Ooh, I forgot I had Maid-sama 4, I think it came with some other books a few weeks ago. Yeah, I’ll probably read it this weekend, I like that series quite a bit. ^_^

Lol, sorry to babble your ear off about Takarazuka (random tangent on a manga blog!). Thanks again for the recs–I’m still waiting for B&N to deliver the Eroica and Let Dai I ordered (such a loooong wait! =__=). Can’t wait~~~~ XD

P.S. Are you reviewing Maid Sama! 4 anytime soon? I’m excited to read your review~

While I hate internet piracy most of the time, Takarazuka is truly one of those things that isn’t designed for an audience outside Japan. I knew the DVDs were expensive (I think a lot of Japanese DVDs are, for some reason), but 11,000 yen is a lot higher than I would have guessed, and I think it’s hard to justify that kind of price unless you saw the show and knew you really, really loved it, in Japan or otherwise (unless you collected the shows from the particular troupes, I guess). This might be one of the few situations where internet piracy helps, but only because a casual watcher really wouldn’t be the type to pay that much for a DVD. And watching it in any format isn’t the same thing as going to see it, at all, so it also doesn’t seem like it would hurt ticket sales. I also imagine Takarazuka having a really small, devoted community that would want to support it however possible, which is always a good thing.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the Utena amv you mentioned. Sorry. ^_^;

I didn’t get to see it live either, but I got the DVD. Luckily, someone else has already uploaded most of the numbers on youtube. Huzzah for net piracy~ j/k~~~~ Takarazuka is so hard to get a hold of (and VERY expensive — their play DVDs are 11,000 yen each! @_@; ) A very exciting “summer high-seas adventure” sort of show~ ^^

As for the Utena movie, I once saw a really beautiful amv for it to Dido’s “Here With Me” that set parts of the dance scene (to wonderful effect!) to the slow, melancholic last strains of the song. I wish so much I could find that amv again. No chance you’ve seen it, is there?

Yes. That scene was absolutely amazing. I remember being lost through much of the first part of the movie, but it was that scene that made me watch it again and again. I just couldn’t get enough of it. It really is very, very lovely.

Ah, and thanks for the reassurance about the drama version of Goong. I like the art I’ve seen of the Goong manga but was refraining from getting it because I found the K-drama a little lackluster. But now I will be sure to give it a chance once I finish Eroica, Let Dai and After School Nightmare.

Speaking of which–I was just thinking about that dance scene in the Utena movie today! It really is one of the most beautiful, romantic scenes in all of anime (all of anything, really) I’ve ever seen. Just the image of those red, red roses gushing over the edge of the garden and streaming down against the dark night sky (especially in the shots where it’s framed by the darkened windows)–SO beautiful. *__* That movie didn’t get the acclaim it deserved, seriously! LoL~

I have seen the Utena movie! It’s been several years, but the scene in the flooded rose garden always sticks in my mind. I watched it without having seen any of the Utena TV series, and was pretty confused at the time, but I loved how it looked and watched it over and over again. After School Nightmare is a lot like that, but it gets its theme across a little better in the end, and is a little more concrete than the Utena movie. Though it is a lot less pretty.

I watched a bit of the Goong K-Drama after liking the manga so much, but I couldn’t get into it, either. The K-Drama was a lot slower than the manga, and even knowing where the story was going, I couldn’t get through more than three or four episodes. The humor works a lot better in the manga, too.

From Eroica With Love is one my favorites of all time! I can’t get enough of that series. The first volume or two are way more slapstick than the rest of the series, but it settles into a nice groove after that. I can’t get over how well the humor’s lasted all these years. If you’ve read El Halcon and liked it, you might like Eroica too, since it’s by the same person. El Halcon is a kind of prequel, and I think was written as a backstory for a painting featured in the second chapter, “The Man in Purple.” Tyrian is the ancestor of Major Eberbach, one of the main characters in Eroica.

You know what’s funny? After posting my first comment, I poked around the tag list running down the side of your blog and randomly clicked on a few titles to read your reviews. I actually hit on Record of the Fallen Vampire (coincidentally, I’d read the first volume in Japanese and didn’t realize it was that! Will definitely go pick it up upon your rec & reviews~) and Evyione myself! :D Hearing your additional rec, I will definitely be checking those 2 out.

After School Nightmare sounds AMAZING. Have you seen the Utena movie? Don’t give away the twist at the end of ASN, but from your description, it sounds a bit like what the Utena movie was attempting to do. If you haven’t seen it, please do–after you get past the “that’s impossible!” shock factor and realize that the academy in the movie is not the same whimsical-but-real/existing-in-the-real-world place as it was in the anime series, you can see what genius the movie is. It’s like the most subtly told mystery-wrapped-around-more-mysteries story ever~

I’ve seen a bit of the Goong K-drama (my parents are pscyho K-drama fans, lol~), but the manga sounds like it might have a better chance of hooking my attention. Paradise Kiss I found interesting b/c it’s very well-written/executed, but not really the sort of subject matter that interests me.

Ludwig II and From Eroica With Love (another one of your reviews I randomly clicked on the other day) definitely sound interesting! I really liked Higuri You’s “Seimaden” (wow, it’s officially translated now?! :D), so I”ve always wanted to try another of her series. And Eroica sounds really funny (also, the art looks old skool cool… like El Halcon or BeruBara or something~).

Ah, “Let Dai” sounds like another must! I luvs me mah BL, and sometimes, that mix of angst and raw emotion with a happy ending (I hope? ^^; Though if it’s a “happy ending” like Godchild’s, I’d be happy too) makes the most satisfying of love stories~

Wow, now I have a LOT of manga to read. :D Thank you so much for the recs!! XD

Haha, you know, my absolute favorite manga are all series that are completely different from OTAON. One Piece, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, and From Eroica with Love are my top three, but I like them all for being really funny and extreme rather than having really developed characters (though, in the case of One Piece and Eroica, the characters are a huge part of why I keep coming back).

But I could give you some recommendations for stuff based more on OTAON. If you like unusual storytelling, you might try Record of a Fallen Vampire or After School Nightmare. Record of a Fallen Vampire starts off as a pretty typical shounen vampire action story, but the story gets much weirder after the first volume, and then takes about a thousand perfectly executed twists and turns before coming to a close. It’s anything but what a general summary makes it sound like, and I loved the constant changes in perspective and sides that everything goes through. After School Nightmare is interesting because it’s very character-driven and a little bit of a cerebral read. It really digs into the identities of the characters and their weaknesses, and the characters play through all this in a bizarre symbolic dream world as a pre-requisite for “graduation.” “Graduation” is left ambiguous and becomes more and more sinister as the series progresses, but when the nature of the school is revealed in the last volume, it’s one of the biggest surprises I’ve ever read in a series. I don’t know if I liked it that much, but it was incredibly original and unexpected. As high-minded as it is, it’s also very much a shoujo romance, with a main character split between a male and female love interest throughout the story.

I love Dokebi Bride, which uses Korean folklore in modern times to tell the story of the sad life of the main character, Sunbi, and how being gifted with traditional spritiual/shamanic powers has done her no favors in life. The inter-weaving of fantasy and reality is very similar to OTAON, and the story is well-told, so it’s definitely worth checking out. Unfortunately, the story has been stalled after volume 6 for a couple years.

If you like the angsty romance aspects of OTAON, there are a few series that you might try. Let Dai is another Korean male/male romance, and one of my favorite series of all times. I always warn that it is extremely violent and deals with really uncomfortable subject matter, but for all the terrible things that happen, there is an answer for them later. Also, the main character is prone to bouts of ridiculously lyrical meditations on the nature of his feelings, but the result of the violence and flowery declarations of love makes for the most perfect combination of romance and angst ever.

Have you tried Goong? I always think of it together with OTAON because they are both from the same publisher and both really pretty Korean romances. Goong is about a fictitious modern Korean monarchy and a regular girl that suddenly finds herself married to the prince set to inherit the throne. Far from being a silly romantic fantasy of becoming a modern-day princess, Goong’s heroine finds herself in a palace completely devoid of any love and compassion, with scheming relatives and a very cold husband. The artwork in this series is very detailed and pretty, especially when it comes to the royal costumes, though the characters look younger and younger as the volumes go on. There are also touches of ridiculous humor that always make me laugh, even with all the drama.

Goong has a similar look, art-wise, to OTAON. There are several series published by Yen press that have the same kind of gorgeous artwork with lots of detailed clothing and dark-eyed handsome types, but most are more contemporary romances. If you’re really into the art, you might also check out You’re So Cool and… maybe Pig Bride and Very, Very Sweet? Those last two are a little more cutesy than handsome, though. I like Pig Bride a lot, and was completely addicted after the first volume, but it’s a contemporary romance-kind of story with Korean folklore mixed in, and is a lot more silly than OTAON, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for.

Also, for absolutely gorgeous art, you can’t go wrong with Evyione: Ocean Fantasy, a retelling of The Little Mermaid with a merman and a princess and European period costumes. This one does come highly recommended, because both the storytelling and the art are gorgeous, but unfortunately only one volume has come out so far. Udon has promised more, but I think it wasn’t very popular and they’re looking to publish stuff that pays the bills first.

I tend to read a lot of You Higuri, and she’s had quite a bit translated into English, including Gakuen Heaven, Seimaden, Crown, and Cantarella, but the series that made me a huge fan of hers was Ludwig II. It’s a strange, fictitious retelling of the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria. It takes the idea that he was “mad” and goes about rationalizing all the strange things he did, like pouring his country’s money into the operas of Wagner or building all sorts of elaborate castles. He’s portrayed as extremely romantic and very sympathetic, and when his madness encroaches more and more in the second volume, that’s handled well, too. Higuri is a big fan of stories rooted in history and stories that lean a little on boy’s love. There are both male and female romantic interests for Ludwig, but the primary love interest is male, and the story is set in late 19th century Europe.

And for the heck of it, I’ll throw in a recommendation for Paradise Kiss. It’s tied with Let Dai as my favorite romance story of all time. It’s set in the present, and is about a girl who attends a very prestigious school for academic types running across a group of fashion designers that attend an art school and getting caught up in their world. There’s romance flying around with all the characters, and the climax of the story is a fashion show in the fourth volume that all the group’s work leads up to. Mostly it’s a kind of coming of age story for the main character, Yukari, and about her finding a place where she belongs. It’s drawn by Ai Yazawa, one of my favorite artists, and she has a knack for capturing all the eccentricities and little embellishments that go along with being fashion students in an art school. It’s only five volumes long, and I’ve probably read it about a dozen times over the years.

Hope that helps, let me know if you wind up trying any of these!