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REVIEW: Beauty and the Feast GN 2 & 3




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thepepin



Joined: 22 Jun 2022
Posts: 69
PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:35 pm Reply with quote
I agree with the "28 is middle aged is a problem" thing - 35 not so much! - though the thought process may have been her justifiable anxiety over her eventual prospects for remarriage. I don't know a thing about Japanese culture but it may well be that this is an instance where it is very different from our own. If so, it is appropriate for the graphic novel to be a reflection of its own culture as opposed to tend to foreign mores. It is no different from how Hollywood's barometer is a lot more Manhattan (and even there most definitely the New York version, not the Kansas one) than Malaysia.

The cockroach thing was done to make her "cute"? Goes with the territory. This work was originally in a seinen magazine but with a 15 year old male lead. Again, I am going to imagine that Japanese culture is different from ours. It may be that making a 28 year woman appear desirable to their decidedly younger male target audience is more difficult in that culture than it is in our own, where Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lopez are playing romantic leads for younger males while in their late 40s (including one that paired Lopez with a 19 year old) and 50s. If so, they may have decided that the best past to the broadest possible readership was to play to that mindset. It may be that in the United States, with a much larger population and more opportunities for overseas distribution, it is possible to challenge and subvert social mores like attraction standards and still make money, but in Japan it may only be profitable in niche works. Then again if you look at the economic mess that the American media industry was in even before the pandemic maybe it just flat out doesn't work beyond niche and arthouse stuff period.
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