shojo

*This book was given to me in exchange for an honest review.

Erica Shinohara is friends with the popular girls in school and to stay in their circle, she made up a boyfriend, even going so far as to show them a random boy’s picture as proof. But those girls recognize the boy and it turns out it’s Kyoya Sata, a student in their school. Erica asks him to help her out by keeping up the lie by pretending to be her boyfriend but he’ll only do it if she becomes his dog.

Kyoya doesn’t blackmail Erica into sex or anything creepy like that. She’s basically his gopher and has to pay for snacks and stuff. It’s clear that being in the pretend relationship could blossom into a real one. There’s a little angst but this is mostly lighthearted shenanigans in a cute young adult romance. 3.5 out of 5.

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I’ve been really busy trying to get Dreamhunter ready for re-publishing and brainstorming ideas for that other anthology I want to query. But in between those things, I managed to get my hands on some anime! So, here’s a long overdue review of Maria Watches Over Us.

I’ve watched season one and two and I’ve come to two conclusions:
1) I have a weakness for shojo. I can’t help it. As warped as I am, give me a good silly story with decent characters and I get emotionally invested. I wanted to know everything about these girls and I wanted them to have beautiful friendships with their "sisters" (it’s kinda their way or mentoring in the school they attend) for the rest of their lives. I laughed with them, teared up when they cried and genuinely wanted them to graduate and succeed.

2) Yuri is nothing like Yaoi. When searching around, this title came up under Yuri and me being ME, I’m thinking "If it’s anything like the yaoi titles I’ve seen, this is gonna be demented and I would want the rest of my family to be far away when I’m watching it." Not even close. Maria is primarily focused on the emotional relationships between the girls. In fact, it’s ONLY focus is how the friendships function and why, and how they grow and change over time. Grab any yaoi manga or video and that’s SO not the case. Given that the market for both genres is the same (young women) you’d think there’d be some more emotion in yaoi or more… *achem* sleeze in the yuri. While I am VERY glad there’s no sleeze in Maria (it’s set in high school, for gods sakes…) I see this divide everywhere. Even in so called yuri manga. Even if the women are obviously in love, they barely share more than a meaningful glance. Meanwhile, the men are boning like jack rabbits through the whole damn thing, sometimes before they even know each other’s names.

So, if you’re looking for Maria to be like say, the female version of Kizuna, you will be absolutely disappointed. But if you want a classic high school drama filled with real emotion that keeps you going to the next episode, I encourage you to watch Maria. It’s just too adorable for words.

Oh, and keep voting for my story on Web Fiction. They refresh the votes every week so daily voting keeps me in the top 5. 😉

I’m almost done with Peach Girl so I’ll be reviewing that next. 😉