Step 25: Hate-Read

I mentioned before that I rewatched Kareshi Kanojo no Jijō, but the anime ended abruptly due to creative differences between the manga-ka and the director of the show (Anno Hideaki of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame, of all people). However, the manga saw the story of Miyazawa Yukino and Arima Sōichirō to completion, so I picked it up again after not having read it in many years.

*Anticipates relishing in all the 2003 feels*

It's... actually a lot worse than I remembered, haha. I forgot how choked it was with walking stereotypes of brooding male jerk wads and the submissive women who love them. Also, everyone marries their high school sweethearts and lives happily ever after, as if teenagers become frozen in time and don't go through any formidable periods of self-growth in their twenties. So, yeah--not a particularly accurate depiction of reality. I was all over that shit like a fat kid on a cupcake when I was eighteen, but my 31-year-old self is more dubious.

What the hell did I just read?

It's not entirely without its merits--Tsuda Masami-sensei crafts a gripping, wonderfully-woven story over the course of 21 volumes--and I certainly enjoyed reading it as a guilty pleasure. Furthermore, I have to credit Kare Kano for influencing my sequential art over the years; in shōjo manga, dramatic pacing is everything, and Kare Kano brings drama in spades. But it also relies heavily on physical violence (hitting people is a sign that you love them, I guess?), and my earlier drafts of Defining Lines included an embarrassing slapping scene that I thankfully omitted in later revisions becaUSE DUH HITTING IS NOT OKAY.

What is it with Japan and smacking people???

I have to poke fun at Kare Kano for one more thing: In later volumes of the manga, Tsuda clearly began phoning the art in. KKNJ was never the visual masterpiece that Rurouni Kenshin was, but the manga-ka literally began cutting and pasting photos of actual things into the art when it became too much of a bother to actually draw the object in question. Because, you know, it's not like she was getting paid to be an artist, or anything.

His and Her Circumstances Thinly Veiled Attempt at Rendering Shoes