|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||
|
|
Reviewed by James Hanrahan Nanako Momoi is a young high school girl with a lovely figure and a beautiful face. Unfortunately for everyone around her, she has the manners of a territorial hyena and the brain of a world-class slacker. Akira Uehara is young high school boy that is tall and handsome, sensitive and intelligent. Unfortunately for him, he has a huge crush on Nanako Momoi. While both are considered by their classmates to be very physically attractive, boys fear Nanako and girls find Akira too dull. Not even Akira's best friend, Shinnosuke Senbongi, can shake his belief that they are fated to be together. And so they are! Just not the way Akira hopes. Akira seizes the opportunity to take classwork to Nanako when she misses a day of school and gets ambushed by her mad scientist grandpa to be a human guinea pig in a crazy experiment. The result is that Nanako and Akira swap brains and now he is she, she is he, and they have to live each other's lives so no one is the wiser. Nanako as Akira embraces his new physique, throwing himself into sport, dating girls, getting a girlfriend and becoming the favored son. Akira as Nanako however finds herself cleaning up after and cooking for Grandpa who is just as much a jerk as his granddaughter was. Akira's sensitive and shy nature makes her a real beauty and even charms Akira's best pal Senbongi to the point that he wants to date her. And more. A random sampling of people at my local comic store showed me that teen females that read it liked it overall, the humor from the reversal of gender roles, bits of fanservice, and Morinaga's drawings of pretty boys winning them over. Older readers that read it, males and females alike, either found the whole situation "silly" or they were frustrated and infuriated at how, as a female, Akira gets walked all over by everyone. And that reaction is a big part of why I am giving this book an A-. It’s probably about 90% of why. What I personally liked about this manga was that it isn't just a straight-out role reversal comedy like Ranma 1/2. No it's much more subversive than that. This entire book comes across as a satire. Firstly, it satirizes manga and the whole shojo/shonen division of manga. Akira as a boy is ineffective and Nanako is painted as a beast. When they switch bodies, Nanako is applauded for being physical, brash, and dumb. It’s expected and girls find him so much hotter. Nobody tells Nanako what to do as a boy. Akira, meanwhile, becomes a sensitive graceful young lady, and guys find her so much hotter. EVERYbody tells Akira what to do, to the point of, er, getting a bit personal. Akira becomes an object of desire. Essentially, Akira becomes a very common type of shojo heroine, the beautiful, introspective doormat. And Nanako becomes a shonen hero, the know-nothing, loud idiot. By extension you can see that Ai Morinaga is also making social commentary about how boys and girls are expected to behave. And it's all cloaked as a gender-bendy romance comedy. Morinaga excels at this sort of thing, playing with conventions and trends of manga, and taking little pokes at things. If a reader realizes that Morinaga is playing with you from the beginning, this is the soprt of thing that might make the experience a richer read. As for the other 10% why I'm giving this book an "A-"? Because of the production TOKYOPOP did on this volume. No, really, I like that aspect also. "Your and My Secret" was originally licensed for English translation by ADV Manga and they put out a volume 1 as well. Due to financial problems, ADV Manga was forced to abandon a good number of their licenses, and this one was snatched up by TOKYOPOP. There are differences between the two volumes, of course. There have to be for legal reasons. I apparently have some sort of nerd-autism or something and picked up both volumes and went through them both, page by page, like a crazy person. I am sure nobody cares about this stuff but me, but I bought them both, so I was interested. The first thing that strikes me is the covers. The ADV version is simple, white with a dark image on the front. The image with the title and volume number directly below draw the eye straight down in a "V" toward Ai Morinaga's name. No frills here. This seems like a pretty good strategy but it is possible to misread the title and to sort of lose it in the similar colors of the image. The TOKYOPOP version is asymmetrical (thanks in large part to them putting their branding on the right side of the book), but the elements of the cover (the image, the title, the author's name and the volume number) are scattered about the front, making the reader look over the entire cover and take it all in. The elements are also all colored differently to make each element pop out. I also appreciate them managing to use the three letter "X"s in the title as an homage to the original Japanese title "Boku to Kanojo no XXX". While one color piece was made grayscale, all images in the two volumes are present. TOKYOPOP, unlike ADV, also sized their pages for print properly and there were no odd pages that seemed too short or too narrow. The thing I like most is the lettering and sound effects. While I have seen many people complain about TOKYOPOP’s custom of not translating sound effects, that really works in the book's favor this time. ADV translated every sound effect and every dialogue aside, putting those translations next to the original Japanese, crowding many panels to the point of ridiculousness. The TOKYOPOP version is a far easier read with less distracting "noise". All the essential dialogue is there. So, yeah, A-. My ADV grade is based on now having the new TOKYOPOP version. ADV version info: Your and My Secret Vol. 1 ML GRADE: C- Creator: Ai Morinaga Translation: Kay Bertrand Adaptation: Javier Lopez Publisher: ADV Manga Age Rating: Teen Genre: Adventure RRP: $9.99 US ISBN: 1413901433 Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
|
||||
 |
| home | reviews | news | features | about us | advertise | privacy policy | contact us |
