Forum - View topicRIGHT TURN ONLY!! - Demons in Paradise
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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This is mainly why Ai Yazawa is so popular, especially among older female readers. This isn't the pink, bubbly shojo make believe of middle school years where love is perfect and unbreakable, this is for older crowds more experienced with love, the more mature girls who realize that cut-out prince charmings don't exist, and that everyone has flaws. It makes Ai Yazawa's characters that much more real for their readers, and that much more personal. You're supposed to be like Yazawa's main character - at first falling in love with George, but eventually growing up and seeing that he isn't that good for you and that you deserve better. When you read Yazawa's stuff, it's not for escapism, it's for the love-life advice of one of your best friends. I'll take Yazawa's flawed but realistic characters any day over the junk shoujo manga tries to pass off as realistic characters any day. She's a manga-ka with a real feminine voice for us. |
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1052 |
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Bad-boy-who-treats-heroine-like-crap-but-she-loves-him-anyway-while-largely-ignoring-the-nice-boy-who's-also-crushing-on-her is so standard in shoujo that it's one of the main criticisms of it. |
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here-and-faraway
 Posts: 1529 Location: Sunny California |
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I totally agree. I am so grateful that Dark Horse has continued to publish it, despite lukewarm sales. I sure hope it gets a full run, because there are some awesome plot twists that I want to see resolved. I also love reading the translator/editor's notes. If you own a copy and haven't checked them out, please do. They are really funny (and educational). |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is such a fun read despite all its behind-the-scenes bumps (how many magazines has it been in? And the last one before its latest move closed up shop?). The fact that it's still being serialized despite the lack of anime/drama/movie/video game or novel adaptations and years of moving around manga magazines gives me hope, namely the hope that the latest juicy plot twist will be followed up soon now that it's settled in a new magazine.
So, what does everyone think about the plot bomb in vol. 13? spoiler[Karatsu is Sasaki's older half-brother, and his powers are directly affected by her menstrual cycle. Strange that he never noticed his lapse of power before, but maybe the reveal to Sasaki somehow strengthened their connection. Questions abound, however. From the simple: "Did Sasaki tell Karatsu that they're related?" To the metaphysical: "how do Karatsu's powers work, what are their origins, and does Sasaki have any potential of gaining supernatural powers of her own (besides for her natural brilliance, of course)?" ] I don't know where I can find a Kurosagi obsessed fan community online, but I'd love to join one! Oh, and the biggest question of all: when can I get my hands on volume 14? |
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Youkai Warrior
 Posts: 505 Location: Sarayashiki |
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That's why I never got into Paradise Kiss. It's not all that realistic when you think about it, because the main female character loves a bad boy who treats her like crap, yet she loves him anyway, instead of thinking about going to the nicer chap who will treat her better. Where's the common sense? I wouldn't go with someone who treated me like crap. I'd leave right away. It sounds just like any shojo except more serious and without the flowery, bubbly Watase-esque storytelling. |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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That's simplifying things quite a bit. While the trope is definitely one that you find a fair amount in manga, I don't think anything pulls it off quite as well as Paradise Kiss. Of course, a big reason for this is the fact that in the end spoiler[she does actually end up marrying to "good guy"]. |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Really? Common sense, when love is involved? Hormones? There is no common sense when either of those get into the equation. Maybe you and you girlfriends have had phenomenal luck when it comes to guys with perfect relationships, but I know I and mine haven't because only a couple of us have married entering into our late twenties, and some of us have even encountered divorce. Basically you learn love sucks, and you pick jerks sometimes. You learn this through hard lessons, and more often than not every girl has experienced a relationship where a guy treated her like crap, but she was just too damn attracted to him and maybe thought she could change him, or she just didn't notice it at first. More often than not this occurs with a hot guy who knows he's hot, and has a huge ego (sounds like a particular ParaKiss character I know). You learn the love lesson the hard way, and then carry on with something better for you, or repeat the process all over again. Is this lesson really that unrealistic to you? Because maybe you've been reading a different Watase manga than me, but from what I recall in Watase manga pretty boys are just thrown at the main heroine and it's all just a matter of going off into the sunset of a perfect ending where everyone is friends in the end and they hold hands and sing kumbayah. It's not how real life works. Eh. Maybe my being in my mid 20s is showing my age on this forum because I'm realizing that I'm just assuming that other female readers have relationship experience that extend past high school a number of exs or so. I just don't see how anyone whose dated more than a couple times, and watched their friends do it as well can say the Paradise Kiss relationships are unrealistic. Especially when it and a large amount of things that happen in Yazawa manga (Nana especially) are actually what life's really like. There are no pretty perfect magical boy gentlemen, there's hard to find nice guys, there are total jerks who more than likely just want to get in your pants, you randomly get dumped when you think things are going great, etc. If I want to read fairy tales, I'll read fairy tales, if I want to read love stories I can relate to, I'll stay out of the middle school/high school shoujo category. Relationship dynamics are different when you're out of high school, and that's why there's a huge difference between typical shoujo manga that target middle to high schoolers, and women who have since graduated from it. Paradise Kiss targets the later. Or maybe I'm just turning into a jaded old maid, and Yazawa is one of those things that gets better as you age. I'm going to go throw myself in Moyocco Anno manga now with a bottle of wine and laugh at how much I relate to those poor girls. I prefer comics with girls out there making the same stupid mistakes you do. Especially comics that don't treat sex as something you do after you've been promised marriage. Now that's unrealistic, especially with horny teenagers. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2655 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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I was trying to think of some brilliant comment about Yazawa's manga and why ParaKiss and Nana are my least favorites (I'm a Gokinjyo and Kagen no Tsuki fan), but you just summed it up perfectly.  She does write about real people, as does Anno, and for me at least, that's not always a draw in my down time reading. I tend to prefer the fluffy stuff if I'm just reading for my own enjoyment, but not many authors can capture the hormonal foolishness of a girl in lust/like/love like Yazawa. And I second your comment on the sex aspect.
I prefer to think of myself as a bluestocking or an ape-leader than an old maid, personally. Those phrases have so much more character. 
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mufurc
 Posts: 612 |
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Man, you have no idea how wrong you are about Paradise Kiss. Misguided anime aside, the Paradise Kiss manga is basically about subverting all the shoujo high school romance clichés. This is the manga where the girl, once she's over the first rush of hormones, realizes the "bad boy"'s flaws and notices the problems in their relationship spoiler[breaks up with him in the end and eventually marries the "nice boy" (whom she kept liking and respecting all along).] I don't know how far you got into it, but the manga is a lot more mature and intelligent than you think. The anime, well, that has issues. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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If unmarried ladies *must* choose labels, than I'd like to spiritually join the ladies in the Princess Jellyfish nunnery.
You guys are really making a great argument for giving ParaKiss a re-try, although it's starting to sound a bit painful to read. I'd nominate Nobuo from NANA as a princely character in Yazawa's manga. Too bad he keeps dating women who treat him badly...Wait, nice guys treated like crap by the women in their lives? That happens in real life, too!
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marie-antoinette
Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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To be fair, the anime only has said issues once it starts to cover the material from the final volume of the manga. Up to that point, it was a very accurate adaptation. I don't know why they decided to leave so much out right at the very end. That said, I still really like the anime, though not quite as much as the manga. Also, I'm not sure I would quite go as far as to call Nobu princely. He's a good guy and all, don't get me wrong, but I see him more like a female version of Hachi, who is sweet but more than a touch on the naive, idealistic side. Actually, if we were looking for a Prince Charming in NANA, I'd say Yasu is the most likely candidate, since he does tend to swoop in and fix things, at least as best as he can. |
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