priest in cairo

Ok I’m fairly new to this fandom and haven’t seen or read everything yet, so if this is common knowledge or dead wrong then sorry. 

I noticed that pretty often when Doumeki and Watanuki have some sort of moment he takes out the egg afterwards and looks at it. 

We know that the egg contains all of Watanukis Memories about Yuuko. And if it’s broken he loses them. 

My theory is that, after losing the memories Watanuki becomes an ordinary human again or at least has no involvement with the supernatural anymore. 

So what if everytime Doumeki and Watanuki have a moment Doumeko contemplates on using the egg which then would “free” Watanuki and could possibly give them both a future. 

If that is true then he decides against it everytime for the sake of Watanuki who clearly doesn’t want to loose his memories and ties to Yuuko. 

Because love lost isn’t really love. Love, true love, God’s love, is ever-present, enduring, mortal yet always alive. Doumeki is like a saint: he’s mortal, but embodies this everlasting, pure love, like a walking paradox. A paradox that can only be explained by love.

Watanuki is in a stasis of lovelessness. Everyone he has loved openly cannot, for one reason or another, be at his side. It reflects his status as not being of the world. Love in its purest form is present, real, and full of life. Its presence casts out that which diminishes life. I think the story of the spirit lady does so well to illustrate how those who haven’t experienced healthy, abundant love find themselves in toxic relationships (same with Himawari and Yuko: even though both them and the spirit lady did really love Watanuki, there was always a price). For the love and companionship Watanuki was getting for his time spent with the spirit lady, he was paying with his health. Doumeki’s pure love cast that toxicity out, even at the risk of losing Watanuki’s love. Indeed, Doumeki’s love is paid for by nothing. Sure, Watanuki makes him food, but he loves making food despite any surface-level gripes he may have. Doumeki’s love multiplies Watanuki’s blessings and takes nothing, as love does.

What would Watanuki be forced to make of himself if he had to face, without question, that Doumeki’s whole and holy love was directed towards him? That he himself is whole and holy? That, even though he was not born a natural birth, has no memories and is a ghost to the world, even though he is in an ageless body, even though he is seemingly alone in his strange realm, an aberration in every sense of the word, he can be loved in a way that isn’t skewed? That a widely “normal” person from the land of the living can harbor a love for him that is pure, right, good, and here to stay?

When Morissey crooned “love is natural and real, but not for those such as you and I, my love,” I’m sure Watanuki felt that. Watanuki is supposedly unnatural and unreal, and can only continue life as shopkeeper. In all of his agelessness, unreality, grandeur and power he is more like a deity than a human being. But Doumeki’s human, yet supernatural, both miraculous and mundane, and had the power to turn Watanuki into a flesh and blood man simply by loving him as one. Doumeki’s suit-wearing, university-attending worldliness marks him as a sentinel of the “real” world, the one that apparently forgot who Watanuki is, and says through him: “ I remember you. I want you. You belong here. And I love you.”

Most often when the average non-shoujo fan says something "borrows from shoujo" they think it means a series drew pretty boys or made romance a main focus. However this isn't the case. When a manga "uses shoujo elements" it has nothing to do with tropes, genres, or bishonens. 

I'll preface this thread with, as always saying, I'm not an expert. I just am repeating articles, papers, and research I've read from other people who have clearly been studying shoujo much more in depth and longer than me. If I get something wrong just tell me. 

When an author gets inspired by shoujo it's usually for the dramatic and deeply personal nature that the demographic offers. Shoujo likes exploring interpersonal relationships and looking in depth at why a character thinks or acts the way they do. Digging into the psyche.

The emotional nature of shoujo manga came from shoujo shosestsu (novels for young girls) that were at first meant to make girls into "good wives and wise mothers" but women authors of these novels were able to also use them as a pushback against gender norms too.

Shoujo shosetsu's had the very dreamy style of writing that is very popular in shoujo throughout the decades. Instead of just saying an emotion, you describe that emotion in depth without naming it. In the case of manga, you draw that emotion.

Now when it comes to shoujo art style, this often gets attributed to jojoga (lyrical paintings). Many would say that Macoto Takahashi is a big reason for the sparkly eyes and flowery imagery we see in shoujo for years now. He was inspired by Junichi Nakahara's work though.

These two both worked in shoujo magazines in the 30's to 40's and Takahashi even went on to create a shoujo manga in the late 50's.

The style of shoujo art developed from there. This is where we not see the detailed, sparkly eyes, the soft bubbly shapes that convey feelings, flowers in the backgrounds, expressionist flowy lines, etc etc

Another aspect of shoujo art style is the paneling which was extremely unique in the early days of manga. Prior to the "boom" of shoujo in the 60's, the series were primarily created by men with a handful of women around too. These manga were the typical comic structural flow.

However as women started to become more involved in making shoujo manga and eventually dominating the creation of these series, the paneling began to follow a more dreamy structure to fit the storytelling of the novels they most likely grew up with.

This is where we see paneling in shoujo become more like puzzle pieces being put together. The flow of time is different in the manga since it isn't just conveying sequences but emotions at the same time. The way your eye is drawn through the page is usually in squiggles or S's.

The reason why a lot of people probably think "shoujo art sucks" is because they're very unused to how shoujo manga is structured. If you are confused by the flow of the page, it's because you're used to a different type of storytelling (shonen). 

Anyway, these are things that are actually shoujo elements. Just because a series has a pretty boy in it or has romance/slice of life doesn't mean it borrowed from shoujo. I also don't think basing a character design on a shoujo character means it "took inspo from shoujo" either. 

When I think of "shoujo elements" I think of inter personal relationships, conveying emotions in a poetic way, ethereal imagery of some sort, paneling that flows through the page or makes time feel slow, and also much softer, wispy line work and shading.

Also important to note that using these things outside of shoujo doesn't automatically make something shoujo. 

Sources pulled from early blog post of Rachel Thorn

Blog posts from Dan Mazur

Essay about panel configuration in shoujo

International Perspectives on Shoujo