The title was intriguing, so I clicked the link on AnimeNano. Then I realized you wrote it, Lupus. Thence, I needed to read the article.

Expectations have often destroyed my perceptions regarding anime. I finished Kimikiss a few weeks ago, and while it was a great anime series chronicling the tragedies and triumphs of high school romances (directed no less by Kasai Kenichi), its ending was weak. Because I expected the series to up the ante until it exploded in an orgiastic victory, I was very disappointed. Not only did mummy spank my ass, she also made me kneel on salt and fed me hot sauce. It was such a disappointment.

However, where else can you look? You can look no further than what is presented, and even if deep down one knows these shippings and these hopes are doomed to failure (as you’ve very saliently pointed out - they’re not meant to be seen in shounen), one cannot avoid looking and putting meaning. ‘Perhaps’ is a very powerful word, and it is this ‘perhaps’ that drives impossibilities into possibilities.

Nemu will probably die. She hasn’t received any development in the last two hundred chapters or so (I think), and she’s not central to the plot at all. But since she’s there, and because there is a possibility: there is a perhaps, I’ll hope.

And ‘hope’ is infinitely more powerful than the more sober ‘perhaps’.

But here’s the problem: Boys Be IS about romance rather than friendship. Seinen isn’t shounen plus tits and blood. You know what manga ran in a seinen magazine? Chi’s Sweet Home, Rozen Maiden, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, and You’re Under Arrest.

Sorta off-topic, but blockquote doesn’t work in the comments either. It must need to be defined properly in the CSS stylesheet.

Mike: You can start by looking at shows/manga that isn’t shounen. Rather then hope, there is only despair in shounen. Now maybe if you were shipping one of the main characters, then there could be a tiny sliver of hope.

If you knew that Kimikiss was based on a bishoujo dating visual novel, then maybe your expectations would have been tempered to not expect so much out of it. Or maybe it’s just J.C. Staff fucking up… how many anime REALLY ends satisfactorily?

Bluemist: You shouldn’t make it the focus of a discussion. You don’t have to use it in a discussion at all. They’re probably best left for personal use - in helping you narrow down your choices, and in helping you shape your expectations. When used in a discussion, a debate about whether the classification is right or not could arise, but people who focus on that instead of on the subject itself are just pricks.

JP: The keyword is ‘often’, which is why I then cited Genshiken as an example that isn’t just shounen with tits and blood. There are probably about equal parts tits-and-blood (e.g. Claymore, Beserk, Tenjou Tenge) and not-tits-and-blood (e.g. REAL, Mushishi, Team Medical Dragon) seinen out there. One can write a whole post on how to finely divvy up the genres or sub-genres, but I just wanted to say that you can’t outright dismiss trying to compartmentalize the genres altogether, because the authors/magazines intend it to happen and it can be done.

Actually now that I think about it, what I said was wrong. Yeah, there are shounen with a romantic focus, and a lot more with overt romantic elements. Maybe I should go kill myself now.

Kaibitzin: Yeah, Zaitcev had a look when I was whinging about it in IRC this afternoon, and he said the whole blockquote definition thing just wasn’t there in the stylesheet.

L-chan: go to the link that says Darkshaunz and post your comment there. He’s the one that came up with the analogy, and I’m sure he’ll really like your comment.

Yeah, it sounds like there is either a nesting or a spacing issue with lists and blockquotes. I would have made the comments work first too, in Riex’s situation.

If there was a periodical which ran many variety of stories, would the branding be as solid. SJ, we know SJ and La-La, since the series “feel” similar, though could be entirely different. ^^ branding