Surprise Crochet!

I was flipping through a volume of Peach Girl, a manga I read years ago, and was pleasantly surprised to find Momo, the main character, crocheting a cellphone holder for her boyfriend (read right to left):

The translation says "knit," but the same verb is used for knitting and crochet in Japan (it also means "to braid"), so I'm chalking this one up to the translator not knowing what crochet is.  Probably an accurate assumption.  I can't tell you how many times I've had people ask me what I'm knitting, even if I've already told them that I don't knit.

I checked out the anime (which I didn't bother to do when it first came out) to see if this made it into the animated adaptation (since it seriously condenses the story), and it did!

Both the fansubs and the Funimation translation use "knit," which kinda proves my point.  People see yarn and a stick and instantly think "knitting."  But it's a little more irksome in the anime, since it shows Momo's pattern book, which clearly has "how to crochet" instructions...

...and shows her chaining in action:

(Wish I'd thought to make an animated gif before sending back the disc).
The finished product:

 While working on getting the images for this post, I ran into another instance of crochet in an unlikely place.  I was watching The Big Picture, the first film directed by Christopher Guest (whom I like due to his improv movies, i.e. A Mighty Wind), and in a scene towards the end, the main character's agent (played by Martin Short) is crocheting away his stress:

That's one big granny square.
Truth be told, I was a little more surprised to find crochet in an American movie from the 80's than in an manga/anime from the late 90's/early 2000's.  Crochet is very popular in Japan, and is the namesake for amigurumi, crocheted stuffed animals.  In fact, why haven't I seen more crochet in anime?  Granted, I did most of my anime watching before I got into crochet, so it could be that, like the translators for Peach Girl, I saw it and just didn't recognize it for what it was.

Dear School Gang Leader/Aa, Itoshi no Banchou-sama

Please read right to left (and click to see fullsize):

I've been reading Dear School Gang Leader (Aa, Itoshi no Banchou-sama), but this is the first time I laughed out loud.  I think it's the beat before the shop owner's line that does it.

Light and Dark in manga

Something I've noticed, mostly in shoujo manga, is a predominance of light vs. dark in love triangles.  I mean, typically, the romantic set-up of a shoujo manga will go something like this: the main character girl will have a crush on the one boy who is nice if a little out of her league, and he almost always has light-colored hair.  And then there's the other boy who pisses her off, and vice versa, but he starts to warm up to her, and her to him, and this boy almost always has dark-colored hair.  I've seen this in Kitchen Princess, Boys Over Flowers, Peach Girl, Shugo Chara!, and to a certain degree in Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime.  And I know that there are more that I either haven't read or just aren't coming to mind.

What bugs me about this set-up, though, is that in every example I've seen, the dark-haired boy gets the girl!  Not that this is a bad thing, but when it happens over and over again, and is done poorly, it starts to piss me off.  I'd say Boys Over Flowers and Peach Girl are good versions of this, but I could be biased as I read those before I noticed the trend.  Kitchen Princess is where I started noticing this, and Shugo Chara is where it started to bother me, mostly because I do not like Amuto in the least, and unfortunately for me, the forces of shoujo seems to say it will be so.  (Granted, I'm only following the US release, and I'm about twenty episodes behind the anime.)  As they say, knowing the tropes is not a good thing in some cases.

Disney Fairies Manga!?

During my trip a couple of weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to get to a Japanese bookstore, and by sheer chance I peek at the children's book section. And what did I find there? Disney. Fairies. Manga. There were two volumes, based on the books "Vidia and the Fairy Crown" and "The Trouble with Tink" and I bought them both. They generally follow the plot of the books, but there are some differences. For one thing, "Vidia and the Fairy Crown" is listed as the first volume, and it has a scene at the beginning where Vidia gets the invitation and and crumples it up, calling it "trivial." And "The Trouble with Tink" includes a flashback for Tink of when Wendy came to Neverland.
Here are some scans I made. Some of them didn't come out very well, though. The artist has an interesting style (I'm not sure what her last name is, but her first name is Haruhi), and she tends to give the fairies fangs. Which makes an odd sort of sense, actually, but it's not the first thing I would have thought of.


Vidia and the Missing Royal Crown. (Vidia to Kieta Oukan)
The back cover
Inside Pic of Vidia (color)
Inside Pic of fairies swinging (color)
Vidia's page of exposition; she spies Tink and Rani (2 pages)
Tink gets mad at Vidia, Vidia says she's not coming to the party (2 pages)
Vidia gives her famous line about the crown
Florian shares her news about the missing crown
Depressed Vidia after the meeting
Prilla in front of Vidia (Very cute)
Prilla wants to help Vidia
Vidia accepts Prilla's help (sort of)
Upon realizing that nobody saw Aiden, Vidia takes off!
Everyone in shock after Aiden uses his drill (panel)
Vidia and Twire
Lympia remembers she never took the velvet bag out of the carrier
Prilla helps herself to a cupcake, Vidia questions Nora
Looking at the fake crowns (panel)
Dupe explains about the fake crowns
Vidia refuses to help
Vidia says the poem super quiet
Vidia has the real crown!
At the hearing
Everyone realizes that they were wrong about Vidia (2 pages)
Vidia smiles her 'thank you' to Prilla (2 pages)
Profiles of the fairies in the story (2 pages)
Four panel comics (2 pages, translated)
More four panel comics (2 pages, translated)

It's kind of odd, but when I read the books, I hear Vidia as sounding like an accentless Eva Gabor (it's all the "darlings" she throws around), but when I read the manga, she sounds like a combination of Chieko Honda and Kaori Mizuhashi.

Tinkerbell's Secret (Tinkaa*Beru no Himitsu)
Back cover
Inside pic of Tink (color)
Portrait of fairies with Queen Clarion (color)
Terence comes to visit Tink at work (2 pages)
Tink gets excited about the game of Tag
Terence tells Tink he's glad she came...but she's gone
Violet shows up for her pot (cropped)
Dulcie
Dulcie promises Strawberry Pie
Vidia's page of exposition
Prilla waves to Tink (panel)
Rani makes a huge fountain (particularly bad scan, panel)
Dinner with the Pots and Pans fairies (2 pages)
Flashback of Peter Pan and Wendy (2 pages)
Tink and Mother Dove (panel)
Peter and Terence (panel)
Tink says goodbye to Peter
Bonus comics (2 pages, translated)

About the bonus comics, I translated the title as "Small and Cute Fairy Diary," but the first word is actually more like "Tiny."
Of course, after I got all this scanned and edited, I found out that Tokyopop is releasing the manga this August. orz

Strawberry Marshmallow

I watched the first volume of the anime Ichigo Mashimaro, also known as Strawberry Marshmallow, back in September, but I didn't get to the second and third volumes until a few weeks ago. I enjoyed the series, despite my apprehension about the character designs, so I decided to check out the manga, since I knew it was out and I'd heard that some stories played better in the manga than the anime. I went to the mall yesterday, intending to buy the first couple of volumes, but the Borders Express I went to only had volumes 3 and 4, so I got them anyway. It's not like Strawberry Marshmallow has an overarching story that has to be read in order or anything. And so I started reading volume 3, and I wasn't all that impressed with it vs. the anime, until I got to Episode 28: Cinderella.

This chapter tells the story of Cinderella (obviously) as read by Miu, so instead of the typical manga trope of having the characters act out the story, we instead get a picture book style with images of Matsuri as Cinderella, Ana and Chika as the stepsisters, Nobue as the prince, and Miu as the Fairy Godmother who ends up sticking around and living happily ever after. What made the story, though, was the additions Miu brings to the story, from stating that the stepsisters "bullied Cinderella horribly, especially on Thursdays and Fridays," to making the Fairy Godmother comment on the effectiveness of Cinderella's gown for fighting demons.

And then I read the chapter where they played with dolls, which was better than in the anime, so I decided that it was worth the money.

I really want the CD with the character songs on it, though.