OKAZAKI Kyoko is a new favorite on my list of women authors for josei manga. River’s Edge is a stark look at contemporary Japan and the emptiness and unreality that characterizes life in the barren suburbs of modernity.
Yoshihara Yuki‘s works differ from mainstream shoujo manga and bears its own distinctive style even within the josei genre due to the mangaka’s drunkenly blunt sense of humor and her clever manipulation of the gender dynamics between her female heroines and their love interests. Her protagonists are outspoken, aggressive, and unabashedly sexual in the pursuit of their romantic interests. They do not bother to put up a front of being docile or coy in their intentions. Their antics are hilarious. They steal their lover’s underwear, they talk dirty without being sexy about it, they are loud about wanting sex and can’t be bothered to beat around the bushes, they stalk their love interests and terrorize them with their monstrous libidos, and still they’re so much fun to read about that I can’t get through a chapter of any of her works without nearly bursting my gut from laughing so hard.
Before I actually picked up the nominally controversial Kodomo no Jikan and read it, I had heard so many interesting things about the series. And most of what I picked up through the grapevines go something like this: child porn, fan service gone too far, immoral justification of pedophilia, cannot be licensed due to being inappropriate for US audiences.
So eventually [inevitably] I got the manga, read it, and found that I have much to say about it.
Kodomo no Jikan [A Child’s Time] is about an elementary school teacher who gets assigned to his first class of 3rd graders. In the class is Rin, problem child extraordinaire, who develops strong feelings towards him and goes to great lengths to seduce him. Lengths that include (but are not limited to): sexual extortion, nude cell phone pictures, spermy haikus, exhibition of various loli parts, and… you get the gist that series is a step up from your standard ecchi. That’s the synopsis in a nutshell.
hiroki endo – hang
an iron hook / we had to fasten him with a hook / we had to tell him something / with a hook / while the dirty floating bundle / fell / drop / by / drop / from where the / missing / would fling a stone upon us
(more…)
