Uh, I'm with TQ, I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not, but on a very pragmatic level, I'm sure you can understand why female leads are generally cute, or at the very least decent looking. Most people (or in this case, young girls, since they're the target audience) want their romances and love stories to have attractive characters. I'm older than most of these readers and I expect my leads to be good-looking too!

I can only guess at the amount of mangas that people pass up simply because they didn't like the artwork or vice versa - manga that's low in terms of writing quality but has a following primarily because of the artwork (i.e. Desire Climax, The Bride of the Water God). I have yet to read a manga that has had a plot as convoluted as BotWG and has still retained such a high level of popularity.

And the kindness factor, I actually prefer my heroines be that way. However, there's a fine line between being kind and simply having no backbone. Most of the time, the heroines can't be one without being the other, and it's probably the most annoying traits about female leads.

Ditto on school setting though. Although I realize why it's generally the conventional setting, it does getting pretty boring after a while. That's why I found Nana to be such a refreshing read.

what i hate the most is that the girl is always weak and in need of protecting.

and/or the relationship develops too fast and they are already in love and it catches me off guard and im like "what? when did that happen?"

im not a believer in love at first sight

________________
http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z204/kmacfarland/PonandZi .gif

Actually, in Bara no Tameni, the lead character is the fattest and ugliest character in the story. It's probably one of the most underrated mangas, though; BNT is such a lovable story (>w<)

Also, in Limited Lovers, the characer is disabled; she loses the use of her legs in the beginning of the manga.

They're both wonderful and extremely underrated mangas (^o^)

Last edited by kanosa at 5:47 pm, Feb 13 2008

agreed. I very much prefer romance that develops slowly. The cliche of 'love at first sight' can be a little tiring after a while.

I could write a full thesis on this subject

1.How some people are so retarded to push their "loved ones" out of the path of a bullet/a car/a falling bridge and then die themselves, even if the person targeted is immortal/has 00ber-regeneration powers, is immune to stuff like that, etcetc....or could just back off with a simple "WATCH YOUR STEP DUMBASS"...makes me want to write a manga only for poking fun at that.
2.The heroine. Someone that's supposed to be plain, ugly, but the ooooh surprise suddenly everyone thinks she's the prettiest around and half the damn school fall for her. Oh and why do most mangakas like the heroine to be a useless piece of junk who can't take a step without missing her and they still think it's "cute"?....mangakakind sure is mysterious.
3.The love interest that is ALWAYS a childhood friend of the girl's love interest. The so-called "rival" is pretty, popular, mean, blonde, most of the time foreign, and perfect in every other way buuut oooh surprise surprise the guy dissess the perfect girl and the Power Of Love triumphs.
I have to stop here or else I might just break the keyboard ^_^''


I want a main character who's a total geek/otaku/loser/creep that can take enough steps without tripping, that has more than tuna for brains and that isn't some whiny happy-go-lucky girl.
Mana and Perfect girl evolution did it until PGE went nuts with one-episode dumb stories and Mana is released slower than a war of slugs conquering the world. Hmpf.

Forgot "love at first sight", "stockholm syndrome", "(dark) asshole guy" and "episodic stories."


Okay now I'm REALLY stopping.

Really? You want your heroine to be a geek/nerd/loser during the entirety of the series? Personally, I'm a big fan of the whole ugly duckling turn swan cliche. Some of the personality traits that come with being a nerdy type character gets tiresome after a while too. PGE is a perfect example because I found her reclusive, hermit type personality to be really annoying after a while. Their schtick got boring and repetitive really fast.

And I think this was mentioned, but I'd like to bring it up again. This cliche makes me roll my eyes EVERY TIME it happens in a shoujo. The whole let's bully the girl whose chasing after the school hunk thing. I only bring this up because I found it so odd when I first encountered it in shoujo and even more so when I saw how frequently it has been used in the genre. It's just not very common that a girl gets bullied at school by other girls because she likes or is dating the school hottie. Yet, you would think it was a common day occurrence with the frequency that it seems to happen in shoujos. I hate this cliche with a passion.

Mine -
A girl and boy met when they were little and really liked each other. The boy remembers, but the girl doesn't. Then they end up falling in love because the girl finally remembers her past.

(Seriously. This one bugs the crap out of me. Then again, most Shojo, manga bug the crap outta me.)

________________

I think this may be a cultural thing - from what I've read, the systematic bullying is a LOT more common in Japan than it is in the US (and many other places). There is a Japanese proverb that goes something like "the nail that sticks out must be pounded down" - Japanese culture places a higher value on conformity, while Western culture places a higher value on individuality. That said...I agree, it does get old.


________________
"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

Naive, stupid, yet kind and pretty girl is heroine. Goes to school, blah blah, hot guy notices her, blah blah, hot guy molests her (xDD), blah blah, female bullies who like hot guy corners heroine and threatens her, hot guy comes and saves the day. (weeeee...) Stupid girl falls in lurve with hot guy and they live happily ever after.

________________

No, thanks for clearing that up. I was going to ask whether this was a cultural thing or not. You just don't hear about that happening a lot in the US, and so it was sort of curious to see it come up so often. Considering the frequency with which it happened, I sort of figured that it wasn't so much a rare occurrence there. I don't know a lot about Japanese culture so I was a bit hesitant to make any type of assumption.

Your comment resumes very accurately what shoujo is indeed.

Well, girls just want that kind of crap oh I mean romanticism, although I dont understand why, I like some lesbian relationship in my manga, guy+girl is so worn out

________________

Gizdiću, ne čitaj mi postove, degenu jedan!!

Oh my gawd...

Why is it that the average girl always gets the hawt, ass bishie?

Girl is smart as fawk and the best in the school, and then some guy comes along and steals her glory. They fight [or she fights against him] and she always loses, and in the process, they fall in love. Only ones like that I actually liked were Kare Kano, but probably cause it got better more into the story, and Special A, but even that series pissed me off some.

Then after she goes out with the hawt, awesome guy his fans gang up on her on the rooftop and her new boyfriend comes to save the day! Only exception was in Koukou Debut, where Haruna beat up the girls herself.

Then after a while, the guy starts wanting seckz, and in some cases, rapes the living brains out of her and she starts saying that "he wanted her so much" so she forgives him and they live happily ever after or some other bullshit like that.

Then they get married and the heroine dies after the bishie becomes a wife beater.

And yet you fangirls will keep on reading it ... so why should the mangakas try anything different?

________________

Weak pathetic girls who cry easily and fall a lot and always need to be saved by the hot guy/hero