so here’s a screenshot.

Screen Shot 2014-08-19 at 11.41.39 AM

With differing laws between the US and Japan, it is sometimes hard to tell if our derivative fandom works (art, fiction, even translations) are legal to share. But I do think it is every fan’s duty to ensure they’re not hurting people when they do so.

What I mean is that it’s really important to me to get the artist, Shihoko’s, permission. (It’s less important to me to get Wataru Watanabe (the author of Yowamushi Pedal) to sign off on it; I am certain he has no idea this doujinshi exists and might be traumatized if he did.) Just because fan works are a little trickier than manga doesn’t mean putting them online without permission is somehow consequence-free.

So for now, I’m just waiting until I hear back from her. And for those of you weirdos who actually want to read my translation, don’t worry, I’ll keep you posted.

Update: I heard back from the artist and she made it exceedingly clear that she’d prefer I not share the doujinshi or my English translation online. So I won’t. The end.

Otaku Links: Aftermath

Otaku Links

panel

Sorry about the post-less Wednesday. For three weekends in a row I’ve been traveling now—first to Lake Anna, then San Francisco, then Otakon. This week it’s like having post-con depression in triplicate. Here are some late Friday links:

  • The 501st Legion is an international group of Star Wars fans who donate their time and money to good causes—in costume, of course. I loved this humanizing interview with Ottawa stormtrooper Andy Pegan.
  • The Parent’s Guide to Anime. Based on the Twitter reception, looks like people have been waiting for a book like this. Author David Rothman is no stranger to anime and presents panels at conventions himself. So if your parents are worried about the safety of this weird anime stuff, this might be a good pick for them.
  • And finally, an MS Paint version of the Free! Eternal Summer ending. Be warned: it’s basically one big dick joke.

Photo of the Otakon panel I was on, Writing About Anime For Fun And Profit, by MishyZ. I’m on the far left. 

How I spent Otakon 2014

Uncategorized

naturevalley

Otakon is always energizing, but it’s also exhausting. That’s why after Otakon 2013, John and I promised each other we wouldn’t go this year.

We preregistered by June. Something about the weather getting warmer made it harder and harder for me to resist. From there, everything came together. We didn’t have a hotel room, but Patches had room at his house. I missed the panel deadline, but I still ended up presenting one!

Due to family obligations this was my shortest Otakon yet, only 24 hours between Saturday and Sunday. Here were some of the highlights:

  • Presenting on Mike Toole’s panel, Write About Anime For Fun And Profit. I found out about an hour before but for a topic like that, I would have come with a minute of advance notice! Myself and the other panelists have all written for Otaku USA, but we each ended up there in very different ways. There’s more than one way to write about anime professionally, and I learned some things, too.
  • Hanging out with Kevo of Anime Maru in person. I’ve interviewed him on this blog, but I hadn’t really “met” him until now.
  • Dinner with Tony of Manga Therapy and our mutual friend, Bobbie, which made it apparent that yes, we can talk about Yowamushi Pedal for two hours without running out of stuff to say.
  • Drinks at the Alewife with half of Anitwitter. If you’re ever wondering who all these people with moe girl avatars actually are, @GNitro‘s annual Otakon gathering is the place to find out what they really look like.
  • Finding the complete guide to every Gunpla model ever made at the Kinokuniya booth. It’s gonna be sooo helpful for updating Gunpla 101, and I swear we will be giving that site an update this week.
  • This car. Update: it belongs to Cosplayer Kyo! He calls it “a 14 year dream in the making.”

hentaicar

  • Finally getting over myself, at age 27, and buying doujinshi from the extremely loud vendor with the rainbow YAOI flag. I’m sure you know who I mean. Using it to practice my Japanese but let’s be honest, we’ve got plenty of raw Gundam manga around the house that I could have used instead. Unfortunately, I did not buy so much hentai that the vendor took me out to dinner.
  • Handing out shiny new Otaku Journalism flyers like, everywhere.

I’m sure a lot of people are wondering what happened with Dave Lister, and whether he made an Otakon appearance to demo his game. I did not see his booth in person or on any maps, but I did hear this from friend and trusted fellow journalist Tyler Waldman: “Otakorp’s president declined to comment on the game in detail, saying it’s the subject of pending legal action and they expect a resolution in the next few months.” That’s all I know right now.

I wrote about attending Otakon in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010, but I think I’ve been there 8 years in a row now, ever since I was 19. Every few years there’s something, like the fire alarm scare in 2010 or the long lines this year, but nobody can deny that it’s the most iconic anime convention on the east coast. We’ll see if I manage to sit it out next year.