Virtues of the Villainess (2019-2022) - :)

I think we’ve all had that friend who is unashamedly thirsty. Who will point out a hot person over and over again and somehow maintain the same level of lascivious admiration for their target’s form or voice or actions. I very much appreciated that friend in high school who brought me endless hours of entertainment from their creative thought patterns and inevitable hijinks as they tried to garner some of their target’s attention in increasingly bizarre ways. If you also had that friend, or perhaps were that friend then I think you’ll find a kindred soul in the heroine of this manhwa.

Ginger Torte is a little bit in love with love. She wants someone to love her, but somehow she’s always coming in second to her rival Larazie Atlanta. When she happens on a romance novel that seemingly predicts the future, with her cast as the villainess, Ginger seizes the opportunity to try to change her fate. Meanwhile, our sad male protagonist Izana is a newly minted king with emotional walls a mile high after years of isolation. However, armed with knowledge from this weirdly prescient romance novel, Ginger starts her bumbling campaign to win Izana’s heart before Larazie can capture his attention. If Ginger were more competent, this story wouldn’t be half so entertaining. Nearly all of her schemes fail, but she throws herself into them with such gusto that they don’t get old. For every silly failure, I was right there with Izana feeling oddly charmed.

The jokes that hit the best for me were the recurring ones: Ginger’s cooking, how she’s always the more physically forward one in her relationship with Izana, and her bullishness in the face of truly half cocked schemes. Ginger as a person seems like she would be delightful and entertaining to be around, and I doubly appreciate that the author told the story they wanted to tell and then didn’t try to drag things out. What diminished the story for me was the epilogue, which did in fact feel rushed and a bit half baked, but the sum of the whole was still a great light romance. I think more people could use a bit of Ginger Torte in their lives.

Survive as the Hero’s Wife (2018-2021) - :)

One of the biggest problems with isekai romance manhwa lies in the timeline. How do you reconcile dropping an adult into a child’s body and still have a romance develop between them and a peer in the story? There are various ways to navigate the issue, with some being more plausible than others, but the only way to make the plotline feel like it’s not being exploitative is to scale the story over a long period of time. The isekai stories that work the best seem to span decades in the life of the characters. Survive as the Hero’s Wife works on a couple levels, with the first being that the leads spend long periods apart and together at formative moments; and the second that their emotions run on an enemies to friends to lovers arc.

Canaria, our isekai female lead, is dropped into the preteen body of the villainess of a novel she had read. The character she is supposed to inhabit is the ill fated first wife of the crown prince, to whom she is already married when she joins the palace as a child. Cesar, the prince, is hounded by his step-mother the Empress who wishes to dispose of him and install her own son as the crown prince, and Canaria was intended to be one of the tools by which the Empress torments Cesar. Naturally, Canaria understands that as a child she needs to somehow leverage that relationship with the Empress and yet still protect Cesar in order to make sure when he grows up and comes to power that her head is not separated from her neck. Watching her befriend the prickly Cesar over the course of a decade or more in the story is a joy, and I liked the trust he shows in Canaria even when she is forced to have an ambiguous relationship to his enemies. Their romance, when it evolves, feels authentic–partially because it wasn’t what Canaria intended in the first place.

One of my favorite things about this manhwa is that Canaria does things methodically, but she isn’t a superwoman. She’s not a genius at business, or politics, and she’s no great warrior. The female lead is presented as a calm, caring, intelligent woman who is making logical choices in an illogical situation. She’s not always in control, and she gets help from others when she needs it. By being vulnerable to the schemes of others it made me invest in the real danger of her position, and that made this a much more enjoyable read. Canaria obviously needs Cesar, and he comes to rely on her as well; the partnership they established was almost more satisfying to read than the romance, which is rare.

Akash: Path of the Five (2019) - :|

Did you ever watch the Smurfs, look at Smurfette and think… I wonder how that might play out if…? Good news! Now you can get a taste of that life in Akash! I will note that the scenario does have interesting implications that are worth being looked at such as: what happens in a culture that sees a decline in the birth of their women, how does it feel to be put in a situation where you are both revered and yet also coveted, and so forth. While I think Akash started to scratch at some of these concepts, it isn’t really attempting philosophy in most of the content though you can get more of the world building and general flavor of the setting if you read the Appendix in the extras menu.

Aurora is the sole female in hundreds of years to appear in her species (elementals). Since this transition to a fixed sex only happened when she was ten, and she doesn’t reach her age of majority culturally or magically until age twenty, she’s had ten long years of having her entire culture’s hopes be pinned on her to eventually marry and start popping out babies. The titular five are all elemental boys who have grown up with her since early childhood in what amounts to an elite training program, which is why they are still going to what has the feel of a high school even at twenty. When it comes to the romance itself, there is really only one progression of events so I would recommend playing your favorite bachelor trope first because for archetypes you’re less interested in there won’t be gads of new content. That being said, I was rather fond of the majority of them and none of them pressed any of my “creep” buttons, which happens so often in these games.

I could have done without the central conflict that was presented in the story and just stuck with the tension that could easily have come from so many expectations being forced on a single person in an insular and diminishing community. There was enough material there, and would have kept the focus on Aurora instead of a much less relatable inter-species agreement with the humans. I was also constantly disoriented by the blurry background contrasting with the crisp sprites, it made me think I wasn’t wearing my glasses. Things this game did very well, however, were presenting dialog in a conversational and organic fashion, and superlative voice acting. Despite faults, I do think this game was enjoyable, but when the deepest emotional connections I got were from extra (text) epilogues that tells me this one isn’t quite on target.

Sincerely I Became a Duke’s Maid (2019 -2021) - :|

Compassion and empathy are beautiful things, but many people are encouraged to embrace this to the point that they can be consumed and burned out by it. Isekai manhwa like this trope of a hyper empathetic person being drawn into a story for one character in particular because it feels like romantic destiny, even if it’s an unhealthy complex. This runs the risk of swallowing the heroine’s personality as well, limiting their world to a single point of focus. Clever writing can sidestep the trap, but to do that the author has to work actively against the traits that brought the protagonist to the world in the first place.

Evelina, our isekai heroine, is transported into a story she felt passionately about because of the tragic fate of her favorite character Liandro. Cursed and miserable, she knows that the novel fated him to have a painful and lonely childhood and an equally miserable adulthood. When she finds herself as a maid in his household she does everything in her power to make his life better, platonically, and as a consequence becomes the only person he wants to keep in his life, romantically. I’m not going to lie, the beginning of this manhwa made me really uncomfortable because Liandro is so young and drawn to look even younger. Thankfully, the romantic feelings are one sided on his part until they both get older (even though their ages aren’t actually that far apart), and only after both of them have time away from each other. Once they are a couple, I quite liked their interactions. The romance in the story comes across as genuine.

The main reason why I can’t give a wholehearted recommendation for this story is how passively the female lead allows her life to slide from one bad situation to another without ever having an emotional connection. By the end of the story Liandro felt like a person who suffered and loved and matured at least a bit, and Evelina… wore progressively nicer dresses? Every chapter was compelling enough that I wanted to read more, but characters that could have been used to help round her out didn’t get much screen time. The only deeply personal connection she had was with Liandro and all of her efforts in life still ultimately put him first; while that was enough for her it wasn’t quite enough for me as a reader.

The Evil Lady’s Hero (2019-2021) - :)

I don’t know when the “she stole my first time” trope started in manhwa, but I can see why it’s compelling. The idea that there is this femme fatale (or more often just really drunk protagonist) seducing a super hot absolutely pure like fire dude who then immediately doubles down on this idea that she must be special. I mean, it’s also deeply creepy when you think about it too hard, but at first blush it’s a hilarious conceit. It sets up a power dynamic early on where the woman is the one on top (pun intended). The other thing manhwa usually do with this trope, however, is pull the bait and switch where now that the main characters have slept together you get to watch them dance around the possibility of holding hands for another fifty chapters rather than allow them to continue to enjoy each other. Not so with this manhwa!

Yunifer is our isekai heroine who has fallen into a novel where she is the villainess, but instead of spending undue time worrying about it she has been leading a relatively normal life. Already, the fact that she had not bent herself in knots trying to avoid a bad ending was refreshing. When she ends up falling into bed with Ishid, she spends a bit of time writhing in angst about it, but ultimately what they establish is a decently healthy and harmonious adult relationship. Plus sex. This manhwa actually had sex scenes in it, which thank everything someone is allowing their grown ass protagonists a guilt free sexual connection. Because lord knows, modeling a healthy sex life is something manhwa could use more of! Ishid treats her well, and Yunifer truly enjoys his company in every capacity.

The plotlines circling around Yunifer and Ishid had a bit of fantasy, a bit of action, and a bit of royal intrigue, but what stood out to me was the treatment of Yunifer’s friend and the prince. Their relationship is called out as toxic and it’s never romanticized even when more context is brought in to explain why it’s so toxic. The author knew the message they wanted to convey, and I’m here for the call to embrace healthy relationships and give people space to heal from trauma. I would definitely recommend this one because even if it isn’t necessarily breaking new ground, I thought it had some fresh feeling takes.

Doctor Elise (Queen with a Scalpel) ( 2017-2021) - :(

Genre mashups can be a delightful and refreshing change of pace. When it comes to medical dramas, I think that there is plenty of room for romance, comedy, mystery, and many long running series out there prove that point. However, when I picked up this isekai/medical/drama manhwa it became very apparent to me that in embracing so many elements that were so disparate that they were not meshing well. One exception is the arc where the protagonist went to war as a field nurse, as that seemed to blend the fantasy-like nature of the setting with her skillset much more naturally.

Elise, the titular character, is our isekai protagonist which is how they manage to pack a lifetime of successful surgical knowledge into the body of a teenage aristocrat. As it so happens she also has knowledge from a different previous life in this world so this is an exercise for her in trying not to repeat the same mistakes twice and save as many lives as she can along the way. Great? Great. However, the isekai story and the medical story never actually mesh with one another. The romance is lackluster, and the protagonists lack chemistry to the point where I am hard pressed to remember the male lead’s name. The medical portion is presented more like a procedure focused drama, where there is some high stakes reason why Elise needs to perform a risky surgery that no one has ever conceived of before and yet this seems to happen over and over. It starts to really fray at suspension of doubt, even more than the standard isekai.

The thing that frustrated me the most about this series is that I think it could have been solid if it had focused on either patching up the relationships that surrounded the prince and the succession battle or on the hospital where Elise worked. By trying to give each item equal time, it really fought itself. The strengths of this story should have been with Elise making her way in the medical world and the relationships and insider drama inherent to a hospital, not with the handsome prince and his sad familial back story. If only this could have been two different manhwa, I’d be able to recommend it.

They say that youth is wasted on the young but thanks to the magic of Hollywood, twentysomethings can be eternal teenagers!  Normally I can mostly ignore how silly this ends up being, but sometimes there is a jarring quality to it.  Don’t get me wrong, I like this movie, and in the realm of romcoms it actually plays out as pretty sweet and sincere.  However, I don’t think most of the dialogue would have felt out of place coming from someone a decade or more older than the characters were supposed to be.  I hope that wasn’t by design, because it kind of ruins the fantasy.

Brooks and Celia are a nice couple.  Celia has a weird old woman in a young woman’s body way of speaking and emoting, but she wasn’t so acidic as to be unlikable and that’s a hard line to walk.  Brooks had a sort of puppy dog charm that allowed Celia to bounce off of him and compliment him both.  I liked their dynamic.  The counter love interests for both of them were a blip on the radar and never provided a significant barrier to their bond.  It all seemed to be coming up roses.  But, if anything, the whole situation surrounding them was too perfect.

Celia’s parents were caring and understanding, exasperated but clearly indulgent and fairly supportive.  Brooks’ parent was similarly wise and loving even if he was presented as if he was some sort of ‘loser’ when really he was just an academic who probably was experiencing depression after a divorce.  Brooks’ gay best friend and the counter love interests were all so forgettable that you would have to concentrate hard on how they provided any conflict.  I wouldn’t say stay away from this film, but I also can’t say its got staying power despite trying so hard to be woke.  There just isn’t any conflict in it that provides lasting tension, and weirdly, the absence of conflict is what sticks out.

I’m no great lover of the story of Pygmalion and Galatea.  I think that the whole idea of a person molding a perfect mate is a creepy fantasy and the fact that it seems to resonate so much with people for hundreds upon hundreds of years is slightly unfortunate.  At the same time I do think that creative inspiration is a wonderful thing and that the story itself is interesting, even if I still think the statue got a raw deal.  Just because I consider it a muse for after school specials about toxic relationships doesn’t change the fact good things have come from it.  I consider the TV series Selfie to be one of those things.

This bit of fluff only lasted 22 episodes, not all of which were even aired on TV because the ratings were so bad the plug was pulled on it midway through the first season.  That was a shame because Eliza Dooley (Karen Gillan) and Henry Higgs (John Cho) were remarkably charming.  Eliza and Henry were both represented as fundamentally flawed but with qualities that the other could learn from, and their friendship was almost more adorable than the hints at romance.  It had enough in common with the original story to make the parallels understandable, but deviated from the original enough to mitigate the creep factor.  I actually wanted them to succeed as a couple.

The series seemed aware it wasn’t going to get much of a chance and the first season is sufficient to get a good sampling of fun stories and moderately awkward adventures.  I don’t think it would have held up as a premise much past one season, if I’m being honest, but I’m glad it got made.  I’m always delighted when someone essentially builds fanfic and it somehow makes it to small and large screens.  This was good fanfic brought to life.

The story of Pygmalion and Galatea has resonated down through centuries of art and storytelling, but at its core it was always a little creepy.  A man who can’t seem to find a “perfect” woman carves one and then magically this statue comes to life and they get married.  It’s the kind of story that makes me give it a lot of side-eye because it seems rather like this statue lacked the ability to make any meaningful choices.  What do you mean of course she had to choose her sculptor when she came to life?  He made her, therefore of course he was owed her love?  Come on.  Pull the other one.

Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) and Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) are the interpretation of this relationship modernized up to a turn of the 20th century London.  Eliza is molded by a bet that Henry makes with his friend Colonel Pickering (ugh to this concept out of the gate) that he could make a guttersnipe pass as a duchess with the right diction and a rather charming and catchy musical proceeds to unfold despite itself.  I still find the plot sinister, as Henry is not the kind of character that experiences personal growth and he never treats Eliza well.  Eliza may be transformed in the course of the movie but no matter if she is a poor flower seller or elevated to a society woman, every iteration of her is too good for Henry Higgins.  That it’s implied they get together in the end is a travesty.

I have some solace in the fact that the author of the play on which the movie is based agreed with me.  George Bernard Shaw was adamant that Eliza not have a happy ever after with Higgins in the play because it completely negated the point of her transformation.  Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who is a bit of a sap, is still the better choice for Eliza.  Fie on the movie for getting it wrong!  Down with Henry Higgins!

Pride and Prejudice strikes again!  In the world of P&P adaptions (of which there are many, and of which I will cover a number of) I think this one stands out.  The format was the key here, with episodes released over time that clock in at roughly 3 min each.  The storytelling had to be tight, and the humor that was injected into this modern day version was well timed and well placed.  They cut out things that weren’t going to contribute much (two extra Bennet sisters that didn’t feature largely in the books) and gave more agency to secondary characters (Lydia and Charlotte) which was beyond smart.

What this series brought home for me is how this story, while driven by Lizzie and Darcy (and to a great extent Jane and Bing) is carried by its female characters.  We experience everything important through their narration, and this just distills that concept into a highly enjoyable liqueur of fast talking fun people.  It’s not that the men are not on screen, but their appearances are few and far between.  Casting for all the characters was on point.  I would have watched this movie, and given that there’s 100 episodes it certainly adds up to having watched a couple movies at least.  Lizzie and Darcy somehow never get stale.

I remember the first time I watched this the part that made me laugh the most was Darcy’s sister.  I know in the books Georgiana Darcy is used more like a cautionary tale rather than a character, but in this adaption I dug her shipping her own brother with Lizzie in real time.  It was the flag waving I needed to tip this story from great to golden in my mind.  We are all Gigi.

I once had to answer a very uncomfortable question to my significant other, which essentially boiled down to “what makes a good sex scene good in a romance novel”?  It was a fair question, as I had been struggling to explain why I liked one piece of media over another and my preferences had come to seem arbitrary, but the one thing I zeroed in on this time was how much the buildup matters.  If there’s no buildup, no tension, then whatever occurs between the characters isn’t exciting.  Basically, what makes sex scenes good is unresolved sexual tension (UST).  Now fast forward to watching Rogue One.

I came out of Rogue One in tears, not because I was particularly upset at the ending (it’s a prequel and we already knew the outcome of this mission if you were paying attention to the other Star Wars movies) but because it was a masterclass in UST.  Cassian and Jyn were given just the right amount of screen time together, harrowing situations they cooperated to navigate and bond over, and character development that put them on a track to understand one another more deeply.  The ending may have torn my heart out and danced on it, but Cassian and Jyn were left perfect and I appreciated the brilliance of it.

I fully acknowledge I was manipulated and that Cassian and Jyn were all buildup with no payoff, in a sense.  But from another perspective the payoff was the journey of the relationship itself and I believed it without needing them to hit me over the head with snappy one liners or weirdly sexualized accidents.  So bravo Rogue One for being a great action movie and also a great romance.  Truly, it set the bar pretty darn high for other action movies that dare “throw in” romance.

When I initially encountered this series, I started watching because I’m a sucker for just about every story that features an MMO in it somehow.  I got one and a half episodes in and realized “holy shiz, there’s 30 episodes, I don’t have time for that!” so I abandoned it.  I didn’t even give it a second thought until I saw the movie come out.  The movie gave me some warm and fuzzy feelings, but also it abridged so much content that there’s definitely loose plot strings dangling about.  Even so, it was worth the watch.

I think it started off on the wrong foot trying to prove Bei Weiwei’s programmer cred so aggressively.  Her amazing schooling of someone who wrote something slanderous about her came off as more “hack the Gibson” rather than “genius programmer.”  Also, the insistence that her friends have that she ignores her appearance is also ridiculous as she is model beautiful from the start.  But if you can get past all the goofy things that don’t make sense, her connection to Xiao Nai does seem to come from an authentic place because even if it’s a fast relationship in the start they really do have a ton in common.  They are sweet to one another, which is welcome over dramatic posturing and garbage behavior.  Plus there’s no weird love triangle business, which I feared but was delightfully surprised not to have to deal with.

The in game sequences are not really used to their full potential.  A lot of time spent in MMOs is very rote and repetitive, and it would have been nice to see them gathering resources when they have conversations rather than standing around in front of a green screen.  Also, if they are respectively No.6 and No.1 ranked in PvP and there is little to no PvP shown that seems like a missed opportunity.  The gripes are minor, though, as this movie is a happy bit of fluff and worth the time to give it a watch.

Like many many other kids I kept a diary when I was young.  But, like fewer kids, I suspect, I kept extensive multi-volume diaries over the course of late elementary to early college.  All of said diaries written in pen, in cursive, lie in a Rubbermaid bin that I live in stark fear of opening because I don’t know if I can bear to read them.  The cringe factor is too high.  Who I was when I started those diaries is so many worlds away from the person who felt they didn’t need to chronicle every little stupid thing in their life that I don’t even know if I’d recognize myself.  So I appreciated Bridget Jones when I read this book in high school, and was stoked for the movie version which I fully loved just as much.

There’s something eternally wonderful about rooting for the perennial screw up who really wants to make a go at turning their life around this time.  Renee Zellweger’s Bridget is every single one of us when we are feeling our dorkiest, but her very earnestness in attempting to be better, stronger, faster isn’t annoying so much as endearing.  Throw in Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy and somehow the stars align.  He’s such a good stuffed shirt, and Bridget’s absolute ridiculousness balances him out perfectly.  Hugh Grant’s red herring boyfriend, Daniel Cleaver, is even delightful as a diversion even if he is a cad.  

The only thing that drags this book/movie combo down for me is the traditional body-hating behavior that Bridget is always chasing after.  That finally gets subverted in the books, but it takes a long time to get there.  Bridget never really gets to be an adult who is comfortable and confident, but I think that’s pretty true to life in a lot of ways as well.  Confidence is the great lie I hope the world believes when I tell it.

I avoided watching this for a stupid long time; probably a full decade after its release was around the first (and only) time I watched it.  Neither Hugh Grant nor Julia Roberts are particular favorites of mine, so I’m willing to avow that my mediocre feelings about the film itself might stem from mediocre feelings about the actors.  With that out of the way…

Will and Anna just don’t do it for me here, for all both actors are reasonably attractive and their interactions moderately sweet.  Anna is supposed to be this super relateable ultra famous actress who bumbles into meeting an average bookstore owner and through various misadventures they keep encountering one another until she realizes she’s madly in love with him.  Other than the obvious comic relief, this movie just isn’t very “fun” for all its status as a romantic comedy.  The romance itself blows lukewarm and cold, so that when they finally get together there isn’t so much a sigh of wistful satisfaction as a workman like dusting of hands that the job was finished.

I do think the basic idea of the thing is interesting.  How would a very famous person and a very not famous person actually relate to one another?  And the dryness of the humor is refreshing over pratfalls and ribald situations, though some of my favorite British comedy has both.  But it certainly isn’t my first choice, or second, and perhaps you should see if Netflix has anything new on offer before you pick this one out of the queue.

If someone had just packaged together a bunch of things that squick me out and handed it to me I would have looked at it and said “hey, no thanks sir or madam, I have enough nightmare fuel in my anxious mind.”  But when many someones package together a bunch of things that squick me out, give it a really pretty title, some solid writing, throw in fantastic art, and put it out for free on Steam it turns out I will give it at least two hours of my time (and 14 out of 69 achievements).

As a romance it’s certainly different in that it doesn’t seem to be playing out a fantasy of any sort (unless someone has some deep self loathing going on here).  It’s very gothic in tone and while I usually love that, it’s not about just being ominous it really goes there iftherewas.  Thing is, I like romance typically as an escape rather than a torment because to love someone beyond that first flush of infatuation isn’t always roses and sunshine but I think we all know that.  This felt like it was forcing models of difficult, broken, unhealthy love in your face over and over again.

I think if I had stuck it out and seen more endings I might have seen what the authors/artists were going for with this, but to get to those pearls took too much self-flagellation.  This is a top notch visual novel, and truly artful, but damn if it isn’t a miserable romance to wade through.  This is one of those moments where if you’re like me and you don’t like abuse baked into the foundation of your entertainment then you might want to skip it, but if you have a high pain tolerance for that stuff then godspeed to you.

Ok, so I have some weird memories of this one as I played it with a group of people in my dorm for 1/3 of the game with all of us taking turns doing the voices.  Keep in mind the first full voice acted Final Fantasy game wasn’t going to occur until X came along.  This was a real group effort.  I didn’t play Garnet, mind you, if memory serves I was Vivi.  Mid-way through fall semester, everyone else gave up on this and I was left with the rest of this great game, as well as some very silly names for the characters.

I’m really glad everyone ditched me though!  It meant I got to get really embarrassingly squeal-y about Zidane and Garnet (Dagger) in my own time.  (I also spent a crazy amount of time playing the card game and collecting cards in general, which would have been impossible in company.)  Zidane’s flirty but not gross about it, and Garnet’s notably cautious but they share a lot in the course of the game and their pairing makes real sense.  It’s nice when a couple makes sense, and since you have dozens of hours to be with these characters there is plenty of time to give them reasons to make all the sense.

Zidane’s tail drove me MAD for a healthy part of the game.  It isn’t talked about at all even though he’s obviously a dude with a tail in a place where other people don’t have tails.  I was waiting forever for closure to the whole tail business and it had a hell of a payoff when we got there.  This game, besides giving me a solid romance with Zidane and Garnet also gave me Beatrix (and the best theme song in all of FF-dom in my opinion).  Beatrix is best.

Kimi wa Petto always seemed a little off, but thanks to the fact that the manga somehow was able to walk a very fine emotional line the premise which sounds very creepy comes off as mostly normal.  Essentially, an older emotionally unavailable woman allows a younger seemingly homeless man to live in her home as her pet.  It’s a supposedly entirely platonic situation but feelings get involved, naturally.  The manga is ok, but I think in this case the live action series that I saw (one in 2003andone in 2017) both tell the story more dynamically.

Sumire and Takeshi compliment one another.  This is one of those series where what seems to build over time overwhelms both parties despite themselves.  They aren’t that similar and neither are their lives, but they both have pieces of themselves that are incomplete and it’s nice to see how they patch the other’s weak points.  The running joke about Takeshi being renamed “Momo” and how everyone thinks he is literally a dog because of the way Sumire talks about him stays funny far longer than it should considering how demeaning the whole situation shouldbe.

This is another one of those series that keeps coming back around because the characters are strong and very much themselves.  Beware the beginning, however (this is mainly for the manga).  It has a questionable starting section about how “Momo” got hurt and homeless in the first place.  It’s honestly weird and off putting and if I hadn’t read this long before I got a little more woke about that shiz I probably wouldn’t have continued reading it.  Given common prevailing ideas in Japan, it isn’t surprising, but it’s always deeply disappointing to see.  You’ll know what I mean when you get there.

To be clear, there are (going to be) seven books in this series (six novels and one novella) and of those I have read four: Poison Princess, Endless Knight, Dead of Winter, and Arcana Rising.  As I have read them, my general enjoyment of them has lessened like a classic case of diminishing returns.  With this series it isn’t a case of poor world building that lowers my opinion of it (because the action is top notch and the different areas encountered are vivid and interesting), but because the romantic triangle that was put in place is just excruciating. 

Evie, the main character who we have been following and supposedly rooting for to win this Tarot card themed hunger games, has to choose between Aric and Jack.  Who Aric and Jack are isn’t really important, what’s important is that despite both of these men being interesting characters in their own right when they are forced to interact with Evie they seem to turn into spineless mush balls who exist for her emotional/mental/physical pleasure.  This series is strong in the action, the horror, the driving sense of purpose and tragedy that all the characters share, but where it is weak is its romance.  Sadly, more and more of the page count is given over to Evie and Aric and/or Jack which is why I’ve stopped where I have with reading.

The Arcana Chronicles would have been a more interesting series, and much shorter as well, with a lot less romance.  Less can be more.  Being someone who loves a good romance, it pains me to admit when romance detracts from a story, but it does here.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say don’t read this series, because the premise is fantastic, but I will say don’t read it for the romance.  Therein lies ship wars and lots of angst, but not in a fun way.

Hanazakari no Kimitachi e (or Hana-Kimi) in both manga and live action form is a story I have consumed in media time and time again and every time I love it.  The base plot is ridiculous: girl (Ashiya Mizuki) ends up at an all boys high school because of the fact that she wishes to encourage her sports hero, (Sano Izumi) a high jumper her own age.  Hijinks ensue when she ends up roommates with said sports hero and he discovers her real sex/gender immediately and decides to help her preserve her secret while not giving away the fact that he knows she’s a girl.

The manga has quite nice art, and every time the live action version is cast they always find lots of lovely looking guys to fill the school, but in my heart my favorite version is the Taiwanese one starring Ella Chen of S.H.E and Wu Chun of Fahrenheit.  Mizuki in that version had the energy and the perkiness that I love, and Izumi was sufficiently serious and yet good humored.  I also think the Taiwanese version had the best Nakatsu Shuichi in Jiro Wang.  Nakatsu coming to terms with crushing on a “boy” when he thought he liked girls always strikes me as a more interesting situation than the Mizuki/Izumi angle, but that wasn’t the story being told here.

In stories like these I always end up thinking back to Twelfth Night, and wonder if maybe the author read it and was inspired by it.  Clearly, there’s something to this story that brings people back time and again for it to have been remade so much, and other than pretty men I think it’s because the relationships are all weirdly pure.  The friendships are strong, and the comedy and drama doesn’t diminish them.  Because the friendships are strong the romance is more touching, which is probably easier to see in the manga because it had longer to tell the story, but the best casts in the live action series also convey.

So you watch this trailer and you think “oh hilarious dysfunctional woman who can’t commit has adorable meet cute with doctor she needs to write a story on for her job and both comedy and romance results.”  In actuality it’s more like “tragically worrisome functional alcoholic who sleeps around and avoids intimacy goes through traumatic life changes while trying to get over commitment issues handed to her by a broken childhood home.”  Basically, I would like to assert that while it had comedic moments I have trouble remembering it as a comedy.

I love Amy Schumer (mostly for her standup specials), I love Bill Hader (who works very well in this as a romantic lead!), and the secondary cast is really on point.  LeBron James is shockingly, one of the funniest characters in this whole movie.  I liked the characters, I wanted them to win the romance, but more importantly I wanted to see Amy Schumer’s character grow enough as a person to be healthy and have happiness.

Something I applaud here is how the romance wasn’t easy, but not 100% because of stupid contrived situations (although it was not totally free of those).  It seemed like the relationship was presented as hard because they were both damaged people, but fundamentally also seemed likable and good.  It made the end have the emotional impact I was looking for, even if some of it tied up too neatly for me.  Overall, worth it.