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Marmalade Boy

Writen by: Meiko

Marmalade Boy based on episode 1 of the television show and the entire manga series(Japanese comic books/ Graphic Novels).

A few months back I was surfing the internet and looking for downloadable anime. My computer being as stupid and slow as it is, I have to find very small files. My search was not much of a success as you can probably guess, but I was able to find a few animes to download. Some of which was four episodes of FY, an episode of Card Captor Sakura (Subtitled!!! I was excited) an extremely bizarre series called Di Gi Charat, and (getting to the point...) an episode of Marmalade Boy. As I started to watch it the first thing I saw in the theme song was a boy and girl kissing (Miki and Yuu if you don’t know) and I thought to myself that that is very unusual. As the theme song continued, I began to get the feeling that this was not going to be you’re usual gun slinging, magical powered, meca powered, scantily clad girl anime (that's a pretty good generalization of anime don’t you think? lol). I was sucked in immediately. You can’t help not feeling bad for Miki when her parents look her strait in the eye... smiling... and say they are getting divorced and exchanging partners with another couple. The episode continues. We find that the other couple (the Matsuuras) have an extremely cute son named Yuu who really doesn’t care about the whole situation at all. All six buy a big house and move in together. Yuu teases Miki all the time and acts like a jerk. But just as one thinks that this story can’t get any worse, there is the biggest twist of all. Miki finds her self in the nurse’s office after a bad accident with a basketball and hears Yuu walk into the office. She pretends to be asleep to avoid Yuu making fun of her, but instead Yuu walks in and kisses her and leaves the room. Then the episode ends!!!! YOU CAN’T END IT JUST LIKE THAT!!!! HOW DO I FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NOW??? Oh, how heart breaking.... and just when it was getting interesting. Damn downloading episodes... I’ll never find episode two! So with that I gave up on Marmalade Boy.

Some months later my friend had gotten hooked on Ranma 1/2 and I went looking for volume two of the manga with her. It was there my eyes fell on a book..... called Marmalade Boy! I was very excited! Now I could figure out what happened next! Almost without thinking I grabbed it and bought it. I started reading it when I got home and I was even more hooked than before. I found that the first episode followed the manga almost word for word, which I thought was interesting (This is the only manga I have read that I can compare to the anime) Except it left out a few little things... like (one of my fav scenes....) when the school tv show interviews Yuu and Yuu tells the school that he and Miki are living together. I find that it is easy to relate to the characters even though this story gets more and more unbelievable with every turn of the page. It’s just like any other teen soap opera, just anime style (so therefore of course better... lol) I’d tell anyone to give this series/manga a try, but it’s certainly not for everyone. Not everyone can take the who’s-going-out-with-who, and the almost normal setting of the plot. You wouln’t find any space pirates, crazy sorceresses or gundams here. Just ‘normal’ high schoolers. There is no fan service either which is always a plus- its all too often a very rare thing in anime. This is just an all around excellent anime/manga.

(updated on 4/26/03) I wrote this review a few months ago, but now that I have read more of the series I want to talk about it a bit more. I still love the series (no doubt) but I have noticed some more stuff, translation problems and whatnot. In the first volume, they mention Arimi being in thier class (going over atendence after school)... but she isn't, she goes to Sakaki High with Rokutanda. Other times there are things that just aren't translated from Japanesse... nothing important, but some of those written emotion things... sometimes they leave the Japanesse and translate it under (which is cool!) and sometimes they leave in words like baka which make it cool too.

As the storyline progresses, it becomes even more adicting. Yoshizumi does not focus as much on Miki and Yuu's relationship as you would expect- which can be good and bad. When you look at the time span this series takes up, you realize that it's a pritty slow story, Yoshizumi just puts it on fastforward to make it more exciting. The plot twists just keep you hooked! well, i'll probably put my two cents in again once I have all the volumes read in august!

(updated on 9/16/03) Ok, I finally got the last one and read it! It was great! This is a definite must buy for all you fans of shoujo comics.

Tokyo Pop Has published the all eight volumes (Yes, only eight, not 23+ like Ranma... its a good thing, trust me!) of Marmalade Boy manga in english here in the US and you can buy it in most book stores. The greatest thing is they are publishing it ‘manga style’ so you get to read it right to left like they do in Japan. It isn’t as difficult as it sounds, you get used to it right away I found. The price is good too- only $10. If that sounds expensive to you, Ranma 1/2 is $16 and that I have found is about average, but there are others that are more expensive too. If you are interested in the anime- well all I can say is good luck. If you know where to buy fan subs look there but as far as I know it hasn’t been licensed here in the US yet- ToykoPop is talking about distributing it, but I have heard no difinitive date yet.