#suni talks

Fifty years ago, Riyoko Ikeda had blessed us with a revolutionary romance manga series called "The Rose Of Versailles" which follows the life of one Oscar François du Jarjayes, a fearless military commander and compassionate patriot. This series divulges Lady Oscar's course of life from early childhood until the last breath of air taken in front of the conquered Bastille.

The year 1975 when the first book of "The Rose of Versailles" was published was not yet ready to warmly embrace taboo subjects such as female military leaders or lead-protagonists, never mind the combination of the two. The story is set in 1770's France when Oscar François du Jarjayes, referred to as Lady Oscar by those who were close to her, never shied away from admitting her true gender and status. That was until she had to face revelations which opened her eyes to a different world.

Despite the fact that Lady Oscar was a female, she had been raised as the heir to her father's legacy, making her adapt to only manly attributes. Growing up as a knight, she knew nothing more than to fight for what she believed in. Once she entered adulthood, she had new aspects of herself to take into consideration. Becoming someone's wife and starting a family completely clashed with the values of being a military general. This started raising question regarding the way to continue her life. It didn't help that her identity journey started together with the revolution of French citizens.

One thing I found particularly interesting enough to be mentioned is Oscar's answer to what seemed to be confusion regarding the role she should embrace; someone's wife or the people's general. She chose to accept the need of love at the same time she refused her noble status in solidarity for the suffering of her country's people. She was at last filled with irrevocable love for her love-interest, as well as French citizens.

Recently I've seen quite the number of people displeased with how Lovely Complex has unraveled as a shoujo series and some its of characters. This was all happening on TikTok so I'll take it with a grain of salt...

The complaint was regarding the series' male lead, Ootani Atsushi, and especially his behavior towards the female lead, Koizumi Risa.

(Could be) Spoilers!

Lovely Complex (also shortened as Love Com) is exactly what you'd think it is; a rom com series. The shoujo manga was written by Aya Nakahara and later animated, all happening in the early 2000's.

The series tries its best to capture the relationship between 1.72 cm tall Koizumi Risa and 1.56 cm tall Ootani Atsushi. The heights bring sorrow to their every day life already. No one sees Risa as a girl and Ootani, as a boy. Although something changes when they sit next to each other.

They start off as friends, naturally. Their friendship seems to be genuine as they share a big interest in the same artist, Umibozu. They go to concerts together and talk to each other about this quite a lot. However what makes them so popular, even at school, is their fights (and trust me, there are lots of them). They call each other insults and names, they make fun of each other's heights and misfortune in love. It's their thing whether it's mean or not.

Somehow Risa develops feelings for Ootani and she rapidly confesses to him. However Ootani can't seem to get over their height difference and tells her the truth; for now the feelings are not reciprocated. Risa doesn't give up on Ootani and for the rest of the series, she fights to receive Ootani's love...which she does.

To people's surprise (and i mean the readers/ viewers), Risa and Ootani's fights never went away. Even after Ootani learns about Risa's feelings, he doesn't change a bit and he sometimes even teases her for the crush. What people seem to miss is that Risa doesn't change that much towards Ootani either. But I suppose that was the key to Ootani's heart. If Risa had changed and became someone "more to Ootani's liking", he would have never ended up falling for her as hard as he had. And same goes for Ootani since Risa fell in love with him as he was from the start.

People are quick and mostly eager to judge. Nothing will be enough or well done. In this case, poeple were just as quick to label Ootani as 'annoying' and 'toxic'.

Is he annoying? Personally, he reminds me of my boyfriend and he's truly dear to me as a character so no, he's not annoying at all. He can be for you! But is he toxic? Let's talk about it!

First and foremost, it all comes down to the fights and the name-calling so we'll talk about this aspect first. It's true that fighting, name-calling, insults are NOT a 'love language' and they aren't 'cute' or 'aesthetic' either. They should never be romanticized. But is it toxic in this scenario? I don't see it as such. They're teenagers, they're new to the concept of love and relationships and especially to such a 'taboo' height difference. They insult each other as a defense mechanism to all the years they've spent being insecure about their heights. They grow and learn together, as we see later in the manga, they learn to love each other and themselves together with their heights. They accept it and that's when the fights die down. I could not call this 'toxicity'.

But what was upsetting to see was this supposed 'toxicity' being label as Ootani's doing. Mind you that they both fight, argue and insult. People tend to pity Risa for having to fight so hard for Ootani's love, but I find Ootani's refusal respectful towards Risa. He knew there was a gap in the intensity of their feelings so he never gave up on Risa and her feelings. Even when Risa was about to lose all faith, he was the one to bring her back on track. There were moments when Ootani believed more in them than Risa had. He loved her, he just wanted to love her enough and appropriately.

Ootani is a prime example of 'fragile masculinity' which is in fact not the same as 'toxic masculinity'. Ootani is insecure about his height, that'a a given. He gets defensive when Risa makes fun of him and feels upset when others don't take him seriously. And funny enough, Risa does the same.

I don't think Ootani is in the case of having 'toxic masculinity', especially since he's had no problem dating the girl who makes fun of him the most about his biggest insecurity who is also tree heads taller than him. And not only did he date her, but he loved her, in his weird gremlin way, but he cherished her.

From women to female characters, they all were, are and will continue to be the objects of all men's desires. Nothing is different when it comes to the anime community. In fact, it only gets worse.

Not only do some fans seek to s*xualize some characters for their own 'enjoyment', but they seem to be encouraged. In same cases, the mangakas, the anime studio, the merch producers and other unofficial sellers of merchandise contribute to the damaging viewing of female characters...

(small break) This reminds me of the TikTok an 'anime' guy made in which he implies he stole the virginity of his body pillow of Demon Slayers' 12 to 14 year old Nezuko. That's exactly what I am trying to hint at. These people will s*xualize female characters despite their age and no matter if the 'right' content will be provided for them. That's why I personally think they shouldn't be given 'what they want' (s*xualized figurines, body pillows, etc).

My inspiration for this post was a certain series of Chainsaw Man figurines of some of its female characters dressed in playboy bunny costumes.

With just one search of "Chainsaw Man Figurines" and below a minute of scrolling, you will be greeted by the pictures of Makima and Power figurines dressed in playboy bunny costumes. While Makima is depicted as an adult, Power is not. And besides their ages, which i could not find anywhere, Power is made out to be Denji's first friend, a 16 year old. Most of the times, she behaves much more childishly than Denji, so no matter her 'real' age, the viewers are meant to believe she's only a teenager.

Now it's true that Chainsaw Man is a story which revolves around a teenage boy so the s*xual side of it is mainly present because of that aspect. However, not all anime fans are teenagers and this content, whether it's shonen anime, merchandise and even h*ntai (oh god, the territory i'm crossing here), can be consumed by anybody.

There are plenty other female characters that are s*xualized without having a 'sexy figurine' made of them, including Himeno (supposedly in her mid to late 20's and is also a romanticized by the fandom s*xual abus*r), Kobeni (20 year old), Reze (supposedly late teens to early 20's, shown wearing little to no clothing in the manga) and lately Asa (mid to late teens). It doesn't take much to be seen as an object.

And don't get me wrong, I love Chainsaw Man. I am currently reading the series and I'm not anywhere near dropping it. It's entertaining and its approach is really different from usual shonen manga. However we can't not acknowledge the flaws in some scenes and merchandise pieces.

Some people might say not only female characters get over-s*xualized in the anime community and that's absolutely right! Again, some men have been getting mad after the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen got released and seeing all the "female" fan service of Gojo Satoru, Geto Suguru, Nanami Kento, Kamo Choso, etc. There have been understandably terrible incidents such as the "Bloody Gojo Figurine" one when a supposed underage fan had ruined their figurine of Jujutsu Kaisen's character with their own period blood... But unfortunately for women and most likely fortunately for men, these behaviors are currently not affecting men to the extent it affects women.

Why I am only mentioning the Chainsaw Man figurines, which from what I've seen are sold by none other than Crunchyroll itself, and not the other merchandise of h*ntai characters and whatnot is because Chainsaw Man is getting more main stream as more chapters get released.

A Sign of Affection is a 12 episodes series about a born-deaf girl navigating through college life and relationships, especially romantic ones - which she has no experience in.

I've seen lots of people hyping this series up and I couldn't wait any longer before deciding to give it a try.

Aesthetically, I enjoyed the art-style and animation a lot. It was easy on the eyes, from all characters to even the backgrounds. The show itself was slow paced but not plot-wise which made it very easy to watch and relax to. All characters were written well and it was extremely easy to empathize with all their stories. It definitely felt like the type of show which didn't need a 'bad guy' to get the plot rolling.

But what I wanted to talk about was something I realized as soon as I finished watching all 12 episodes. The communication between characters.

One common trope in shoujo anime/manga is definitely misunderstandings. It's probably as old as the first shoujo manga. My belief is that it's used as a form of dragging the plot as much as you can without making it suspiciously obvious and the book unreadable. A manga which, in my opinion, over-uses this trope is 'Kimi ni Todoke' in which the female lead, Sawako, not only has way too many misunderstandings with the male lead, Kazehaya, but with also pretty much everyone else.

The same things can absolutely not be said about A Sign of Affection. The communication is crystal clear between Yuki, the female lead, and everyone else.

Although Yuki is born deaf and cannot even fathom what talking sounds like, all her relationships seem to have never encountered communication problems or misunderstandings. Most of Yuki's friends are hearing, some of them know the sign language as well, meaning Oushi (if I can call him a friend).

Her romantic relationship with Itsuomi is built on the desire to learn and to discover things they couldn't otherwise but through each other. Ever since Yuki and Itsoumi first met, they were never once met with the inability to communicate freely.

On the contrary, their communication is so good, it doesn't take them a-series-long to get together and we actually have time to see not only how their relationship comes together but also how they both grow in the context of their relationship.

This is one of the reasons why I personally think this series deserves a 10/10 review. (Another reason is the educational aspect of the whole series which is greatly needed.) I highly recommend it if looking for something sweet and short to watch!

Have you watched it? If so, what was your favorite aspect of this anime/manga?