Kawahara Kazune - High School Debut, vol. 09 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

My sleep schedule is still messed up, I cannot wait for the semester to end, and I do not care about so much right now.

And yet, this manga still manages to cheer me up!

Haruna encounters the sports festival

And now, it is time for the sports festival! I can't remember if there was one for when Haruna was a first-year; possibly there was but it was ignored because she and Yoh were still working out their relationship.

I have to say, even though Yoh in an old-fashioned uniform is a shameless bid for attention, it still worked for me. I am also amused by how the guys are still wearing those ties around their chest that hold back your sleeves if you're wearing kimono. Which they were not, rendering those ties completely useless and decorative.

The various festivals and class events are usually my least favorite part of the high school shoujo genre, and although I'm not particularly thrilled by this section of the manga, Haruna continues to make it amusing. My favorite part is, of course, how she has enough faith in Yoh to discount rumors of how he's growing closer to the other leaders, but other favorites are her various delighted expressions and her attempts at cheering Yoh on.

I also love the rather shy Yoh taking the spotlight. Of course he does wonderfully, because it's manga, but I really like the acknowledgment that he is antisocial and not naturally good with peoplem, and that he actually has to work at it. I empathize with that a lot!

Wait, no, I lied. My favorite part is actually Haruna threatening to beat people up for insulting Yoh's masculinity, because any time Haruna threatens to beat people up = instant win.

Most high school shoujo shoves emotionally stupid behavior onto its protagonists. Possibly there is a quota for emotionally stupid or opaque behavior in high school shoujo, and because Yoh and Haruna are so amazingly well-adjusted, all the random behavior gets shoved onto the side characters. Really, that's the only explanation I can think of for Asaoka, who is creepy and very strange. He reminds me a bit of Shigure from Fruits Basket.

I'm also interested in seeing how Kawahara will end the manga; will we get to see Yoh in college dating Haruna in high school? My skeptic self does not believe it will work, but I love the two of them so much that I probably won't care if Kawahara cheats a little to make it work regardless.

Comments

[lnhammer]

THAT's who Asoka reminds me of -- a slightly less pervy Shigure. THANK YOU.

How much spoilerage do want for where it ends? (which goes hand-in-hand with mild spoilerage for the sequel short stories)

---L.

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

My favorite part of this volume was when Yoh looks out at the crowd while cheering, sees Haruna spazzing out with a huge grin on her face, like the huge dork that she is, and he gives this adorable little smile (and all the girls swoon). :-D It makes me giggle every time.

I only went to one sporting event when I was studying abroad, but it was the big baseball game against our rival school, and we totally had the male cheering squad doing their thing. Short gakuran jackets, not the badass long ones, but awesome nonetheless.

Asaoka seems to be the token "nice sadist" character--I've run into variations on it a lot lately, and I tend to find them really amusing, but he is the one who kind of sticks out as being a little more of an obvious type than the rest of the cast.

[oyceter]

No spoilerage, beyond "Will this make me go berserk and retroactively regret reading the series a la Kare Kano?"

[oyceter]

Oh! I forgot that moment! I love it! I love when Yoh smiles and blushes. It is so cute.

I am so disappointed my Taiwan high school did not have better uniforms. Noooo, we got stuck with bright pink polyester.... (guys too)

[umadoshi]

My favorite part of this volume was when Yoh looks out at the crowd while cheering [...]

That was my favorite too. ^_^ It was ridiculously adorable. (Late comment due to having hoarded the new volume for a while!)

Catching up now that I'm back home

[lnhammer]

No, it won't make you regret the series -- there's one or two eye-rolly episodes, but nothing headbangy.

That said, the sequel short stories have already contradicted the main story's time-skip epilogue, so I'm not sure whether we're supposed to discard the latter or not.

---L.

Re: Catching up now that I'm back home

[oyceter]

Huh, interesting....