LMST 265F : Manga and Anime

Hiromu Arakawa has been one of my favorite manga artists since I watched Fullmetal Alchemist. Her storytelling and character designs are amazing. However, what makes her manga more special is the message she wants to give to the audience and how she deals with it. Silver spoon is basically a story of a high school boy who has no dream but came to an agricultural school just because he needs somewhere else to live. I only read the first chapter so that I cannot cover the whole thing. However, I can see she wants to say something with a story where a boy grows up not only physically. Already in the first chapter, I can see the change of emotion and think of the character and we could think about how the story will go. He came to school without no dream related to agricultural stuff. He entered the school with the best grade and after seeing some classmate, he thought they are not that smart and kind of look down on them. However, the classmates start the conversation about agriculture

Gender and sex are the main controversial subject these days. Especially in a conservative country like Japan, I had never thought Japanese manga was open to LGBT subject so the class this week was very refreshing and great. The manga "My lesbian experience of loneliness" was impressive. It was not just about sexuality, it was more about finding myself and emotional progress of a person. She, the creator has depression and how her lesbian experience and circumstance around her makes her change was relatable and touching. I was afraid to be a "grown-up" "woman" when I was puberty, the image "woman" should have like the depiction of sexuality and make-up looked weird to younger me. Now I know that was because of wrong imagery of media and "female" just man biological sex, and I do have to do those things to be a woman but still what she felt was pretty similar to younger me. That helps me emphasize to her. Ran-Ma and "My brother