Plus, the manga isn't even available in stores anymore while the anime is so that just means new fans that get introduced to the fandom will usually automatically start with the anime.
That makes sense.
But honestly, yeah I get what you mean, that was also one of my main issues with the manga. While I love the Akito character and the whole extremely feminist concept behind her, her whole cross-dressing thing did seem pretty transphobic, though that's nothing to say of Ritsu's character arc which seemed completely transphobic!
So much this. There was a ton of potential in the first half of the series that was never quite followed up on, and in retrospect, a lot of it reads as queerbaiting. It might just be that Takaya thought she was actually being progressive, but if that's the case, then it's even more disappointing. There were just so many characters that fell out of gender norms or seemed about as straight as boiled pasta, so with every development that contradicted this, it was like, ".....oh," one after the other.
Also, for a series that's about love and acceptance, it comes across as even more baffling.
Really? I've not had that experience with the Shojo I read. Natsuki Takaya actually seems one of the more anti-LBGT Shojo mangaka compared to the rest. I mean, Sailor Moon has a canon lesbian couple and several lesbian/bi characters, Clamp is well, Clamp. Fushigi Yugi also has a gay character and implied canon gay pairing and of course there's Utena and Ouran High School Host Club's constant yaoi references. XD
There's a ton of shoujo that does the exact same things Furuba does, if not worse. CLAMP is...yeah, I have some problems with their treatment of certain things (for example, their f/f couples usually get the axe), but they're better than average. anime!Utena is awesome and dear to me, but the manga falls down on a lot of the queer things the anime pulls off so well. Like, a lot of the examples you mention are more queer-friendly, but for every single one of them, there are at least ten that aren't. There's just so many examples, and most of them aren't translated or brought over from Japan...
Maybe I haven't watched/read enough Shojo but compared to what I've seen, Takaya-san seems strangely anti-LBGT. I don't know if you recall but there's a part in the last fanbook, the Banquet fanbook I think where she has a mini-comic series at the end talking about some of the characters and she literally states that she might have had Akito and Tohru end up together if Akito was a boy! Maybe I'm oversensitive, but that really rubbed me the wrong way and seemed pretty homophobic.
Yeah, I remember that. It's a shame! As much as I enjoy Furuba, what kind of cool plot twists and developments could we have had if she wasn't limited by her own prejudices?
Which is quite a shame because Takaya seems like quite the feminist, I only wish she was as sensitive to LBGT issues. I mean, it seems really unrealistic to have ALL her characters be straight without even a single gay or bi character.
You can fudge the lines a bit with certain characters like Haru and Ayame and read them as bisexual or pansexual, but it doesn't seem to be an author-supported reading. (Not that I think everyone is obliged to stick to what the text points to, but I do think it's useful for drawing conclusions wrt analysis.)
What's funny about that is I even heard that back when that secret was first revealed in the early days of the fandom there was quite a ruckus over it. Suddenly, fans who had absolutely adored Akito now hated her and thought she was a bitch! Glad I wasn't in the fandom when that was going on, it seemed quite ridiculous. I mean, really misogyny much?
Ahahahah. Reading this made me laugh because I was keeping track of the manga as it came out, and yes, fans did go completely insane. Everyone was floored by it. A lot of it was just surprise -- even I thought it was a shock -- but some fans took it even further and posted long tl:dr rants on the internet. I remember that there actually were fans who completely revised their opinion and glommed onto Akito's character, but there were definitely extreme reactions.
Yeah, they probably just did that because they knew that was the ending for the anime so they wanted to go out with a dramatic bang and add more realism to Tohru's character since the manga wasn't even in its middle volumes and thus they had no idea what Tohru was really like. I guess it worked... I'm just so attached to manga Tohru that I sort of have mixed feelings about that scene, ha-ha.
And that's perfectly fine! I think that Furuba's shift from dramedy to drama-with-lighter-moments was probably something the anime staff didn't see coming, and so their interpretation of certain things was a bit off. Going back to the question of whether the show itself worked or not, though, I have to add that their execution of certain scenes was absolutely pitch-perfect and really added emotive value to the same events in earlier volumes. I'm not sure that it would have made the same impression if I had gone into the manga cold.
Seriously! If Sailor Moon could get a more faithful adaptation, do you think Fruits Basket is next? :( Because personally, this series needs it even more than SM does, at least the Sailor Moon anime was a complete series in and of itself!
Anything is possible! I don't know if Furuba has the sustained popularity required to see something like that through, though...it is a long manga.
The Kyou and Kyoko thing you could kinda see coming if you squint in the earlier volumes though, also think about it: Kyo, Kyoko. Basically the same name, only Kyoko has the "ko" added to it, what does that tell you?
I don't have the manga on hand with me, but were they written with the same kanji?
But expecting us to believe a mother outright despising her own daughter and trying to kill her because of jealousy? No, sorry, that's not realistic. Maybe if they explained the reason WHY Ren even thought that way, since thinking that way is clearly not normal it would've been easier to swallow but they didn't even do that and so it just came off as contrived and a quick way to wrap up Akito's backstory. Shame though, Ren had so much potential as the manga's true villian/antagonist too...
Ren is one of the few characters I truly think Furuba could do without; her existence in the story is basically a contrivance to wrap up loose ends.
That's another reason I hated that Takaya refused to include any gay characters or gay couplings in the manga, I mean when I first read through it I was seriously expecting Yuki/Kakeru to be Yuki's endgame. No joke, they're literally perfect for each other. But nooooo, Takaya had to pair up Yuki with his sister, and fit everyone into nice, neat little straight pairings. No LBGT awareness in this manga, even if the characters actually DID mesh well together!
I can understand shipping Yuki/Kakeru; they do have pretty good chemistry. I want to argue that for Yuki's character arc, having a good friend was just as important to his development, so there's no need for Yuki/Kakeru...but that being the case, there's no need for Yuki/Machi as romantic endgame as well. I'm fine with Machi in general, but while she does have a connection to Kakeru, most of her existence revolves around being Yuki's love interest, and so I can't help but read her as a satellite character instead.
The thing is, you can become a strong, fulfilled person without romance being the catalyst for that change. I love that Yuki made the shift to looking out for others after realizing that there were people who cared about and reached out to him, but this "romantic love trumps all!!!" theme leaves me a little dissatisfied. Just because he "lost" to Kyou wrt Tohru, it doesn't mean he needs another romantic interest to make up for it.
this is gonna be long
That makes sense.
But honestly, yeah I get what you mean, that was also one of my main issues with the manga. While I love the Akito character and the whole extremely feminist concept behind her, her whole cross-dressing thing did seem pretty transphobic, though that's nothing to say of Ritsu's character arc which seemed completely transphobic!
So much this. There was a ton of potential in the first half of the series that was never quite followed up on, and in retrospect, a lot of it reads as queerbaiting. It might just be that Takaya thought she was actually being progressive, but if that's the case, then it's even more disappointing. There were just so many characters that fell out of gender norms or seemed about as straight as boiled pasta, so with every development that contradicted this, it was like, ".....oh," one after the other.
Also, for a series that's about love and acceptance, it comes across as even more baffling.
Really? I've not had that experience with the Shojo I read. Natsuki Takaya actually seems one of the more anti-LBGT Shojo mangaka compared to the rest. I mean, Sailor Moon has a canon lesbian couple and several lesbian/bi characters, Clamp is well, Clamp. Fushigi Yugi also has a gay character and implied canon gay pairing and of course there's Utena and Ouran High School Host Club's constant yaoi references. XD
There's a ton of shoujo that does the exact same things Furuba does, if not worse. CLAMP is...yeah, I have some problems with their treatment of certain things (for example, their f/f couples usually get the axe), but they're better than average. anime!Utena is awesome and dear to me, but the manga falls down on a lot of the queer things the anime pulls off so well. Like, a lot of the examples you mention are more queer-friendly, but for every single one of them, there are at least ten that aren't. There's just so many examples, and most of them aren't translated or brought over from Japan...
Maybe I haven't watched/read enough Shojo but compared to what I've seen, Takaya-san seems strangely anti-LBGT. I don't know if you recall but there's a part in the last fanbook, the Banquet fanbook I think where she has a mini-comic series at the end talking about some of the characters and she literally states that she might have had Akito and Tohru end up together if Akito was a boy! Maybe I'm oversensitive, but that really rubbed me the wrong way and seemed pretty homophobic.
Yeah, I remember that. It's a shame! As much as I enjoy Furuba, what kind of cool plot twists and developments could we have had if she wasn't limited by her own prejudices?
Which is quite a shame because Takaya seems like quite the feminist, I only wish she was as sensitive to LBGT issues. I mean, it seems really unrealistic to have ALL her characters be straight without even a single gay or bi character.
You can fudge the lines a bit with certain characters like Haru and Ayame and read them as bisexual or pansexual, but it doesn't seem to be an author-supported reading. (Not that I think everyone is obliged to stick to what the text points to, but I do think it's useful for drawing conclusions wrt analysis.)
What's funny about that is I even heard that back when that secret was first revealed in the early days of the fandom there was quite a ruckus over it. Suddenly, fans who had absolutely adored Akito now hated her and thought she was a bitch! Glad I wasn't in the fandom when that was going on, it seemed quite ridiculous. I mean, really misogyny much?
Ahahahah. Reading this made me laugh because I was keeping track of the manga as it came out, and yes, fans did go completely insane. Everyone was floored by it. A lot of it was just surprise -- even I thought it was a shock -- but some fans took it even further and posted long tl:dr rants on the internet. I remember that there actually were fans who completely revised their opinion and glommed onto Akito's character, but there were definitely extreme reactions.
Yeah, they probably just did that because they knew that was the ending for the anime so they wanted to go out with a dramatic bang and add more realism to Tohru's character since the manga wasn't even in its middle volumes and thus they had no idea what Tohru was really like. I guess it worked... I'm just so attached to manga Tohru that I sort of have mixed feelings about that scene, ha-ha.
And that's perfectly fine! I think that Furuba's shift from dramedy to drama-with-lighter-moments was probably something the anime staff didn't see coming, and so their interpretation of certain things was a bit off. Going back to the question of whether the show itself worked or not, though, I have to add that their execution of certain scenes was absolutely pitch-perfect and really added emotive value to the same events in earlier volumes. I'm not sure that it would have made the same impression if I had gone into the manga cold.
Seriously! If Sailor Moon could get a more faithful adaptation, do you think Fruits Basket is next? :( Because personally, this series needs it even more than SM does, at least the Sailor Moon anime was a complete series in and of itself!
Anything is possible! I don't know if Furuba has the sustained popularity required to see something like that through, though...it is a long manga.
The Kyou and Kyoko thing you could kinda see coming if you squint in the earlier volumes though, also think about it: Kyo, Kyoko. Basically the same name, only Kyoko has the "ko" added to it, what does that tell you?
I don't have the manga on hand with me, but were they written with the same kanji?
But expecting us to believe a mother outright despising her own daughter and trying to kill her because of jealousy? No, sorry, that's not realistic. Maybe if they explained the reason WHY Ren even thought that way, since thinking that way is clearly not normal it would've been easier to swallow but they didn't even do that and so it just came off as contrived and a quick way to wrap up Akito's backstory. Shame though, Ren had so much potential as the manga's true villian/antagonist too...
Ren is one of the few characters I truly think Furuba could do without; her existence in the story is basically a contrivance to wrap up loose ends.
That's another reason I hated that Takaya refused to include any gay characters or gay couplings in the manga, I mean when I first read through it I was seriously expecting Yuki/Kakeru to be Yuki's endgame. No joke, they're literally perfect for each other. But nooooo, Takaya had to pair up Yuki with his sister, and fit everyone into nice, neat little straight pairings. No LBGT awareness in this manga, even if the characters actually DID mesh well together!
I can understand shipping Yuki/Kakeru; they do have pretty good chemistry. I want to argue that for Yuki's character arc, having a good friend was just as important to his development, so there's no need for Yuki/Kakeru...but that being the case, there's no need for Yuki/Machi as romantic endgame as well. I'm fine with Machi in general, but while she does have a connection to Kakeru, most of her existence revolves around being Yuki's love interest, and so I can't help but read her as a satellite character instead.
The thing is, you can become a strong, fulfilled person without romance being the catalyst for that change. I love that Yuki made the shift to looking out for others after realizing that there were people who cared about and reached out to him, but this "romantic love trumps all!!!" theme leaves me a little dissatisfied. Just because he "lost" to Kyou wrt Tohru, it doesn't mean he needs another romantic interest to make up for it.