geri_chan

Forgot to post this earlier--this was my entry for the Be the First flash round back in September:

Not Your Typical Cinderella Story (5969 words) by geri_chan
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Nakamura Miya, Nakamura Yasu, Kounokura Teru
Additional Tags: Family, Step-parents, Step-siblings, Family Bonding
Summary: Miya, an illegitimate daughter of the Kounokura family, goes to live with her stepmother and stepsisters after her mother dies. She expects to be mistreated, but to her surprise, they all seem determined to love and protect her.

Just as she is beginning to settle into her new family, Miya's grandmother shows up, threatening to take her back. Will Miya have to give up her newfound happiness? Not if stepmother Teru and her daughters can help it!

***
 
( Read more... )

 

I picked up volume 1 of Midnight Secretary from the library. It was kind of silly and trashy (in a good way) and a lot of fun. Kaya becomes the secretary of company director Kyohei, who frankly comes off as a jerk at first. He rudely declares that he doesn't want an unattractive woman working for him, and he's a womanizer who has a string of lovers waltzing in and out of the office. Kaya thinks he's a jerk too, but is stubbornly determined to impress him with her secretarial skills, which she does in spite of himself. And of course along the way, she discovers that Kyohei is actually a vampire, and his lovers are "food". (He drinks a little blood from them during their, ahem, passionate encounters, which leaves a little anemic but otherwise unharmed and unaware of what really happened.)

( Cut for mild spoilers... ).

Excellent news! NHK is producing a live action miniseries based on the My Brother's Husband manga, which I blogged about here. I'm not familar with the guy who's been cast to play Mike, but I've seen Sato Ryuta in a number of dramas and liked him a lot, and I think he'll do a good job with the role of Yaichi, even if he's a bit slimmer physically than the character. Coincidentally, he played a gay character in Shitsuren Chocolatier, and while that character had some gay stereotype traits, he was also a really likable character that was pretty well-rounded for a comedic supporting role. I don't know if I'll ever be able to see it air in the US, but if/when it comes out on dvd, I will definitely pick it up! (Even without subtitles, I should be able to follow what's going on, since I'm familiar with the manga version, even if I miss out on a few details.)

Closing out the month with another manga review, this time for My Brother's Husband.

This was an amazing story, and highly recommended! It's by Gengoroh Tagame, who is best known for writing explicit gay manga about big beefy guys having BDSM sex. However, this one has no sex at all and is actually pretty family friendly. It's shelved in the adult fiction section at the local library, but I think it could easily be shelved in the Young Adult section, and even younger kids could probably relate to the character of Kana.

There are very minor spoilers below the cut, but nothing that isn't obvious from the official summary.


( Read more... )

Two completely different titles, but what they have in common is that, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy them as much as I thought I would. (Coinicentally, both are published in the US by Seven Seas, but since there are plenty of Seven Seas titles I do like, I don't hold that against them.)

The High School Life of a Fudanshi: About a straight high school boy who loves BL manga (in other words, a "fudanshi"), who wishes he could find other male pals who share his hobby. It sounded like fun, and it started off cute enough, with the main character hovering around the BL section of the bookstore, but being too embarrassed to get the books he wants while a couple of girls are hanging out there. But the humor mostly revolves around, "I find BL manga hot, but I am not gay! Yup, I am completely straight even if I love BL manga!" Which, let me tell you, gets old pretty fast, and wasn't that funny the first time around. Also the dude is kinda creepy--not because he likes BL, but because when his male friend tells him about how he got groped by a stranger, it becomes fodder for his BL fantasies. Eww.

Plum Crazy! Tales of a Tiger-Striped Cat: This one I didn't hate, just have somewhat mixed feelings about. It's a G-rated title about an adorable cat named Plum, who lives happily with her owner, a teenage boy named Taku, who is more responsible and practical than his kind but ditzy mom. Life is good until Mom adopts a stray kitten named Snowball, who gets into a lot of mischief and is always picking on poor Plum. On one hand, kitties being adorable--yay! On the other, I end up feeling bad for Plum for getting beat up on by Snowball so often. Still, fans of other cute kitty manga like Chi's Sweet Home might like this one.

I'll do another post later with more positive reviews.

I'm so behind on all book/movie reviews and other blog posts I've been planning to make, but I wanted to at least take a moment to rec Fumi Yoshinaga's manga What Did You Eat Yesterday?, which I also briefly mentioned here. I recently read that US publisher Vertical is losing money on this series, although they remain committed to continuing it. (Apparently the adorable cat manga Chi's Sweet Home is a big hit that helps to fund their less profitable titles, for which I am eternally grateful.)

But it breaks my heart that more people aren't buying this series! The food descriptions and drawings are mouth-wateringly delicious, but what I love most about it is that it's a slice-of-life story about a 40-something gay couple (Shiro and Kenji) that portrays their relationship in a mature and realistic manner. They deal with problems at work, and worry about aging parents, who in Shiro's case, are trying to be accepting of their son, but still aren't entirely comfortable with him being gay. They often argue over petty issues (and occasionally about more serious ones), but at the same time, it's obvious that they love each other very much and remain committed to each other.  So much BL manga deals with high school romances, and being closer in age to Shiro and Kenji, it's really refreshing to find a story about an adult couple dealing with typical adult issues.

( Mild spoilers below the cut... )

It's interesting, the random bits of information I pick up about Japanese law/culture/history from watching tv shows and reading manga, and how those two sometimes cross over. For example, jury trials were implemented relatively recently in Japan, and an episode from Season 6 of the Aibou detective drama focused on a murder case that (in the fictional Aibou world) was the first jury trial in the country. And in Vol. 5 of the manga What Did You Eat Yesterday?, a slice-of-life story about a 40-something gay couple (a lawyer and a hairdresser), the lawyer has to assist in defending a murder suspect because he's one of the few (or possibly only) people in the firm who have had training in the jury system.

( Read more... )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you so much for volunteering to write a fic for me! Please feel free to take a look around my journal if you want to see what kinds of stories I like. You can find my Fanfic Masterlist here, and the fics are also tagged by fandom and/or title in the sidebar. As you can see, I mostly read and write m/m slash, but if you don't feel comfortable writing that, I would be perfectly happy with a gen story, (or het or femslash for the fandoms that have female characters) too!

( Contains spoilers for the various canons... )

I'm not sure if any of you are following the Skip Beat and Library Wars manga series, but I've found the recent volumes to be so squee-worthy that I just had to share my impressions here. I love Skip Beat for its acting/showbiz themes, and Library Wars because of the way it handles the issues of censorship and the freedom to read in a both comical and serious manner. Since I'm talking about volumes later in the series, this will contain some spoilery talk for readers new to the series. I managed not to give away too much for Library Wars, but spoilers for Ren's past were unavoidable for the Skip Beat discussion, since the plot revolves heavily around them.


( Cut for spoilers... )

As you may have heard, JManga is shutting down at the end of May. This was sad news for me, as I've been an avid supporter of JManga--despite having reservations about their "read online only" system, I was really thrilled with the diverse selection of titles that would probably considered too obscure or niche to be profitable for a print company. And of course, I was happy with the license rescues like my beloved Tactics (formerly published by TOKYOPOP). I gave my initial reaction over at Manga Bookshelf in Mourning JManga:
( Read more... )