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IMADOKI! 1, by Yu Watase.
The title can be translated as "Nowadays," or as the short form of a phrase meaning, more or less, "Now my heart's going pitter-pat."
Tanpopo (Dandelion) is a girl from rural Hokkaido who moves to Tokyo to attend a fancy prep school. On her first day, she literally falls into the arms of a handsome boy who's planting dandelions. They chat about his love for plants, and she bounds into the school, delighted that she's made a new friend. However, it turns out that the boy, Koki, is the scion of an immensely rich and powerful family and has an alternate identity as a complete jerk. The other students despise Tanpopo as a stupid hillbilly. In a final blow, it turns out that all the plants on campus are artificial and real plants are banned.
But Tanpopo is undaunted! Even though she has no allies except for her adorable pet fox, she is convinced that if she's only nice enough, determined enough, and plants some real dandelions, she WILL make friends, melt Koki's heart, and be happy. To the bewilderment of the rich bitches and bastards who exclusively populate the school, her conviction that people ought to be nice and flowers ought to be real is stronger than their desire to crush the new kid. Especially when she gets Koki on her side.
IMADOKI! is utter fluff that cheered me up immensely. Unlike FUSHIGI YUGI or CERES, which went to some pretty dark areas, or ALICE 19th, which hints at dark revelations to come, IMADOKI! is straight comedy, at least in the first volume, and it cracked me up. (I'm laughing now just at the rule mandating artificial flowers.) Though the bullying Tanpopo faces is realistically harsh, she's so convinced that she can overcome it that it's merely an obstacle and a source of narrative tension, not a nightmarish evocation of the reader's own painful bullying memories.
Watase's romantic/comic style is a perfect fit for the material. The Tamahone-esque Koki is good to look at, the fox is adorable, and there's a lot of visual humor. (I especially like the way a deceptively gentle-looking girl with glasses morphs into an avenging horror every time Tanpopo gets too cozy with Koki.) It's an excellent choice of reading material if life has just kicked you in the teeth.
RED RIVER 1, by Chie Shinohara
This is yet another manga about an ordinary schoolgirl who gets sucked into a fantasyland abounding in cute men. Also see FUSHIGI YUGI, PLANET LADDER, ALICE 19th, INU-YASHA, SHUTTERBOX, MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH, etc. Etc. Etc.
Yuri is an ordinary schoolgirl who's just been kissed for the first time by Satoshi, the cute guy she likes. But water starts doing weird things around her-- reaching for her, trying to pull her in. Finally, a pair of arms reach out of a puddle and yank her down. She emerges into ancient Anatolia, where a wicked queen wants to use her as a human sacrifice. But she's rescued by a cute guy, who's also a prince, a lech, and filled with the blithe sense of entitlement that you get when you're a prince and gorgeous. Yuri just wants to go home, but to do that, she needs to retrieve the clothes she was wearing when she arrived and have the prince perform a spell at a certain time. So, ignoring everyone's warnings that the queen is waiting for her, she sneaks back to the palace to get her stuff...
This started out fun, with Rumiko Takahashi-esque drawings and the interesting complication of a likable boyfriend back home, but I wasn't grabbed by either the characters or the milieu enough for them to overcome the rote feeling of the second half of the book, where Yuri predictably does the stupid thing and walks into a trap. Granted, Yu Watase's heroines are also prone to reckless deeds, but they tend to be so maniacally determined to whatever ridiculous thing they're plotting at the moment, and feel so passionately about whatever it is they're trying to get or do, that they suck me in to their eccentric little worlds and make me like them. Yuri and her stuck-up prince just ended up annoying me.
Still, this is the first volume, and series often get better as they go along. I'll probably browse the next one in the bookshop.
The title can be translated as "Nowadays," or as the short form of a phrase meaning, more or less, "Now my heart's going pitter-pat."
Tanpopo (Dandelion) is a girl from rural Hokkaido who moves to Tokyo to attend a fancy prep school. On her first day, she literally falls into the arms of a handsome boy who's planting dandelions. They chat about his love for plants, and she bounds into the school, delighted that she's made a new friend. However, it turns out that the boy, Koki, is the scion of an immensely rich and powerful family and has an alternate identity as a complete jerk. The other students despise Tanpopo as a stupid hillbilly. In a final blow, it turns out that all the plants on campus are artificial and real plants are banned.
But Tanpopo is undaunted! Even though she has no allies except for her adorable pet fox, she is convinced that if she's only nice enough, determined enough, and plants some real dandelions, she WILL make friends, melt Koki's heart, and be happy. To the bewilderment of the rich bitches and bastards who exclusively populate the school, her conviction that people ought to be nice and flowers ought to be real is stronger than their desire to crush the new kid. Especially when she gets Koki on her side.
IMADOKI! is utter fluff that cheered me up immensely. Unlike FUSHIGI YUGI or CERES, which went to some pretty dark areas, or ALICE 19th, which hints at dark revelations to come, IMADOKI! is straight comedy, at least in the first volume, and it cracked me up. (I'm laughing now just at the rule mandating artificial flowers.) Though the bullying Tanpopo faces is realistically harsh, she's so convinced that she can overcome it that it's merely an obstacle and a source of narrative tension, not a nightmarish evocation of the reader's own painful bullying memories.
Watase's romantic/comic style is a perfect fit for the material. The Tamahone-esque Koki is good to look at, the fox is adorable, and there's a lot of visual humor. (I especially like the way a deceptively gentle-looking girl with glasses morphs into an avenging horror every time Tanpopo gets too cozy with Koki.) It's an excellent choice of reading material if life has just kicked you in the teeth.
RED RIVER 1, by Chie Shinohara
This is yet another manga about an ordinary schoolgirl who gets sucked into a fantasyland abounding in cute men. Also see FUSHIGI YUGI, PLANET LADDER, ALICE 19th, INU-YASHA, SHUTTERBOX, MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH, etc. Etc. Etc.
Yuri is an ordinary schoolgirl who's just been kissed for the first time by Satoshi, the cute guy she likes. But water starts doing weird things around her-- reaching for her, trying to pull her in. Finally, a pair of arms reach out of a puddle and yank her down. She emerges into ancient Anatolia, where a wicked queen wants to use her as a human sacrifice. But she's rescued by a cute guy, who's also a prince, a lech, and filled with the blithe sense of entitlement that you get when you're a prince and gorgeous. Yuri just wants to go home, but to do that, she needs to retrieve the clothes she was wearing when she arrived and have the prince perform a spell at a certain time. So, ignoring everyone's warnings that the queen is waiting for her, she sneaks back to the palace to get her stuff...
This started out fun, with Rumiko Takahashi-esque drawings and the interesting complication of a likable boyfriend back home, but I wasn't grabbed by either the characters or the milieu enough for them to overcome the rote feeling of the second half of the book, where Yuri predictably does the stupid thing and walks into a trap. Granted, Yu Watase's heroines are also prone to reckless deeds, but they tend to be so maniacally determined to whatever ridiculous thing they're plotting at the moment, and feel so passionately about whatever it is they're trying to get or do, that they suck me in to their eccentric little worlds and make me like them. Yuri and her stuck-up prince just ended up annoying me.
Still, this is the first volume, and series often get better as they go along. I'll probably browse the next one in the bookshop.
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