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Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo is one of my favorite manga series. The title can be literally translated as "His and Her Circumstances", but is generally shortened to "Kare Kano" in both it's Japanese and English publications. The series ran 21 volumes in its American publication, and I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. There is a slow section in the middle of the series where the story gets sort of derailed as it explores the lives of various side-characters, but these side stories are also enjoyable in themselves, so it isn't a big deal to me. The main plot revolves around two high-school freshmen, a girl named Yukino Miyazawa and a boy named Arima Soichiro, who are both academic over-achievers. Their relationship starts out as a rivalry wherein the two of them compete for the highest grades in their school, but quickly turns into a budding romance.
I'll admit that this isn't a proper review of the manga, and it isn't meant to be. (If it were, I would have to mention that - while the art is beautiful - it is dreadfully dificult to tell certain characters apart at times. -_-;) I'm writing about the series for more personal reasons. To me one of the most powerful scenes in the series comes at the end of volume 9, when "Dark Arima" makes his dramatic and disturbing appearance. This is a personafication of Arima's doubt and self-loathing that gradually lures him into depression and a self-destructive frame of mind. The scene really struck a cord with me when I first read the series as a teen, and in the last few weeks I think I've had a few encounters with my own "Dark Arima". It's comforting (and not too much of a spoiler) to know that Arima eventually overcomes these feelings with the help of loving friends and family and grows up to have a happy life as a husband and a father - even if he does end up getting shot and killed during the series' only action scene. (Again, not really a spoiler - and an intentionally misleading one at that. ^_^)
Saturday, March 26th, we had the spring cleaning of our Kingdom Hall. I didn't get any sleep the night before, so I was super tired by the time the work was wrapping up, but I did manage to keep going most of the day. Here are some photos I snapped throughout the day.
I remember seeing advertisements on TV for the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers when I was a kid. I may have even seen an episode or two, but I certainly didn't watch it on a regular basis. I don't think it was until much later that I found out it was originally a Japanese show called Super Sentai. When they brought it to the USA they cast american kids and refilmed scenes where the characters weren't in costume, and then spliced that new footage with the action sequences from the Japanese show.
Well, I hadn't heard anything about the Power Rangers or Super Sentai for a long time, and I had sort of assumed the show was long gone. Just today, I discovered that it is currently in its 35th season in Japan. I also learned that each season of the show is treated as a separate series, dealing with a totally different set of heroes dealing with a totally different menace. All of this was brought to my attention when I found this video of the opening to the 33rd Super Sentai series.
Now, party of me wants to laugh at the pure campy-ness of that, but part of me feels like a ten-year-old boy sitting in front of the TV on a Saturday morning thinking "This is so awesome!" I did a quick Google image search and found the picture below of the main cast from that series. Why are campy Japanese superheroes so awesome? And why do Japanese kids look so much cooler than American kids?
