My Thoughts on Season 2 of The Dangers In My Heart - The Best Shonen Romance I Have Ever Watched

 

It has taken me a long time to find a TV shonen anime that I thought was better than Please Teacher (I was much younger when I watched it, don't judge me). To be sure, the shonen genre has not historically had romance as the top-priority, but through the years the idea of showing romantic relationships from the point-of-view of teenage and young adult males, for teenage/young-adult males has been a rising phenomenon since the 1980s and rise of works by people like Rumiko Takahashi. This trend continued into the 21st century and we see much romance work in the shonen demographic. The problem is a lot of them are not that good or convincing. While we get an excellent romantic comedy like Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, More realistic or straight-forward romance have been more of a mixed-bag or rather a stale-bag. 

One of the most annoying things for most western audiences is the stock Japanese romantic archetypes: the extremely shy, extremely chivalrous male and the either equally shy or extremely "forward" female protagonist. These stock tropes are often taken to their extreme in manga and anime. In recent years creatives in the industry have endeavored to break-out of these clichés (most notably in LGBT fiction) and recent works have started to subvert things. The success in winter 2024 of A Sign of Affection shows that western audiences are craving for a more familiar, honest relationship between the main couple in these shows.

While I'm not a big expert or connoisseur of romance fiction, I have been fascinated at how anime and manga handles these the subject. Growing up with the format, I did not care about this when I was young, but as I age and wanted more emotionally-mature work, the limitations of shonen anime/manga becomes more apparent (this is less the case in shojo, but the rule still applies). I am more at home with seinen anime obviously given my age, but I think that seinen is marginally better at relationship and josei is probably as good as it will get when it comes to romance in anime and especially manga (which makes it very unfortunate that josei manga are the least likely works to be adapted into anime). When I watched My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999 in Spring 2023 it had a similar effect in the shojo demographic (for me) that the subject of this review has had.

The first season of The Dangers in My Heart was an interesting affair. The synopsis and 1/3 of the first episode is a fake-out and it reveals from the second half of the episode, the beginning of the love story of Kyotaro Ichikawa and Anna Yamada. The world of these two are very different on the surface, but their awkwardness and emotional vulnerability brings them together. They are learning to love themselves while falling in love more with each other. The first season is showing how alienated and afraid of himself Kyotaro is and how Anna, his classmates, and finally he starts bringing himself out of this alienation. 

This season sees him go step by step to become the person he truly wants to be and that his sister alludes that he use to be. The realism of his insecurities and that of the people around him is as realistic as I have seen in awhile. He doesn't magically improve himself overnight, but almost each episode showed some improve meant in him that felt earned. The people around him are not nearly as terrible as he thought they were when he met them and the idea that he could not love someone like Anna is easily disproven without feeling so unrealistic. Though the story is from Kyotaro's pov, it could have easily have been from Anna's pov and not lose any of its power. Because we are not in her head the way we are in Kyotaro's we have to infer her emotions and inner-thoughts from her visual cues. The way she goes out her way to match him and emotionally and his trying to do the same despite how different personalities were is a key point to where we know they are going to become a couple. Even the male gaze is not played for fetish, but feels visceral and awkward as we see it from Kyotaro's point-of-view.

An interesting aspect of this show is the meta-dialogue it has with Kimi ni Todoke. In TDIMH, there is a parody version of KnT that Kyotaro & Anna are both fans of. The in-universe version of KnT's Shōta Kazehaya becomes the conscience "inner voice" for Kyotaro and gives him very honest advice on what he knows he wants or what he knows he needs to do. It is up to Kyotaro on whether to listen to him or not. The irony is that Kyo is obviously more similar meta-wise to KnT's Sawako Kuronuma. Both Kyo and Sawako have become withdrawn and had their self-esteem crushed by events prior to the stories’ beginning. The key to both stories is that they encounter friends and romantic partners who help change them for the better. Now a key difference is that the former title is a shonen romance and the latter is a shojo romance so the temperament of both stories will be different. Also, the drama that Sawako faces is almost-completely external, while it was just one external incident that motivates the internal trauma of Kyotaro. For the more old-school knowing anime fans, Kare Kano is worth a look to compare to this anime.

The production quality has certainly been boosted and the music and editing is really incredible. The way that they introduce the episode title at the end of every episode is masterful at tying the theme of the overall story together. The voice acting is to be commended on how they really go hard for the nuances of Japanese teenagers to an almost painful degree.

When I look at this franchise, I feel like it offers a hope. It tells a favorite type of love story for me: the main character has to remember to love themselves as much as they love their beloved. One is hopeful that more shows that subvert the old standards of anime romance are adapted and/or created. I can't wait until the next season of this anime is made. This show is process, redemption, love.

My Goodreads Review of Diana's Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik

Finally got this one out of the way after procrastinating on it for eternity. Diana's Tree by Alejandra Pizarnik
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I have made the leap from myself to the dawn.
I have placed my body alongside the light
and sung of the sadness of the born." - Poem 1

"only thirst
silence
no encounter

beware of me, my love
beware of the silent woman in the desert
of the traveler with an emptied glass
and of her shadow's shadow" - Poem 3

Ever since reading her poem "The Awakening" (in Spanish: El Desperatar) in The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: An Anthology, I had been curious to read more poetry by Alejandra Pizarnik (who was part of the odd, troubling trend of suicidal white women poets of the early to middle of the 20th century) and was recommended this volume. I like that this is a very straight-forward, but still high quality collection of brief poems (the best to read, but hardest to write). These poems are from relatively early in her equally- short career as her more famous work was still 3 years ahead of her. Given that I am reading this totally in-translation (without the original Spanish version) I have to trust that the translator Yvette Siegert did the best she could to keep the original meaning of the poem as one inevitably loses the wordplay that the poet had intended when translating. I don't know if I'll read more by Pizarnik, but I loved the alchemy which she uses in the lyrics of this collection.

"beyond the reach of every forbidden region
lies a mirror for our sorrowful transparency." - Poem 37

"This repentant song, standing guard behind my poems:

it belies me, it has silenced me." - Poem 38

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Goodreads Review of The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

 My first book review in over a year is bound to be rough and this thing feels rough. Got to start from somewhere, I guess. 

Happy New Year.

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Been a minute since I have done any type of real serious reading, but here I am.

This year is the last year of the United Nations International Decade of People of African Descent. For the last 10 years that I have been on here I have been saving a bookshelf of books by or about people of African descent here on Goodreads if you wish to check it out: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

This book was on my radar from the time it came out, but I needed it in a reasonable price-range before I decided to read it given it's length. It is the second-to-last book published during Toni Morrison's lifetime and it is an edited publishing of her 2016 Charles Eliot Norton lectures. As the title suggests, she uses the idea of the other or othering and how in the U.S. context slavery and it's afterlife helped to create "the other" as we have it in America today.

"One purpose of scientific racism is to identify an outsider in order to define one’s self. Another possibility is to maintain (even enjoy) one’s own difference without contempt for the categorized difference of the Othered. Literature is especially and obviously revelatory in exposing / contemplating the definition of self whether it condemns or supports the means by which it is acquired. How does one become a racist, a sexist? Since no one is born a racist and there is no fetal predisposition to sexism, one learns Othering not by lecture or instruction but by example."

She spends the book using various examples from literature like Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, to show how whites "other" black people, but she also uses people like Harriet Jacobs, Camara Laye, and most noticeably herself to show how Black writers push back against the attempts to dehumanize them. This book also reminded me that I need to read Paradise ASAP.

"I became interested in the portrayal of blacks by culture rather than skin color: when color alone was their bête noire, when it was incidental, and when it was unknowable, or deliberately withheld. The latter offered me an interesting opportunity to ignore the fetish of color as well as a certain freedom accompanied by some very careful writing. In some novels I theatricalized the point by not only refusing to rest on racial signs but also alerting the reader to my strategy."

This book is like a career-bookend to Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination and a lot of what she brings up here will be familiar to those who have read that book or The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. I confess, with this being the first book that I had to sit and think on in some time, I had a time trying to say something here that was different from the other non-fiction books of her that I have read, but the fact is that this book is transcript of a lecture she gave so it was no surprise that there would be little surprise here if you are familiar with her non-fiction writing. I will say that if you only know Toni Morrison from her novels, this is the perfect place to start for seeing what her thought-process is in condensed form.

I wish I could feel like this review was up-to-snuff with how I usually do, but this is what I have in the tank at the moment.

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Chihayafuru vol 1 by Yuki Suetsugu - manga review

Back into the Goodreads thing. We'll see how long this goes...if things pick back-up for me this blog itself may move to a better place. I've been waiting to do this review for two years so I am glad to have it off my chest. Chihayafuru, Vol. 1 by Yuki Suetsugu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

[I originally wrote this part of the review in July before the last chapter had been published]
Since the announcement that this manga was coming to an end this August, I felt it was time for me to read it and watch the anime adaptation. Now I am not big into sports anime/manga and while I'd heard of this title for years, I had no interest in ever reading it...until 2020. In one day, the author of this manga gave me all the reason to want to read and watch this that I needed. I am going to review the first three volumes of this manga, watch the anime and read remaining volumes of this series, but I want to use the beginning of this review to talk about something else: my appreciation of the author as a black anime/manga fan.

In the aftermath of killing of George Floyd with myriad of people speaking out, I came across someone who I had never heard of make the case for black folks despite it not having no benefit to her. That person was Yuki Suetsugu, the author of this long-running manga about a traditional Japanese card game dominated by women. On June 4, 2020, Suetsugu sent out a series of tweets speaking out against racism and for Black Lives Matter and as I read these tweets it made me think about things. In my time growing-up in, growing apart from, and coming back into anime (and later stating to read manga). It is not surprising that people of African descent & dark-skinned people in-general are not the most well received in the media formats. That has a lot to do of course with how black folks are viewed in Asia generally compared to whites and it is reciprocated throughout the media in the continent which includes Japan. Japanese creators-now-have been a lot better about this than when I was young, but it still has far to go. The mecha genre and Shinichirō Watanabe are the outliers on this as non-stereotypical black representation has always been normal with that genre since Mobile Suit Gundam and that creator's anime Cowboy Bebop. Outside of those were example it is more usual to know manga and anime creators' racist views and neo-Nazi leanings. The long-held controversy over the fascist views of the creator of Attack on Titan is the most well-known example from recent times but given how Japan's failure to deal with its fascist, imperialist past is no different than the USA's, it is not surprising. What IS surprising is seeing an anime/manga creator who does not make mecha or is big into African-American culture (as far as we know about Suetsugu) actually speak out against anti-black racism. It is a small gesture, but one that I appreciate given how rare such a gesture from anyone in that industry is (and hey, you get to have my money).

[This portion of the review was written after the series had ended]
I suppose now I should actually talk about this first volume of the manga. The story is based around a girl living in Tokyo names Chihaya Ayase who is trying to find a purpose for herself and be out of the shadow of her older sister, an up-and-coming Japanese supermodel. When a boy from rural Japan named Arata transfers to her school she learns that despite his appearances he is very skilled in and participates in competitive Karuta: a traditional Japanese card game. They clash with, and then become friends with another boy named Taichi who is also a competitive Karuta player, and they join together to form Team Chihayafuru. They come together at a community center that teaches Karuta and they start practicing and decide to enter a Karuta competition.

This is not the first Josei manga I have read, but it may be the best-looking one easily. The is a very solid coming-of-age story and it was a good read. The idea of a traditional Japanese card game that uses poetry is quite different than even what most Japanese think about. Under this review I will post some videos of competitive Karuta and how it is played. All-in-all, I'll probably mostly be following this series thought it's anime adaptation, but I still have some manga volumes that I will read and review first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMh-V... Okay, so the guy is a bit extra in the beginning of the video and he has an accent, but he does a good job explaining exactly how to play the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7X0JG... This is an English-subtitled commentary of a standard competitive Karuta match. IT gives you as broad an overview as you could hope for by actual people who have been top-ranked in the official tournaments held in Japan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_30EF... This is a full competition Karuta match, in Japanese.

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Drácula (1931) directed by Enrique Tovar Ávalos & George Melford

 I suppose I can come through with a Halloween movie review this year. This is the interesting Spanish-language version of Universal Studios' Dracula adaptation. The original English-language launched the career of horror actor Bela Lugosi, but many people note that the direction, set, and costume design of this version is superior. This is widely regarded as the "hotter & sexier" version that is more closer in that sense to the original. The gothic atmosphere played-up more and some of the acting is done better, but not much. Carlos Villarías does his best to try and match Lugosi, but that is what the English-language version has on this one, otherwise this would be 100% better rather than 80% better.

My Review of Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) directed by Rosine Mbakam

 What a beautiful little documentary this was. Chez Jolie Coiffure is a cinéma vérité documentary about an undocumented Cameroonian hairdresser named Sabine and her salon that she runs in an underground mall in Belgium. The film is done totally in the salon and it documents the daily life of Sabine, her employees, and her customers and it commentates on the wider community of African immigrants in Belgium. For me, it is an interesting look at how immigrant communities outside the United States deal with the issue of immigration, trying to get citizenship in a system that tries to make it impossible, and how folks deal with their everyday lives in the meantime. This is the first film I have watched by the film-maker Rosine Mftego Mbakam, but it won't be my last.

My (short) Review/Impression on Squid Game (2021) directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk

 I suppose this will be a partial-continuation of my previous review in relation to the survival-horror genre. Squid Game has become the premier Netflix title and while it ain't bad, I don't think it is the greatest thing: basically it's a'ight. I suppose to me this serial does not really do anything new, but does a lot old. For me, it is the fact that it relies so much on stock-genre tropes and lazy stereotypes. The actual action parts are entertaining and interesting, but once the show gets into its rhythm it becomes too predictable and by-the-numbers for me. Even the "twist" was seen a mile-a-way. It's still better than As the Gods Will, but this would work well for someone who is not use to these kinds of shows. Teenage me would have liked this more than 30-something me. 

I guess the moral is that Battle Royale was the first and possibly still the best of this genre. I did get the commentary on the wealth disparity in South Korean society. I felt like this was ok, but had more potential than was delivered.