Tag: shoujo

To recover is to bravely leave the safe-but-stifling for the freeing-but-frightening, and find yourself

~ violetsachet ~ Leave a comment

The final heart shard was shaped like a pair of fluttering wings. 

Wings for the people who had spent a comfortable time inside the story to leave the nest with…

Wings for the prince to return to himself with.

Princess Tutu Akt 25

Breaking free from a narrative imposed on you (although not quite so literally as the literary characters turned real, but still bound by a dead author hellbent on a tragic ending, as in Princess Tutu), by others, or eventually your own mind, in their absence… I think the relief is the same, when you finally return to yourself.

When unhealthy manners of thinking become familiar, although they’re restricting, they become difficult to break out of, so recovering seems frightening—it’s undeniably difficult, at times, and painful—but it’s freeing to finally leave the nest.

Mermaid Prince (Ningyo Ouji) by Ozaki Kaori

~ violetsachet ~ Leave a comment

Today, I read a three-chapter manga part of a collection of short stories/one-shots, called Mermaid Prince (note: this is not an error in translation, he is not a merman [except in the girl’s imagination in one shot], but simply a human boy who loves mermaids) and the story was very tender and unique—the story was set in Okinawa (the girl speaks in the dialect and the boy’s brother-in-law is also Okinawan!), love story was light and believable for the kids’ ages and it was just as much about them struggling with their changing home situations and family troubles, with a quest for a wish-granting, monstrous-looking mermaid as catalyst for change.

It’s a sweet and unique story, the one fantastic element surrounded by so much grounding itin reality, I had no idea how it would turn out for them (will the kids survive, will they find her, does she exist, is she good, evil, or is she so different that our concepts of good and evil not apply to her at all?).

The art is clean, simple, but beautifully evocative, that I can easily be swept up in the emotions of the story, I wanted to save how inspired I felt to draw seeing this artwork!!