Yoshinaga Fumi - Flower of Life, vol. 01-03 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

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.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I really want Ooku in English. Really really.

I do not know whether you personally would like Gerard and Jacques, but it is my favorite Yoshinaga; however the reasons it is are not reasons that may apply to most people. Basically the entire thing is a riff on tropes of eighteenth-century philosophy, as applied to yaoi; which means that yes, there is a lot of non-con and a lot of abuse of power differentials, but it's entirely self-aware. I mean, the book name-checks both de Sade and Rousseau, and I am absolutely one hundred percent certain that Jacques is named Jacques as a reference to Denis Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, given that Yoshinaga did the cover for the Japanese edition of that. And I thought Gerard and Jacques managed to say some fairly biting things about both eighteenth-century philosophy and yaoi.

So I don't know whether you personally would like it, but I do feel I have to mention that what it is doing is very interesting and complex and really not what it initially looks like.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Also, if you're referring to the plot thread in Flower of Life that I think you are, I hate that as much as you do and wish it would stop.

[oyceter]

OMG yes. The Majima one? I hate it so much. So much!

[oyceter]

I want Ooku SO MUCH.

I may end up avoiding G&J anyway, just because I sadly do not have the philosophical background to pick up on all that! But that is very interesting and I greedily encourage you to do super-spoilery posts so I can read and enjoy vicariously!