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Yoshinaga Fumi - Flower of Life, vol. 01-03 (Eng. trans.)
Despite Yoshinaga being widely praised, I tend to avoid her manga because her kinks are... most decidedly not mine, let us say.
Hanazono Harutaro's leukemia is in remission, and so he's enrolling in school late. He soon quickly makes friends with the somewhat short and chubby Shota, which is how he ends up in the school's manga club, run by super-otaku Majima. Not much happens in the three volumes, and quite a few chapters aren't even on Harutaro. What's great about this manga is how normal and ordinary it is, from Majima's all-too-real rants about manga to a young manga writer's love of art supplies (I forgot her name.. Shin something?).
It's a very difficult work to describe, because so much is in the details. Yoshinaga is excellent at observing people, and I especially love the Christmas arc in the third volume, which by all rights should be schmaltzy and cliched, but is instead wonderful and makes me smile. I love how Yoshinaga's geeky love of manga shines through even as she makes fun of it at times, and I particularly love how fond she is of her characters, even prickly Majima. My favorites, though, are manga writer girl and Shota (people talking about weight in a manga!), and I am so glad manga writer girl doesn't get a makeover.
There is one plot point that I very much dislike, but I love the others so much that I will keep reading. I'm not sure how well this will work for non-manga fans, because it is filled with such love and bemused affection for manga, but if you love manga and know anything about it, this is wonderful.
Yoshinaga fans, tell me -- should I read her other series? I loved the first half of Antique Bakery, but not the second about Tachibana's angst and Ono's assorted relationships, and I am very, very bad with non-consensual anything and/or huge power differentials. But I love her characters in this so much.
Hanazono Harutaro's leukemia is in remission, and so he's enrolling in school late. He soon quickly makes friends with the somewhat short and chubby Shota, which is how he ends up in the school's manga club, run by super-otaku Majima. Not much happens in the three volumes, and quite a few chapters aren't even on Harutaro. What's great about this manga is how normal and ordinary it is, from Majima's all-too-real rants about manga to a young manga writer's love of art supplies (I forgot her name.. Shin something?).
It's a very difficult work to describe, because so much is in the details. Yoshinaga is excellent at observing people, and I especially love the Christmas arc in the third volume, which by all rights should be schmaltzy and cliched, but is instead wonderful and makes me smile. I love how Yoshinaga's geeky love of manga shines through even as she makes fun of it at times, and I particularly love how fond she is of her characters, even prickly Majima. My favorites, though, are manga writer girl and Shota (people talking about weight in a manga!), and I am so glad manga writer girl doesn't get a makeover.
There is one plot point that I very much dislike, but I love the others so much that I will keep reading. I'm not sure how well this will work for non-manga fans, because it is filled with such love and bemused affection for manga, but if you love manga and know anything about it, this is wonderful.
Yoshinaga fans, tell me -- should I read her other series? I loved the first half of Antique Bakery, but not the second about Tachibana's angst and Ono's assorted relationships, and I am very, very bad with non-consensual anything and/or huge power differentials. But I love her characters in this so much.
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Anyway:
The Moon and Sandals: is probably the one you'd enjoy the most, judging from your parameters. I avoided it for ages, because the jacket copy for the first volume makes it sound like a "student-teacher romance" story (which is one of my MAJOR turn-offs). But, that jacket copy is completely misleading. There is a student, and there is a teacher, but they have their own relationships, and are never in any danger of getting with each other in Standard Manga Fashion. I give it bonus points for a sympathetic portrayal of a girl who is in love with (and rejected by) one of the gay male protagonists.
Solfege: This one *is* about a student-teacher romance, with abuse of power and dodgy consent issues. Avoid.
Gerard et Jacques: This is my personal Manga of Feminist Shame. I love it for the characters (even the bad ones) and the humor, but it's got abuse of power and nonconsensual sex out the wazoo. Avoid at all costs.
Ichigenme: This is the "law students" one. The first volume is a well-written self-contained story that has romance in, but is as much about friendship, and self-knowledge, and finding one's place in the world as it is about dudes getting it on. I really like it. The second volume is probably less to your taste; it's a series of vignettes featuring the characters from the first volume, and some completely new ones. Some of them are cute, some are decidedly not, and there isn't really an overall plot.
Lovers in the Night: Relationship between a naive young French aristocrat and his older butler around the time of the French Revolution. Lots of sex. I'd rank it as only so-so, so you would almost certainly not enjoy it.
Don't Say Any More, Darling: A collection of very well-written short pieces, most of which are kinda twisted.
Truly Kindly: Another collection of shorts, most of which may been deliberately written to trigger a "O YOSHINAGA FUMI NO" response.
Garden Dreams: The title is well-chosen; it's kind of a dreamy fairy-tale (without fairies)--not much plot, vague characters, not much to it at all, except for atmosphere. This is my least favorite of her books.
Now, I am really, really looking forward to somebody publishing Ooku in English. (AU shogunate Japan, where a majority of men have been killed off by a disease, and women have taken the reins of power.)
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Also OMG! I know! Why is Ooku not out here? Why why why?
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Well, the stories all share a common...structure? theme? something like that; where the reader is led to believe one thing is going on, or that the characters' relationship is some particular way, and then it is revealed to be something different. Sometimes surprisingly so.
One of the stories (of 5) is really magnificently twisted in a O YOSHINAGA NO manner, but the rest are okay. Apart from the vague "surprise the reader" similarity, the stories themselves are quite diverse. I'll quote from myself (http://desdenova.livejournal.com/227137.html): it does a great job of showcasing Yoshinaga's versatility as a storyteller. The stories in this volume range from romantic comedy, to twisted scifi, to slice-of-life character studies reflecting on the gap between fantasy and reality. You probably wouldn't like *all* the stories, but I think you'd like some of them.
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