Emura - W Juliet, vol. 01-02 (Eng. trans.)

I read vol. 1 a pretty long time ago, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy.

Ito Miura is a tomboy in the drama club, where she frequently (?) plays male roles. I think several girls in the school have a crush on her, and the drama club prima donna definitely does. Enter Makoto Amano, who is feminine, gorgeous, refined and delicate.

Except Makoto's actually a boy.

He doesn't want to inherit the family dojo, as he loves acting, so he made a deal with his overbearing father. If he can successfully attend the rest of high school as a girl, he'll have proved his acting chops and can go into acting instead of martial arts (I am still amused that the choice isn't between acting and finance or acting and engineering, but instead acting and martial arts!).

Ito discovers Makoto's secret early on and vows to protect him and to help him fulfill his goal.

This isn't a great manga; a lot of the scenes are fairly typical high-school shoujo. There's the school play, there are dramatic moments in which they discover the drama club may be disbanded (the angst!), there's the school festival, and there's Valentine's Day and chocolate. But I am fond of the characteres, and I'm interested in the gender-bending.

So far, Emura's going the standard route, in which Ito is beginning to wish she were more girly and there are moments in which Makoto gets to be all manly. And there's the requisite dramatic tension in form of a love triangle and people trying to split them up.

But I like that they're coded somewhat as a lesbian relationship in the text, and that in front of the school, Ito's taking the traditionally masculine role and Makoto's the traditionally feminine one.

I probably won't buy this, but since my library is getting it, I'll keep reading.

Gundam Wing, ep. 16-20

I have successfully addicted rachelmanija to Gundam Wing!

GWing was my very first anime ever, and clearly it hooked me for life. I have hesitated to pimp it before because most of my memories of liking it are tied up with the insane emo angstasticness and the multiple attempts at self-destruction. But I find it's holding up well for rewatching!

It probably helps that the plot is so insane and convoluted that it feels like I'm watching for the first time. I keep yelling, "OMG! I forgot about that!"

Rachel's incredibly amusing entries are here. Spoil her, and I will sic an insane and self-destructive Heero on you.

Brief summary: There are five insane pilots of Gundams, superpowered mecha. The Gundams are the bestest and fastest and coolest because this is based off a shounen series. They go around and blow things up.

There's also the Alliance, which rules Earth and the colonies. The colonies want independence. I think. That is what the narrator says in episode 1 at least. In this series, it's a little hard to tell.

There are many coups and rebellions and factions and attempts at coups and explosions and switching of sides. Most of the time, I have no idea what is going on politically, and I have not only seen this series 3 times or so, I have also spent four years of my life attempting to figure out all the factions and politics (possibly this says something about me, but let's not go there!).

I love it to pieces and it gives me great cracktastic joy to rewatch!

( Spoilers attempt to self destruct! )

Please put any spoilers beyond ep. 20 in <span style="color:#333,background:#333">spoiler text</span>, as I've seen the entire thing, but Rachel hasn't.