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Week Five

Romance manga is something I'm very familiar with, so for this week I reread and rehashed myself with Princess Jellyfish, Ouran High School Host Club, and Fruits Basket.

To start off, Kuragehime's mangaka, Akiko Higashimura, is one of my favorite. Not because of Kuragehime, actually, but because of one of her later works--Tokyo Tarareba Girls. I think Princess Jellyfish stands out because it is such an unusual romance. TTG is also unusual, with a slightly older cast. I think both are phenomenal because it shows different sides of love, unlike usual shoujo romance manga. Love isn't this one way street where you meet some person in high school and suddenly you're together forever, it hardly happens that way.

On the other hand, Fruits Basket and OHSHC both revolve around the high school romance. Both were actually two of my first series getting into animanga. Personally, I don't think they're actually that stand out aside from OHSHC's humor now that I'm older. Fruits Basket has an interesting fantasy twist, which I think made it a little more unique, but I still think they're very same old shoujo material, unlike Higashimura's work.

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