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Unconventional Romance: Five Manga Couples
In the graphic novel Mangaman, Barry Lyga and Colleen Doran have some fun with the conventions of manga, depicting a character who crashes into a more realistic comic and confuses everyone with his speedlines, sweatdrops, and heart-shaped eyes, not to mention the image of his girlfriend that appears above his head whenever he thinks of her.
While Lyga and Doran played it for laughs, manga really is a good medium for romance, with its many visual cues for emotions—not just sweatdrops and the little hash marks that indicate anger, but a strongly expressive repertoire of facial expressions and gestures. What’s more, manga creators often layer an internal monologue into the panel alongside the speech balloons, providing a more nuanced telling of the story than would be possible with dialogue alone. Of course, these powerful storytelling tools work best in the service of a good story. While manga romances often fall into familiar formulas, the good ones break the mold with believable characters that you want to root for. Here’s a roundup of five manga romances with couples that range from nervous teenagers to urban sophisticates, each of them intriguing in their own way.
Happy Marriage?! by Maki Enjoji
The “two strangers who have to get married” plot is the oldest wheeze in the romance biz, but Maki Enjoji gives it new life in her tale of a plucky girl who marries the company president to pay off her father’s debts. Our heroine, Chiwa, is working as an office lady and moonlighting in a hostess bar when the CEO of her company, Hokuto, proposes marriage. It’s strictly business: Marrying her will secure his position in the family organization. The setup is straight-up old-school Harlequin romance: Chiwa is naïve, idealistic, and (to Hokuto’s surprise and dismay) a virgin; Hokuto is cold and controlling at times, but decent underneath it all. Once that’s all established, though, this story goes off into all sorts of interesting subplots, ranging from awkwardness over Christmas presents to a kidnapping, and Hokuto’s personality becomes clearer as his troubled family life is revealed. Meanwhile, the couple is steadily falling in love and just as steadily refusing to recognize it, keeping the romantic tension going for 10 whole volumes.
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What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Fumi Yoshinaga
Sometimes a nice dinner is just a nice dinner, but in this series of short stories about a gay couple in Tokyo, it’s always something more. Shiro is an uptight corporate lawyer who deals with his insecurity about money by focusing intently on keeping the budget down and fixing thrifty (but delicious!) meals every night. Kenji is a laid-back hairstylist who is prone budget-busting impulse purchases of Häagen-Dasz. The complications, tensions, and joy of their relationship come through in the cooking and serving of each meal. The novel-plus-recipes is a familiar format, weaving together as it does our physical and emotional hungers, and Yoshinaga handles it brilliantly, crafting an entire world around Shiro and Kenji and the dinners they enjoy together.
Paradise Kiss, by Ai Yazawa
Paradise Kiss captures the rush of first love and the thrill of finding a new passion in life. Yukari Hayasaka is one of the good girls of manga: She’s studying hard, going to cram school so she can get into a good university (though she’s not sure why), and she has a one-sided crush on a handsome classmate. Then she runs into a group of fashion students who recruit her to be the model for their final project, and suddenly nothing is the same. The students of the Paradise Atelier are as hard-working and earnest as she is, but they are following their dreams, not preparing to work for The Man. Yukari finds their freedom exhilarating, even if she can’t quite figure out how to share it. What’s more, she grows weirdly obsessed with the head designer, George, who continually leaves her off balance. Yazawa’s unique style draws heavily from fashion illustration; in fact, this story was serialized in the fashion magazine Zipper.
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My Love Story, by Kazune Kawahara and Aruko
Kawahara and Aruko cleverly flip the conventions of teen romance manga to come up with a story that is charming, funny, and a bit out of the ordinary. Takeo is a big, good-natured guy—a hulk with a heart—but the girls only have eyes for his best friend Sunakawa, a classic manga prince (blonde hair, good grades, stand-offish attitude). Takeo is resigned to staying in Sunakawa’s shadow, so when they rescue a girl named Yamato from a creepy harasser and she keeps showing up to thank them, he assumes she has a crush on Sunakawa and nobly steps aside… and steps aside… and steps aside… until she finally has to tell Takeo that he’s the one she’s after. Kawahara has a lot of fun with the contrast between Takeo’s size and his gentle naïveté, and the depictions of Takeo’s frequent freak-outs are priceless.
Insufficient Direction, by Moyoco Anno
Here’s a happy ending for our roundup: A story about a real-life couple who are perfectly suited for each other. Moyoco Anno, the creator of Sakuran, Flowers and Bees, and In Clothes Called Fat, is married to Hideaki Anno, the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion, and this slim volume chronicles the ups and downs of their life together. Moyoco portrays herself as a baby and her husband as sweet, if somewhat clueless. It’s otaku-meets-otaku humor that will make a lot more sense to hardcore manga and anime fans, but there’s a comprehensive set of footnotes in the back to aid the perplexed. And even if you don’t recognize Hideaki’s exact pose or the anime song they are singing, there’s something universal about sharing your enthusiasm with the one you love.
Who’s your ideal manga match?