Forum - View topicBuried Treasure - Marmalade Boy
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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I know TokyoPop (like Viz) is much better at releasing manga than anime, but I never even knew they had released Marmalade Boy on DVD. Haven't watched the show since the VHS fansub days.
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Pray tell. My curiosity is piqued. |
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14755 |
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IIRC from the Tomodachi fansubs and the OP theme lyrics: 
spoiler[Yuu/love/kiss tastes like marmalade - bitter and sweet] (I should really pull out those old fansubs and find out the exact explanation....) |
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here-and-faraway
 Posts: 1528 Location: Sunny California |
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Well said. This and Hana Yori Dango had me GLUED to the TV. Ahh...guilty pleasures... |
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alifemde
Posts: 38 |
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Oh wow! This takes me back. The first year of our college anime club showed this, and the pres and co-founder both kept praising it as the best melodrama Japan had to offer.
Let's just say the shine was lost relatively quickly. Personally, the overdramatizing plus the ridiculous situations (and goofy characters) really made everybody turn on this puppy very quickly. The prequel movie didn't help at all. Honestly, I am always surprised when this show is ever praised for any reason. I wonder if the praiser had seen it lately without the "holy glow" of it being the first subbed anime show they'd ever witnessed. |
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SalarymanJoe
 Posts: 468 Location: Atlanta, GA, USA |
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Bold emphasis mine. It's interesting that you note that; to me the sheer ridiculousness of some of the situations, the over dramatization (typical of teenage girls) and the occasional goofy characters were all part of the charm. It was that over-the-top, what's-going-to-happen-next, edge of your seat feeling but most of it, from what I've seen, was completely plausible. I "discovered" Marmalade Boy when I graduated High School. Well, that was when I first got around to watching it. I'd seen it out and about and heard about it for several years but didn't get around to watching it until the summer between High School and Uni. Unfortunately, I only managed to get seven or eight tapes, which covers the first 28 or 32 episodes. But then again, I'm also picky about the over the top twists or depictions. Something like Hokuto no Ken is immensely enjoyable, exploding heads and all, but I was severely turned off by the antics of Prince of Tennis (Dragonball-esque tennis techniques obliterating dinosaurs); romance, much like I think sports, can have fantastic elements but should ultimately be grounded in reality. There are plenty of other genres in which I can suspend disbelief.
I completely agree with this statement. While I'm a romance fan, I'm typically not a shoujo fan. There's probably a handful of titles I genuinely like and Maramalde Boy is at the top of that list. What I remember most, and liked best about it, was the gripping story. Even if it seemed over the top and melodramatic, it was like looking at many of my female friends, which meant that at its heart it was all grounded in realism. I remember saying about the same thing (anime crack) to a friend of mine when I first started watching it. She immediately agreed and kept telling me that if I enjoyed the first few episodes, it only got better from there. Over the years, I've weaned myself from spoiling the ending or seeing the movie, but with the TV series boxes now down to a cheaper cost, I'm afraid I might relapse.
This was something I noticed as I was watching it but not something I made a conscious note about. I'm glad you put it in those terms. I guess it also grounds the fiction: everyone has problems, no matter how good they seem to have it. |
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Tofusensei
Posts: 365 |
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Lol I was wondering when you'd bust this one out.
A bit too long by today's standards, but a classic nonetheless. I really believe this was one of those shows that was guilty of being 'fansubbed to death' back in the VHS days. I think most people who wanted to see it already had by the time Tokyopop got around to releasing it. -Tofu |
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cool3865
 Posts: 770 Location: Austin, TX |
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i remember seeing bits and pieces of this show, but after reading more about it, its time to go out and buy the series. im a sucker also for drama and romance shows
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Vikio
 Posts: 60 Location: tropical volcano |
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Everybody's saying that its too long to just casually watch, so I have a suggestion. Why dont you read the Marmalade Boy manga? It's got the same emotional rollercoaster, but won't take you nearly as long to finish.
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sunflower
 Posts: 1080 |
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I have to say that while I think Marmalade Boy is a great classic shoujo series, I liked the manga series better because it didn't have that bloating filler near the end. The manga seemed just right at 8 volumes, tight and well-paced. As long as the anime stuck with that I enjoyed it. But stretching 8 volumes into all those episodes was too much. Still, it's a classic worth watching.
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MrAnimeSpecialist
 Posts: 124 |
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That's nothing. Hokuto no Ken is even longer(109 episodes!), mainly due to those goofy filler episodes. I've managed to plod through 40 episodes, so far.
Me too!  Though, I do tend to get swayed by action shows. To be honest, Shonen Jump anime (and some non-SJ ones) can be considered to be some sort of type of action-packed soap-operas, complete with cliffhangers and plot twists out the wazoo (ex: Goku and friends are shocked when Raditz, his long-lost brother, tells him that he is an alien from outer space!). However, they do have romance sometimes.
Still, I have been wanting to watch Marmalade Boy for a while. I'm not really ashamed to expand my horizons to watch the shoujo genre. You can miss out on great things if you're restricted to only one genre, after all. In fact, I found it amusing when Nintendo Power labeled Dragon Ball Z as a "kung-fu soap-opera" in a game preview. 
Last edited by MrAnimeSpecialist on Thu Oct 16, 2008 12:43 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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AirCooledMan_2006
 Posts: 594 Location: Delaware, U.S. |
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Wow, a column on Marmalade Boy for once.
I really would love to see this gem get rescued, for without it, we wouldn't have other teen drama animes such as Peach Girl. It's because of MB's out-of-print status that I was forced to "summon" the whole series, just like Angel Cop, Mad Bull 34, and Video Girl Ai before it. Then I watched it, and got sucked in right from the beginning, and that ain't bullshit. |
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Sakuya Masaki
 Posts: 34 Location: TX, USA |
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Yes, yes, YES!!! Marmalade Boy!
Back in the day of fansubs on VHS, shoujo was a rare beast than a lot of other anime genres. I think it might have been the first real shoujo series I had ever seen. I was extremely happy to have been able to get ahold of this series back in the day. And so were my friends. I spent a good portion of my sophomore and junior yr. playing a sort of anime drug dealer w/this series. I was the only one of my group who had access to fansubs and was given the duty of making copies for everyone of the latest MB tape. When I look back at this series now as an adult, it's with a lot of tender fondness. Being a somewhat hardened, jaded adult, I can see now how crazy some of the melodrama is. But I still enjoy watching it every now and again. For me, this series holds a lot of memories of sleep overs w/my best friends where we would stay up all night watching shoujo anime, squeeing and screaming like the schoolgirls we were. Marmalade Boy is a big part of some of my happiest memories from my high school days so I cherish it. It's very near and dear to my heart. 
And I think any young female anime fan should start off with this series. It's just such a classic shoujo series. It's old by now, but I haven't really come across many series that are as timeless as MB. |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Buried treasure, huh? I've heard a lot about Marmalade Boy in general, although back in my early otaku years, I got it confused with Golden Boy a lot and wondered how those two storylines could POSSIBLY be in the same show.
I've seen Golden Boy now, and no...no, they could NEVER be the same show.
I wouldn't mind watching it, but what with the focus on melodrama and the heavy episode count, I'm not eager to "buy to try," and I'll have to ask around my otaku friends to see if they have any of it instead... Mostly I'm intrigued because...uh...is this a bit of trivia that everyone but me knows? Miki and Yuu look exactly like grown-up versions of Sana and Akito of Kodomo no Omocha. Was that intentional for Daichi? 
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cool3865
Posts: 770 Location: Austin, TX |
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not just female, i think anyone that likes the shoujo genre......im a male and love the shoujo genre. |
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