(no subject)
Super disappointed in the Kamikaze Girls manga (which I was only reading because my local library doesn't have the original novel anyway.) It starts really well. The first of four stories is basically the story of the movie, and it's essentially the manga summary of my dreams. It's all gorgeous shoujo drawings that, according to all the shoujo tropes it gleefully uses, cast Ichigo and Momoko as, respectively, the hero and heroine of the story! Moments where Momoko Suddenly! Sees! Ichigo and it's all hearts and sparkles and omg she's so cool! Moments where Ichigo looks at Momoko and thinks she's beautiful! It fucking ends with Momoko whispering "I really, really like you!" as she rides on the back of Ichigo's scooter. It is amazingly gay, in all the best possible ways.
So I was blissfully rolling around in all of the practically canon queer, and then I got to the second story, which is basically "Guess which one of these awesome bi ladies needs a man!" (The bisexuality is non-canonical, but I can't read them as anything else, given their canon attraction to men, and how incredibly gay they are for each other and occasionally other women.) It was such a let down. And then the third and fourth stories were about some totally different people, and were all about pairings with giant age gaps blackmailing each other into relationships, and were very unpleasant for me.
Basically, go watch the movie instead, because it is the BEST. The unlikely friendship of a yanki/biker girl, and an incredibly misanthropic lolita! They stick up for each other, help each other through shit, become competent in their own ways, become best friends and fall in love! But skip the manga.
(If you need more convincing, go watch this vid, which does a great job with the way that the movie is gorgeously stylised, and yet punctures all pretension every possible chance it gets. I can't say enough good things about how this movie is both incredibly cynical about everything, and yet so kind. It mocks the ridiculous aspects of lolita every chance it gets (for example, wearing fancy clothes to walk on a dirt road used by farm animals), but is so completely understanding that people do ridiculous things because they get some genuine satisfaction or meaning out of them, and has such affection for those sincere emotions.)
This entry originally posted at http://opusculasedfera.dreamwidth.org/17252.html, comment wherever you please.
So I was blissfully rolling around in all of the practically canon queer, and then I got to the second story, which is basically "Guess which one of these awesome bi ladies needs a man!" (The bisexuality is non-canonical, but I can't read them as anything else, given their canon attraction to men, and how incredibly gay they are for each other and occasionally other women.) It was such a let down. And then the third and fourth stories were about some totally different people, and were all about pairings with giant age gaps blackmailing each other into relationships, and were very unpleasant for me.
Basically, go watch the movie instead, because it is the BEST. The unlikely friendship of a yanki/biker girl, and an incredibly misanthropic lolita! They stick up for each other, help each other through shit, become competent in their own ways, become best friends and fall in love! But skip the manga.
(If you need more convincing, go watch this vid, which does a great job with the way that the movie is gorgeously stylised, and yet punctures all pretension every possible chance it gets. I can't say enough good things about how this movie is both incredibly cynical about everything, and yet so kind. It mocks the ridiculous aspects of lolita every chance it gets (for example, wearing fancy clothes to walk on a dirt road used by farm animals), but is so completely understanding that people do ridiculous things because they get some genuine satisfaction or meaning out of them, and has such affection for those sincere emotions.)
This entry originally posted at http://opusculasedfera.dreamwidth.org/17252.html, comment wherever you please.