Hobbies in Manga: Otomen

In other posts, I discuss the "container" for a romance. The romance follows a classic pattern (just as mysteries do), from meeting to (sometimes) a requisite breakup to a revelation (of some type) to reconciliation. The "container" may be a mystery. Or a cruise. Or a trip through purgatory. 

A variation on the "container" is the hobby. Manga particularly offers many series that focus on characters exploring a favorite interest, including manga itself! 

The hobbies range from camping to astronomy to stamp-collecting (okay, I haven't yet read a stamp-collecting manga, but I'm sure one is out there!). 

Otomen is a great example--as is Hana-Kimi--of a series where hobbies define not only the series' theme but the characters. Frankly, more high school manga should employ the same approach! 

Asuka, the main otoman of the series, likes cute things. Ryo, his girlfriend, likes physical, rough-and-tumble pursuits. More importantly, however, they like specific hobbies. Asuka likes cooking and sewing. Ryo is good at martial arts and likes to hike.

Amongst Asuka and Ryo's friends, Kitora loves flowers; Tonomine loves make-up. Juta actually has a job as a shojo mangaka. 

The true magnificence of the series is that the otomen are allowed to be themselves--but so is everyone else, including the flirtatious girly girl whose hobby is, in fact, flirting and cheering people on.  

The character are memorable because of what they focus on and pursue. 

Launcelot & Guinevere: Yuck

When it comes to classic romantic couples, Lancelot and Guinevere are on the list.

And I have never found them even slightly interesting.

Consequently, I consider T.H. White's Once and Future King, which is more about Arthur and the knights, more interesting than the musical Camelot, which covers the inevitable love affair between Lancelot, Arthur's best friend, and Guinevere, his wife.

As I mention elsewhere, romance and adultery are a bad combination. But the problem goes beyond adultery. I've always had a sneaking sympathy for Tristan and Iseult, another adulterous couple from medieval lore. They fall in love when Tristan collects her to marry his uncle. The relationship begins on the boat ride back (and in some versions, is aided by a potion). So--not exactly adultery (at least not at first), yet still kind of skanky.

The thing that bugs me about Lancelot and Guinevere, however, is the angst. 

So they commit adultery, which is bad enough. But then they--Lancelot mostly--bemoan the fact. Oh, my sad, sad life where I betray my friend! Oh, I must wander limply around the castle and weep into my mead. I must beat my breast, take my sorrowful self on a self-indulgent journey--where I cause more grief to people (see Elaine and Elaine) because I am so, so sad.

I always start routing for Modred. In a short story that I wrote in college, I had Launcelot's heir, Galahad, leave his father and side with Modred. He was tired of the self-justifications. 

N is for Nutty Significant Others or Ted Bundy Didn't Fool Everyone

A popular trope in traditional romance novels is the heroine who is engaged or married to a sociopath. 

The book I tried by Brenda Novak, Tourist Season, falls into this category. 

I have a problem with this trope. 

Americans like to mythologize their serial killers: They are so clever and so handsome...THAT'S why they weren't caught. 

The truth is, catching serial killers is hard because randomness (or seeming randomness) is hard to pinpoint. It isn't because serial killers are "all that." 

One of Ted Bundy's approaches was to put on a sling (to make himself look harmless) and ask women to help him at his car. The myth forgets, a number of women didn't go with him. (The movie with Harmon as Bundy does a good job showing that reality.) 

Harmon as Bundy

The women didn't go with him because they had plans. Or they had a policy of not going anywhere with strangers. Or they were willing to fetch other people to help. Or they actually thought he was kind of sketchy. Not sketchy enough to call in the cops--people don't usually react to uneasy feelings that way. But sketchy.

One of my aunts (now dead) married a creepy guy. She then divorced him and married another creepy guy. 

Her sisters, including my mom, thought the guys were creepy from Day One.

I want to make clear: people fall into relationships for reasons other than using their brains. I don't think people are (necessarily) to blame for ending up with horrible partners and/or with partners who become horrible and/or with abusive partners. They certain don't deserve to be hurt/killed.

Brenda is a great, flawed character

who luckily ends up with Fritz.

The problem with the trope in romance is how often the writers want the heroines to be savvy and logical. They want them to be tough women who are trapped, not dopey women or desperate women or even, like Brenda in The Closer, complicated women who can be tough on the job but really stupid about relationships. 

Instead, the heroine's above-it-all natures are used to excuse their lack of perception, despite these women often being in careers that deal with people.

I likely wouldn't like them much better if they were basket-cases who made excuses for their partners (as my aunt did). But I also wouldn't spend the book, thinking, "It took you until now to figure out that this guy is a pathological liar?" especially since, far too often, the guy turns out to have no redeeming qualities. The guy is handsome and charming but there's nothing else to explain the engagement or marriage--not a pitiable story or shared interests. Just one day this entirely self-aware woman was walking along and, oops, happened to get into a serious relationship with a serial killer. My, my, how did that happen?   

Novak does supply an interesting contrast: a sociopath versus an ordinary criminal/guy who went to jail. Unfortunately, the contrast emphasizes how un-self-aware the heroine is: if there is a difference between the men...what took you so long?!  

Productive Delinquent Relationships

A variation on the "rake" is the delinquent. Delinquent romances fall into two categories: the clean-cut lover + a delinquent; two delinquents together. 

Delinquents together is particularly charming. (In this case, I using "delinquent" in the "not good at school" sense.) 

In Family Ties, Nick and Mallory are impressively functional. Neither is good at school, and Nick dropped out before they met. However, like Kyle from Last Man Standing (see below), Nick encourages Mallory to attend college. Both Nick and Kyle are inherent gentleman who put another's welfare first. They are also both wise about life if not about books. 

In both cases, the drop-out is encouraged to complete a certain level of education. Mallory gets Alex to help Nick achieve his G.E.D., which in the 1980s was enough to move Nick up the socio-economic ladder. (Nowadays, Mallory would get Alex to get Nick to complete a trade certificate, and Nick would go on to make more money than everybody else in the family.) 

Speaking of changes in educational expectations, Kyle--who exhibits impressive and believable growth throughout the Last Man Standing series-- eventually commits to going to college because he wants to become a pastor and needs an education to serve in the places he wants to serve. Both he and Mandy acknowledge that getting a degree is going to be hard for him. He is not naturally academic, but he is exceptional with people and is willing to undergo the potential ordeal of getting through the necessary classes. 

As an English instructor, I admire the reality check here: education is hard; it isn't supposed to be easy, and it isn't unfair that it isn't easy. 

Nagisa from Nagahama to Be or Not to Be by Scarlet Beriko is a high school student who doesn't know what he wants to do with life. He gets good grades but ACTS like a delinquent who is about to give up. He gets upset, however, when Issa, his friend (and eventual boyfriend) does supposedly give up. Issa drops out because he knows that he wants to be a fisherman and he knows how to make it happen (by joining a deep sea fishery for six months). In this case, the supposed delinquent-but-not-really behavior becomes a wake-up call for Nagisa who goes on to discover what he truly cares about. 

The problem with any relationship is that one person can pull the other down. In the above cases, the couple buoy each other up; the relationships have the potential to last because they are productive. 

These delinquents don't want to simply sit around smoking weed and contemplating the nature of mooching. They are consequently more interesting. 

Lovers of Verne--And Each Other

As mentioned on Votaries, Verne did not invest all that much in character change/growth. His books are travelogues. Characters learn things, but they don't usually alter their fundamental beliefs or habits. 

Even Phineas Fogg, in Around the World in 80 Days, doesn't alter his fundamental nature. He gains a wife by rescuing one. 

Film versions tend to give Fogg a moment of epiphany or an alteration in goals. However, even film versions of Around the World tend to be mostly visual extravaganzas that focus on location, location, location. 

One exception is not from Verne but about Verne: Doc and Clara Clayton in Back to the Future III. 

Doc and Clara are the original geeks or otaku, the original Dungeons & Dragons masters, the original cosplay, anime, manga, Lord of the Rings fans on their way to the next convention. Their romance is adorable since it involves that delighted recognition between the two that they share an interest...

A love of Verne.

Shakespeare's Couples: Teens Teens Teens in Love's Labour Lost

In the world of "Yeah, Shakespeare really did try his hand at anything" stands Love's Labour Lost. A story about four friends swearing off women (sex) and then falling in love anyway seems on par with some of the stupider comedies of the 1980s. 

I watched the 2017 version of Shakespeare's play, which is set in a boarding school in a conservative Christian community. It made me laugh right away with the Bad Girls Get Diseases/Good Girls Don't poster. In fact, there are several scenes that match Monty-Python sex-ed-talk levels. 

The movie's producers "got" that in the earliest of Shakespeare's comedies, he is throwing dopey behavior and discomfort regarding dating and flirtation (and eating paper, which in the world of farce, strikes me as supremely hilarious--don't ask me why) into the blender and having fun. And he was likely quite young when he did it. 

There are naturally four male students and four female students who flirt and court. In truth, the relationships are rather touching, in part because they are so young. The same behavior in older characters would be kind of wearing and tacky and exasperating, which may explain why Branagh's version of this play was not successful (but his Much Ado, which is more witty and challenging, was). 

It is rather sweet to watch bumbling and gawky and frankly horny teenage boys gain a measure of maturity--to watch them grow from wanting to date any girl to being enamored of a single young woman with whom they want to spend time. 

So one lady can encourage Berowne to stop making snide remarks about people and use his wit to help them instead; the final scene of the movie shows him visiting cancer kids and using his clever (self) mockery to cheer them up. Likewise, after the princess's father dies, her beau attends the funeral to give her comfort. Everybody grows up a little.

It is less sweet to watch older folks going through the same ups and downs--which is why Midsummer Night's Dream is funny but has a seriously dark side. 

Everybody in Romance Should Have a Job: Lawyer

As I mention on Votaries, Jessica Fletcher's role as writer allows her to move around the country, where she can come in contact with crimes. In sum, murder mysteries are greatly helped if an amateur detective has chances to get involved in other people's lives. (Rather than having the murders appear on their doorsteps.)

Romance characters also need jobs. Sometimes, the jobs supply conflict and even an underlying arc (such as the job to program an advertising app in On or Off). Sometimes the work supplies conversation. And sometimes humor!

In What Did You Eat Yesterday? Shiro is a lawyer. Although he has training for trials--unlike other attorneys in his office--he rarely goes to trial, which is true for lawyers across the board, including in the United States. In fact, Shiro's cases--no matter how complex--are rarely as drama-oriented as the gossip Kenji picks up at the hair salon.

There are exceptions. In one of Shiro's rare court appearances, he defends an employer who fired a lazy employee. The case leads to the worry that the defendant's husband cursed Shiro--or his family! 

Kenji does get sick. But nobody dies. This is not a horror manga!