This Week in Anime

Drama Over Anime

Sylvia
I wouldn't blame you if that were the case! But I must commiserate with you about my similar shojo blindspots. Writing for this column has helped with that, no lie, but there's still a lot out there I haven't even heard of. While I'd love to shoulder all the blame for that myself, I have to consider that I am primarily an anime watcher. Shojo anime just doesn't receive the kind of visibility and promotion in America that other demographics benefit from. And heck, it took us three whole decades to get an anime version of Hana-Kimi! Even I know that one's a classic.

But maybe I've been looking for shojo in the wrong places. In fact, maybe I've been prowling the entirely wrong dimension.

Which is to say: did you know there were that many live-action takes on Hana-Kimi? I sure didn't!

I can understand why. "Girl crossdresses to attend the same school as her crush" is a premise that blossoms in your imagination without any other input needed. That's also a premise easy enough to translate into live action. You need a leading lady who looks just boyish enough, and you're golden.

The 2007 Japanese version definitely leans into the goofiness, too. Like, I think about this show being contemporaneous with iCarly, and probably having a similar audience demographic. Plus the timely references.

No, you're right, that one is much better.

I mean, the live-action production does feel kinda perfunctory. Or maybe a better word is awkward. This is a 20-year-old show now, so it can't help but look dated, and it leans into avenues of humor that society has gotten a little more sensitive towards in the interim decades, e.g., Mizuki getting felt up, Mizuki having A Moment at the urinal, etc.

That is, perhaps, a nice thing about the anime taking so long to come around. So far, this adaptation of Hana-Kimi seems to be making minor but good editorial decisions (or so I've heard from manga readers).

Certain aspects of it might be dated, but I think that playful ethos regarding gender/sexuality shenanigans is transgressive in a positive way. Personally, I want to see a modern, probably even more problematic version where Mizuki specifically poses as a trans man to attend the academy, but society might not be ready for that one yet.

Regardless, there are other existing shojo to discuss before I start waxing poetic about my twisted takes on them. For instance, Boys Over Flowers! Let's take a moment to luxuriate again in how good that anime looks.

Agreed! I don't want to repeat myself too much, but it's a great example of the kind of raw aesthetic power a thoughtfully composed animated adaptation can bring. Yamauchi's take on Boys Over Flowers is dreamy, classy, and imaginative.

Like, my favorite manga adaptations are those with their own creative vision—a vision that doesn't shackle itself entirely to its source. Even if that source is my favorite manga in the whole world, I don't want it to get an anime that doesn't take any risks.

It's worth noting, too, that by virtue of being a cartoon, an anime adaptation lends itself to being more, well, cartoonish. This, obviously, is a pretty close fit for the kind of expressiveness that a manga's format affords.

That Hana-Kimi drama attempts to depict zany antics with some CGI elements, but those just don't gel as well, especially as the technology has aged.

And in general, there is an unavoidable degree of realism that you run into when you're making a live-action production. You can't make a live-action Boys Over Flowers look like the anime does. That's probably why I felt this South Korean version fell flat compared to the anime. The moods are very different.

Alas, I am sorry those college girls steered you wrong. But it's hard to blame them for not choosing the "correct" version when there are so many. Literally, the Wikipedia page uses a table to get all that information across in the most efficient manner possible. People all around the globe love these jerks.

And as far as jerkitude goes, I have to give this adaptation props for nailing the fashion. This is exactly what I picture a 2009-era fuccboi wearing.

Koo Hye-sun is also quite good as Jan-di, the adaptation's equivalent of Makino. I think she gets the amount of feistiness right, and she's not afraid of mugging for the camera.

More importantly, it was a gigantic phenomenon in South Korea at the time, and its influence trickled down into many ensuing K-dramas. It's a perfect example of why you can't just look at anime when you're trying to think about the cultural footprint of shojo manga.

Speaking of which, we have another anime/live-action shojo pair, this time for ItaKiss, a story that bravely asks the question, "Can a stupid girl and a smart guy get together?"

Well, I guess that answers that.

That is a well-worn trope in shojo romances (in fact, we see versions of it in both Boys Over Flowers and Hana-Kimi as well). Conflict makes stories interesting, and the quickest way to conflict is to invent two people and butt their heads together. Rinse and repeat until they start kissing. Tale as old as time.

As for the anime, I really appreciated its 2008 feel. We are precisely far enough removed from that time period for it to become culturally nostalgic, and if you haven't accepted that already, then I suggest you get a head start and rewatch Lucky Star while you can. But more to the point, I think this looks great. Expressive and cartoony without going overboard.

And back in meatspace, ItaKiss has several live-action takes as well. Not enough to necessitate a table on Wikipedia, but still worth mentioning. Crunchyroll actually licensed the 2013 drama, and for whatever reason, they still have it streaming, going on 13 years later. I wonder if everyone just forgot it was there. I guess if it gets taken down in the next week or so, we'll know the answer.

Agreed, I think it's pretty smart, despite the academic acumen of its heroine. Another thing we should talk about is that an episode of a drama is usually at least twice as long as an episode of an anime. Very different writing techniques are going to go into one versus the other. Most obviously, an hour runtime provides more breathing room, so I noticed most of these adaptations adding side plots or extending scenes compared to their more efficient anime equivalents.

In Mischievous Kiss, one change I really liked was that Kotoko's house gets destroyed by a tiny meteor instead of an earthquake. It ties back to her earlier monologue about the meteor shower and other cultural signifiers of destiny, and it twists those around funnily, so the joke isn't just that her dad built a cruddy house.

That is, arguably, a creative advantage that live-action has over anime. Because an anime adaptation will usually hew closely to the manga character designs, since it's feasible to do so. But you can't 1:1 translate those bug-eyed shojo characters to actual human beings, so you take creative liberties with costuming and makeup. And I am all for that when it leads to a drip as unimpeachable as this.

Seriously! All the casual outfits in this living room scene say something.

It's proof that meatspace isn't necessarily more limiting than pen and paper. There are interesting artistic decisions to be made everywhere. Now, that's three sets of shojo with both anime and live-action versions, and I think we did a pretty good job elucidating the interesting contrasts that come up when you compare them. But we aren't stopping there. We also looked at two series that only have drama interpretations. First up is Good Morning Call, which technically got a single 20-minute OVA, but for our purposes, that doesn't count.

And that is basically what I was going to say, too! The inciting incident here isn't an act of God, nor a superpowerful student legion, nor a gender oopsie. It's a real estate scam. That's the real thing, there is.

There's still some requisite contrivance, but once you accept the cohabitating premise, the drama unfolds mostly naturally. Anybody who has ever had a roommate understands this.

It only lost me when Uehara had to run out to rescue Nao from a guy who had been attacking random women in the area. That felt further removed from the passive-aggressive roomie stuff I had been enjoying.

Seeing the manga art in the OP was also a nice touch.

That being said, if I had to guess, it might be that the down-to-earth premise didn't stand out enough to garner an anime adaptation. Good Morning Call, at first blush, looks tame compared to the shenanigans at hand in Hana-Kimi. That's not a bad thing, but it can be the difference between puncturing the cultural consciousness or not.

Just so we cover our bases, An Incurable Case of Love is technically a josei romance, not a shojo one. In practice, though, this is beat-for-beat a shojo romance, minus the high school setting. It's actually kind of clever how, as a nurse-in-training, Sakura experiences cliques, drama, pop quizzes, and other familiar tropes. It's all high school. And to be fair, my day job experience has done nothing but confirm this to be true in the real world as well.

And certainly, the medical dressing slots it nicely alongside the long line of hospital dramas and soap operas that people can't get enough of. They are a live-action staple. I mean, so many people have told me to watch The Pitt. So many.

Sometimes you gotta play the hits.

Sakura has some funny moments of realization after Tendo crushes her schoolgirl fantasy, but she also earns her eureka moment at the end and "solves" the case. While still melodramatic, the emotional resolution has a few more contours than the strictly shojo series we've touched upon in this column. So it's a nice morsel of contrast.

Again, no reason why this couldn't be an anime, but josei adaptations are rare enough as it is, so I'm glad 2026 is currently spending its josei voucher on Journal with Witch (which also got a movie, for the record).

Shojo romance is full of genre-defining—sometimes generation-defining—works, but you wouldn't necessarily know that if you only knew anime. That's why I think it's always good to zoom out and reexamine your priors. And it definitely helps when you have a shojo guardian angel for an editor to guide your way. I highly recommend finding one of those if you're curious about this space.