Manga Notes: Kageki Shojo!! 9
Sep. 9th, 2023 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerWhen I got around to watching the “girls’ acting school” anime Kageki Shojo!!, I became caught up in its melodrama to the point of ordering the original manga by Kumiko Saiki before I’d finished the series. (The manga began with a volume of unusual thickness, which I eventually understood collected everything that had first been printed in a particular manga magazine before moving to a different publication.) It took a while to read through everything that had been adapted in the anime and reach the further adventures that had been the point of going on to the manga. While I summarize the anime I watch every three months, I’m a bit more relaxed about commenting on the manga I read, as might be suggested by the volume number here. When I thought I ought to post about something around now, though, the volume was both finished and had included some interesting points.
The specialized acting school in this story, feeding into an all-female revue recognizable as referring to the Takarazuka Revue, takes just two years rather than the three I have to admit other anime and manga have impressed into my awareness. At the end of the eighth volume, the senior students graduated and the characters we’ve followed since the start of the story moved up into mentoring roles themselves. The cast didn’t expand anew quite as much as it might have, though: just two new students are named and developed. They, of course, wind up mentored by the two most significant characters in the story, the tall, fluffy-haired, and often overenthusiastic Sarasa, who has connections to the all-male world of kabuki and is intent on playing Lady Oscar, and the forever dour-looking Ai, who used to be a member of an idol singer group and has serious family baggage.
One minor thing about Ai that caught my eye was her character design changing more than once to grow her hair out, a small touch among the simple appeal of the artwork to me. That design changes again in this volume as she follows up on a suggestion and starts really weighing whether to just keep drifting into playing female characters in the revue or to try and play male characters. Maybe that did make me a little more aware of how this particular series might touch on gender issues and how at times within and beyond this series I can be blithe and not think all that much about particular interpretations of stories others dwell on. In any case, this particular volume was divided into fewer chapters than a good many other manga series slice up when collected, which meant fewer points to put it down and trip off to other things, which probably helped me get through it in a hurry. A big part of the volume included a “side story” chapter that took me a little while to realize just how it tied into the main story, and might have wound up a “should I look back to the rest of the story?” moment.
The specialized acting school in this story, feeding into an all-female revue recognizable as referring to the Takarazuka Revue, takes just two years rather than the three I have to admit other anime and manga have impressed into my awareness. At the end of the eighth volume, the senior students graduated and the characters we’ve followed since the start of the story moved up into mentoring roles themselves. The cast didn’t expand anew quite as much as it might have, though: just two new students are named and developed. They, of course, wind up mentored by the two most significant characters in the story, the tall, fluffy-haired, and often overenthusiastic Sarasa, who has connections to the all-male world of kabuki and is intent on playing Lady Oscar, and the forever dour-looking Ai, who used to be a member of an idol singer group and has serious family baggage.
One minor thing about Ai that caught my eye was her character design changing more than once to grow her hair out, a small touch among the simple appeal of the artwork to me. That design changes again in this volume as she follows up on a suggestion and starts really weighing whether to just keep drifting into playing female characters in the revue or to try and play male characters. Maybe that did make me a little more aware of how this particular series might touch on gender issues and how at times within and beyond this series I can be blithe and not think all that much about particular interpretations of stories others dwell on. In any case, this particular volume was divided into fewer chapters than a good many other manga series slice up when collected, which meant fewer points to put it down and trip off to other things, which probably helped me get through it in a hurry. A big part of the volume included a “side story” chapter that took me a little while to realize just how it tied into the main story, and might have wound up a “should I look back to the rest of the story?” moment.