Forum - View topicREVIEW: Honey and Clover GN 1-2
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Top Gun Posts: 1194 |
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No, but when those of us who consider themselves as having a comprehensive and well-rounded vocabulary have to go scrambling for a dictionary on multiple occasions, it's clear that there's some sort of communications breakdown occurring. There's a clear difference between diversity and creativity of word choice and ostentatious verbosity, and in my humble opinion, Ms. Brienza stepped over that line. Hell, I've never so much as seen the word "pabulum" in print before tonight, and I've actually studied the language it's derived from. As for the content of the review itself, I have neither read the manga or seen the anime myself, but I do have several friends who tend to be very picky about their likes and dislikes who have rated the latter as one of the best series they've ever seen. In fact, they've been haranguing me for months now to break down and watch it. One of the points they keep raising is how the show is supposedly tailor-made for someone like me, a recent college grad with very little idea where he wants to go in life. After hearing such high praise for so long, I find such a mean-spirited and discordantly negative review to be rather suspect. |
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| Zac ANN Executive Editor  Posts: 4298 Location: Death Star Cocktail Lounge |
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Yeah and you've all been piling on now for 6 pages, generally repeating the same few complaints over and over again, frequently attacking Casey personally while simultaneously crying about how when someone doesn't like a comic book you like and says so in a manner you don't personally approve of it's a deep personal insult, one clearly aimed at you directly, tantamount to heresy. And what happens after I say that? I get the "nobody in this thread is saying this is tantamount to heresy" argument, in which many of you are proven hypocrites because there's so much misrepresentation, misunderstanding and out-of-context extrapolation of exactly what Casey said going on in this discussion thread that it's borderline absurd. It's not that I don't hear you or that I'm not listening to your complaints. That isn't the case. Casey's review is controversial, as many of her reviews have been. You're just getting to know her as a critic, and it just so happens that many of her early reviews are drawing fire. I don't expect you to be eternally patient before writing off a critic completely, or claiming you can't trust them, or don't like their writing. What I do expect is some level of reason, some attempt at understanding what the critic is trying to say before leaping on it like a rabid dog. Every single time we publish a review like this one - and this has happened to other critics here as well, myself included - we get this small army of people who march in claiming "what a review should be". It invariably includes the words "objective" "unbiased" or any number of other buzzwords people use to try and make it seem like their subjective opinion of a show is objectively right and someone else's subjective opinion is objectively wrong. It is immensely tiresome, self-serving, totally transparent nonsense and there is a mountain of it in this thread. Disagree with the review but the endless frothing attempts to discredit Casey and bash her personally are really, really sickening. Let me put this another way: Do I think Casey's review has its problems? Yes. No review is perfect. Do I think it's poorly written or doesn't make its case very well? No. Do I think she has a tendency to use academic language that gets a certain response from fans? Yes. Is that a problem? Not really, not to me. But if people really do get that riled up about it then we'll have to take another look at it and see where to go from here. To be honest, I don't agree with Casey's take on Honey & Clover. I think she's going in a little too deep and is focusing a bit much on a character that is easily identified as potentially sexist. But her point is taken and her analysis isn't unsupported. Her review is well written and does not use any words that I didn't already know and would assume anyone who'd graduated high school would be familiar with. Simply because I disagree with her opinion does not mean that I believe she is somehow objectively wrong, or a bad critic, or that I shouldn't publish her opinion. And many of you seem to be arguing that her opinion should be silenced or replaced simply because you don't like the way she said it. And I will never, ever agree with that mindset. |
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| GATSU Posts: 8416 |
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I'm not personally insulted, but that "those primitive and sexually oppressive Japanese" meme does get old.
And we're explaining what she's saying using her own words. If you or her have a problem with that, then maybe she should do a better job understanding what she's reviewing. 
It's not the language itself. It's the context of the language that's at issue. This isn't Gender Studies 101. |
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| StickyToffeePopcorn Posts: 61 Location: UK |
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| Just wanted to say, I hate moe; but still managed to really, really like this manga, including the female lead. So anybody originally interested in this series (maybe fans of josei in particular) who are not put off by this point should maybe consider still giving it a go.
I totally did not expect that review at all, I mean, has moe now got such an over-bearing influence in all manga that just because a heroine possesses some of these qualities (even when they're displayed in an oddball way like this) that it can only be construed as foolish male wish fulfilment? I think that making that parallel in this case is a harsh judgement on a series that doesn't seem to possess the same misogynistic values as the typical shonen/seinen, and is just exploring a different character type for jinsei.
I understand this, but I think that you've really got to keep the intended audience in mind; this is aimed at older people that aren't likely to be as susceptible to thinking this way. You could always say that since Hagu is so eccentric that it also encourages the audience to celebrate their own (more unusual) personality traits, or it could just simply be displaying a character that isn't intended to affect your ideals. I think that for this kind of thing it's all how you look at it.
Sorry to sound condescending but welcome to the real world. This is what university students do all over the world and I personally don't see it as a sign of a corrupt future; but an integral learning experience. Not everybody in the world is going to absolutely bum the course they do. Hope it doesn't sound like I'm defending this manga too much (I've only read the first volume), but some of the arguments people made definitely raise some interesting questions about moe's effect on manga. Overall it seems like people are more expectant of manga to be sexualized or a wish fulfilment (which in my opinion generally seems to be true). Last edited by StickyToffeePopcorn on Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:44 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Celes Posts: 216 Location: Columbus, OH |
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It's true, I'm a jaded old soul at the age of 22 almost 23...*sob* I feel honored to be quoted by someone who always has such great posts though! YAY! But on that note I thought it was intended for women OVER the age of 18 due to the magazine it once circulated in...can't remember off the top of my head but I understand that most josei titles are for the older set, yes? Either way, you are probably right about different ages enjoying the series in their own way. I know when I was younger reading about college was exciting to me too, and now that I am out of college I am leaning towards more adult stories...reading about people who are in the stage of life after mine. I still stand by my opinion though...if you want to read a good josei story about art students, read Paradise Kiss!  (Although that's about high schoolers...) |
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| StickyToffeePopcorn Posts: 61 Location: UK |
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Just wondering, is Paradise Kiss actually josei? Or is it just considered a manga that crosses the shoujo/josei boundary? I feel slightly confused because somebody else in this topic brought up Ai Yazawa as a josei artist (including Nana), but I never look at it that way. |
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| selenta Moderator  Posts: 1774 Location: Seattle, WA |
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| First of all, let me say that I have no intention of "debating" this any further than it already has been; not that the review is really up for debate in the first place. I think the reviewer was quite clearly injecting her personal biases and agenda, and I think the review was garbage in that it is completely unusable to anyone in gauging the piece and determining how relevant it may be to their tastes. The only exception to this is the crowd that can not enjoy a show without an overarching story (I certainly don't blame them, as I'm usually one of them) should be able to immediately pick out that this one isn't for them.
The reviewer's bias seems obvious enough, she wanted a funny manga with a strong female and a plot that makes every episode indispensable; and I guess it could be argued that when the reviewer makes their bias that obvious the person reading it should just take that into account. The problem in my mind is that it doesn't look at the story for what it is, she looks at it for what it's not. Hagu's not a strong female, nobody is normal, they don't do anything exciting, blah blah blah. She seems to do this in all of her reviews that I can recall reading, though it's not unreasonable those happen to be the only those ones stuck in my mind. Anime, being the genre it is, can appeal to just about every type of person in just about any mood. H&C was something I liked to read to relax, when I didn't want to watch something that would get me all worked up or make me feel the need to watch the next five episodes in a row, it's the same reason why I read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, and it's the same reason I watch Aria. I don't want there to be a plot, and I don't want them to go on some fantastical quest to save the planet. The reviewer faults the GN for being exactly what it wants to be, and appealing to the people it wants to appeal to. You can give it a low grade in art because there's not a lot of detail or it looks busy, or whatever; but to make what are such blatantly sexist comments about Hagu and what you think she must be is not only irresponsible and revealing about your character, it makes your reviews worthless. Also Zac, you vastly overestimate people's vocabularies if you think every high school graduate should know some of those words (to the point of arrogance I would say, if you really expect everyone in this country to be reasonably expected to know 'pabulum'). It's true that I've only taken a few journalism classes in college, but more than one of them would have told Casey that using such words in a paper written to a general audience is nothing but "literary masturbation". You seem to be of the opinion that a review can be anything the reviewer wants it to be, I guess this is true, technically; but this is not what a good review is. While I've disagreed strongly with a few of the reviews written here, none of the others made me feel like the reviewer had already made up her mind just based on the character's personalities. This is what makes her a "bad critic" in my mind. Last edited by selenta on Fri Jul 11, 2008 11:21 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Maidenoftheredhand Posts: 329 |
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And see this shows that different people prefer different things because I like Honey & Clover way more than Paradise Kiss. While Honey & Clover is about art students it is way more down to earth than Paradise Kiss which deals with models and glamor (and I have the same issues with Nana's story about rock stars.) I am not saying these things are bad I just really couldn't identify with any of the characters like I could with the characters in Honey & Clover. I will say I like Ai Yazawa's art style a lot though. |
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| ArielTsuki Posts: 176 |
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It was published in CUTIEcomic, then YoungYOU and finished in Chorus, which are all jousei anthologies IIRC. So yea, despite it winning the Kodansha award for shoujo (but it seemed that they also award jousei titles the Kodansha Award for shoujo since Kimi wa Pet [aka. Tramps Like Us in the US] won the award alongside Honey and Clover that year) and published in Shoujo Beat, Honey and Clover is a jousei title. Also, I never got to say this in my previous posts, it makes sense that Honey and Clover didn't focus too much of the main cast in class is because they were all different majors and years: Takemoto and Mayama were architecture majors, although Mayama was more on building architecture and Takemoto was more on interior design. Yamada was a pottery major, Morita was a sculpture major of some sort and Hagu was the only one who major I couldn't remember. It made sense that a lot of scenes of the series was outside of school or in Shuuji's office. And to be honest, Honey and Clover is better than Paradise Kiss and especially NANA IMO. It tends to not fall too much into the melodrama like those two titles (especially the latter) and I have a feeling Casey would've rip those titles wide open if she talks Hagu was the pinnacle of a sexual object of men or whatever. |
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| Kaioshin_Sama Posts: 338 |
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| Okay, this is comign from somebody that has no real feelings about Honey and Clover either way, but for several of the reasons highlighted in this review (albeit rather harshly and generalized therein, like the reviewer is sore she didn't get the series she expected rather than actually gauging the one she got) I tend to take a lot of praise and hype for Slice of Life series with a grain of salt. I'd rather build on those ideas then comment on what I think was a rather biased review just in reading it.
There's just something about them more often then not that makes me feel that the creators are trying to force a certain narrative rather than make it feel that everything is happening naturally as per real life. I also tend to get the impression from reading around on line that the die-hard fans of the genre are often trying to hold it up on a pedestal while forcing it on others, and tend to sell it's strengths as greater then they actually are and it's frequent weakness' short quite often. This sort of results in a what appears to be a lens filtered view and the result is that I find myself having an especially hard time trusting reviews on Slice of Life series. I'm sorry but as much as I'd like it, real life just does not contain happy smilely 18 year olds that look like little girls running around everywhere (yes I'm a bit of a lolicon and I will feel no shame for it, but I also know where reality ends and fantasy begins). Most Slice of Life series I see also fail to capture the essence of real daily life that I would imagine from the moniker. The only one that has even come close for me was Welcome To The NHK. |
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marie-antoinette Posts: 2626 Location: Toronto |
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I don't think she should be silenced or replaced, but I do think she should strongly consider not attacking a series so negatively, because doing so completely overshadows her opinions and just gets people angry. There are ways to write a review of something you didn't like that don't cause so much distaste in your readers. Carlo has already been used as an example of this. He has given negative reviews to series that I love as much as I love Honey & Clover but I never got upset about them, because he is entitled to his opinion. But he stated it in a way far superior to this review. There are times that I feel that Casey is purposely trying to upset fans of a series (I could very easily be wrong, but this is the impression that I get). And that's the part I dislike most, because then the review does not serve it's purpose. Yes, debate about a title is interesting, but we could get that by someone starting a thread about it in the Manga section of the forums. I think a review should offer something different. |
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| flyer888 Posts: 3 |
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I'm intrigued (enough to finally register) as to why people find Hagu as only either cute or creepy. Having watched the brilliant anime series, I found Hagu's depiction fascinating to observe; evolving from a state of extreme introvert to acquiring the bare essential social skills of adulthood. She is an interesting character seldom seen in anime or any other medium for that matter. Takemoto's affection is based on admiration of Hagu's talent which is largely evident later in the series, not once is she depicted as a sexualised object. The main drawing card of Honey and Clover is it's relatively accurate portrayal of college life and interpersonal relationships between fellow students, work colleagues (in Mayama's case) and professors. While Umino doesn't focus on Takemoto's architectural or Ayumi's ceramics assignment a great deal, she definitely highlights the challenges that are presented to young adults at such point in their lives, which I personally find more interesting. Having watched the anime first, I found the manga a tad flat. The story is intact but just doesn't resonate as well as the anime did for me. Give the anime a chance whenever the hell VIZ decide to release it. As for the review itself, I respect the reviewers opinion although I believe the 'repulsive misogyny' part was unnecessarily exaggerated. I've come across another review that also happens to be just as abrasive... |
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| GATSU Posts: 8416 |
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Kaio:
I'm not sure how being an otaku in Akihabara who doesn't do a damn thing all day can be considered a slice of life, since that's not really living... |
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championferret Posts: 385 |
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Thanks GATSU. When I said this I wasnt specifically talking about the review itself, but the whole 'moe=evil' attitude alot of people seem to have, which has included dictation over what a 'girl' shouldnt read. "don't read/watch *insert moe series here*, you're a girl so you'll find it offensive". And I uh...don't? Personally I find alot of the shojo manga in stuff like Nakayoshi more 'offensive' than any moe I've ever read, but that's a totally different argument I'm not going to get into.
...I'm quite willing to bet that had I not said she was asian, you wouldnt have said I was patronizing. How is calling her 'moe' reducing her if it's something we both happen to like? If I told you that she was also quite the otaku and saw it as a massive compliment, is it still patronizing? One of my other friends calls me moe, are they patronizing? And yes, I do take it as a compliment, she uses it as a compliment, even if I don't entirely agree with her belief that I am cute. It may sound bizarre to some people, but the guys in my scifi club endearingly call eachother 'geeks' and 'geekettes', not insultingly. So based on your assumptions, yes, I think you enormously misunderstood me. No hard feelings, but I'd prefer it if people's assessments on how I view my friends (who I treasure deeply) stays out of here now. I merely brought the analogy in to demonstrate that people of that age/personality do exist in real-life without being 'creepy'/'repulsive'. On the topic of Casey's reviews, I'm in the crowd that doesnt have a problem with her opinions, just how she presents them. I know for a fact how fun it can be to bash a series you hate, and even the sadisticly fun feeling of making fun of people who like it. (in all mock-seriousness, of course)But that sort of thing is best kept to blogs and things like that...I don't think it should be in a more 'professional' review place such as this. It's hard to not offend others, true, but words are powerful things, and when put in a certain way, some people...well, they have a little to contribute to the discussion threads. Although on the bright side, she can let you know the bad points of a series right out, and there's always so much discussion in the followup threads that its like two separate reviews in their own right. For some people this may even be a good way of assessing a title for themselves based on both her reviews and the followup thread discussion. I mean hey, thanks to this thread, I've learned a great deal about Honey and Clover and now I want to read it. |
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luffypirate85 Posts: 248 Location: Phoenix, AZ |
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| harsh review but i guess you can't please everyone...:(((( honey & clover is awesome!! morita is a riot! absolutely one of the most touching josei titles I've read :)) | ||||||||||
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