anime: Kyo Kara Maoh: Season 1
So, what's Kyo Kara Maoh? Here's the brief version:
Fifteen year old kid from out world gets transported to a fantasy world and learns they have a special destiny. Of the core group, there's the borderline perfect knight(yet, naturally, with a tragic past and lost love) the loudmouthed hothead who's decent enough underneath and gets accidentally engaged to the main character right off the bat, the court official declaring his love for the main character left and right, the grouchy guy who's a big old softie underneath and has a protective streak, and the crossdresser who initially challenges and tests the main character, but is soon a hard and fast ally.
Sound familiar?
*waits for the friends list to stop chanting "FUSHIGI YUGI!!!!"*
The twist? The main character is Yuri, a boy with a demeanor rather like that of Haruhi from Ouran High Host Club(I Keep comparing characters to Ouran characters lately...I think that means it's been too long since Viz put out book 8 and they need to get on the ball with it), and Yuri's destiny isn't to save the world from evil and monsters, but to become the demon king and save the demon tribe from humans. And yes, all the above characters are male.
The show gets called shonen ai a lot, and, from the few episodes I had seen before, that's what I thought it was, but really, it isn't. It's considered perfectly natural in the demon world for two men to get married. Guntor, the court official and Wolfram, the son of the former Demon Queen who Yuri accidentally gets engaged to are both very into Yuri, but Yuri's general reaction to that is to run for dear life and wonder why it can't be girls. Conrad(perfect tragic knight character) seems to be that way at first, but once you know his past, not so much. Sure, it could happen later but really, so far nothing is setting off and shonen ai/slash detectors, what with it all being one sided and the other side REALLY wishing the one didn't exist. As a result, I really have to shipping/otp meters going off.
Now, frankly, I've read and seen too many "magical girl" manga/anime(particularly Fushigi Yugi and its various spawn) to NOT like this. It's fun, the animation is great, the story, which is well aware that it's little more than a parody of Fushigi Yugi and the like at its core, is interesting and manages to put a few twists into the genre without trying to be clever.
And, for an extremely male oriented cast, it has it's fair share of female characters, even if we don't seethem a lot. There's Celi, the flamboyant ex-demon queen(and mother of Conrad, Gwendal and Wolfram-who all have different fathers) who's on a quest for true love, Yuri's mother, who's dingy let lovable and VERY amusing, Giesella, Guntor's adopted daughter who's generally an extremely sweet natured medic, but if you cross her she can be the scariest army officer ever, Flynn, an idealistic noblewoman, and my favorie female character(and second favorite character) Anissima, Gwendal's childhood friend who's a rather nuts inventor who uses him as a guinea pig for her inventions and is the ONLY thing he fears(barring the death of a family member) *freely confesses to shipping them* There's also some priestess chick, but she annoys me.
That said, I'm surprisingly unattached to the male characters...I adore Gwendal beyond words-stern, grouchy, and too serious for his own good, he has a soft spot for anything cute, takes in ANYTHING resembling an innocent in distress(including an enemy's pregnant fiance) is uteerly loyal and comitted and is devoted to his insane family and, for allthat he wants to rn in terror, he's extremely tolerant of Anissima and would never dream of denying her(it's not ALL fear) I also like Josak, the occassional crossdresser and regular spy who's the friendliest guy you could ever meet-if you can recognize him-and, like Gwendal, once you prove you're wortgy of loyalty, you have him for life(unless you btray his trust) Like most leads in Magical Girl shojo(which this is even if he's a guy) Yuri is more than a bit of a Mary Sue, but he's well versed on his heroic fantasy and his forgetting which side he's on-holy sword vs demon sword, etc.-is amusing, and unlike many, doesn't whine about his lot. His friend, Murata, also amuses me, but we're only recently actually starting to see more of him. There's also Gwendals cousin, Hube(who does the flawed tragic knight bit better than Conrad, IMO) but I have a feeling he's gone for the most part(but he got a happy closure to his storyline, sothat's ok.)
I was kinda crazy for Conrad at first, but, well, he's like Allen in Escaflowne, he's TOO perfectly the flawed, tragic, perfect knight. Even his flaws make him seem more perfect and I want to scream atthe TV set to just make there be something wrong or imperfect about him to make him more interesting(that said, with Conrad, it looks like they listened, so, YAY!) Guntor and Wolfram...urm...Wolfram is a spoiled opinionated brat who, while amusing, needed to be spanked a lot as a kid(I think only Gwendal's fondness for cute things got him through childhood alive, honestly) but he seems to be getting better. And Guntor...urm...he's cool when he goes all serious swordsman, but mostly I want to stuff a sock in his mouth and give him prozac to shut him up.
Short version is, there's plenty of fodder to keep yaoi fans happy(butthen, that's true of any anime or manga with at least 2 bishies), but as far as what's actually in the show...well, if it's been holding you back from checking it out, don't worry about it, there really isn't that much, or at least, there didn't seem to be much to me. For the most part, it's just a fun, likable take on the "magical girl" genre. It IS rather long though...78 episodes(season 1 is 39 eps)
Fifteen year old kid from out world gets transported to a fantasy world and learns they have a special destiny. Of the core group, there's the borderline perfect knight(yet, naturally, with a tragic past and lost love) the loudmouthed hothead who's decent enough underneath and gets accidentally engaged to the main character right off the bat, the court official declaring his love for the main character left and right, the grouchy guy who's a big old softie underneath and has a protective streak, and the crossdresser who initially challenges and tests the main character, but is soon a hard and fast ally.
Sound familiar?
*waits for the friends list to stop chanting "FUSHIGI YUGI!!!!"*
The twist? The main character is Yuri, a boy with a demeanor rather like that of Haruhi from Ouran High Host Club(I Keep comparing characters to Ouran characters lately...I think that means it's been too long since Viz put out book 8 and they need to get on the ball with it), and Yuri's destiny isn't to save the world from evil and monsters, but to become the demon king and save the demon tribe from humans. And yes, all the above characters are male.
The show gets called shonen ai a lot, and, from the few episodes I had seen before, that's what I thought it was, but really, it isn't. It's considered perfectly natural in the demon world for two men to get married. Guntor, the court official and Wolfram, the son of the former Demon Queen who Yuri accidentally gets engaged to are both very into Yuri, but Yuri's general reaction to that is to run for dear life and wonder why it can't be girls. Conrad(perfect tragic knight character) seems to be that way at first, but once you know his past, not so much. Sure, it could happen later but really, so far nothing is setting off and shonen ai/slash detectors, what with it all being one sided and the other side REALLY wishing the one didn't exist. As a result, I really have to shipping/otp meters going off.
Now, frankly, I've read and seen too many "magical girl" manga/anime(particularly Fushigi Yugi and its various spawn) to NOT like this. It's fun, the animation is great, the story, which is well aware that it's little more than a parody of Fushigi Yugi and the like at its core, is interesting and manages to put a few twists into the genre without trying to be clever.
And, for an extremely male oriented cast, it has it's fair share of female characters, even if we don't seethem a lot. There's Celi, the flamboyant ex-demon queen(and mother of Conrad, Gwendal and Wolfram-who all have different fathers) who's on a quest for true love, Yuri's mother, who's dingy let lovable and VERY amusing, Giesella, Guntor's adopted daughter who's generally an extremely sweet natured medic, but if you cross her she can be the scariest army officer ever, Flynn, an idealistic noblewoman, and my favorie female character(and second favorite character) Anissima, Gwendal's childhood friend who's a rather nuts inventor who uses him as a guinea pig for her inventions and is the ONLY thing he fears(barring the death of a family member) *freely confesses to shipping them* There's also some priestess chick, but she annoys me.
That said, I'm surprisingly unattached to the male characters...I adore Gwendal beyond words-stern, grouchy, and too serious for his own good, he has a soft spot for anything cute, takes in ANYTHING resembling an innocent in distress(including an enemy's pregnant fiance) is uteerly loyal and comitted and is devoted to his insane family and, for allthat he wants to rn in terror, he's extremely tolerant of Anissima and would never dream of denying her(it's not ALL fear) I also like Josak, the occassional crossdresser and regular spy who's the friendliest guy you could ever meet-if you can recognize him-and, like Gwendal, once you prove you're wortgy of loyalty, you have him for life(unless you btray his trust) Like most leads in Magical Girl shojo(which this is even if he's a guy) Yuri is more than a bit of a Mary Sue, but he's well versed on his heroic fantasy and his forgetting which side he's on-holy sword vs demon sword, etc.-is amusing, and unlike many, doesn't whine about his lot. His friend, Murata, also amuses me, but we're only recently actually starting to see more of him. There's also Gwendals cousin, Hube(who does the flawed tragic knight bit better than Conrad, IMO) but I have a feeling he's gone for the most part(but he got a happy closure to his storyline, sothat's ok.)
I was kinda crazy for Conrad at first, but, well, he's like Allen in Escaflowne, he's TOO perfectly the flawed, tragic, perfect knight. Even his flaws make him seem more perfect and I want to scream atthe TV set to just make there be something wrong or imperfect about him to make him more interesting(that said, with Conrad, it looks like they listened, so, YAY!) Guntor and Wolfram...urm...Wolfram is a spoiled opinionated brat who, while amusing, needed to be spanked a lot as a kid(I think only Gwendal's fondness for cute things got him through childhood alive, honestly) but he seems to be getting better. And Guntor...urm...he's cool when he goes all serious swordsman, but mostly I want to stuff a sock in his mouth and give him prozac to shut him up.
Short version is, there's plenty of fodder to keep yaoi fans happy(butthen, that's true of any anime or manga with at least 2 bishies), but as far as what's actually in the show...well, if it's been holding you back from checking it out, don't worry about it, there really isn't that much, or at least, there didn't seem to be much to me. For the most part, it's just a fun, likable take on the "magical girl" genre. It IS rather long though...78 episodes(season 1 is 39 eps)