lupetuple's reviews
1264 reviews

How'd I go so long without reading the original manga... it fills me with so much joy and weird gender affirmation, especially that one panel with Usagi in drag. Takeuchi's art is my favorite of any manga artist out there. What else can I say... it's Sailor Moon!!

Nostalgia read, as I never got to finish it as a child (I was the kid who waited to buy manga volumes at the bookstore). It's silly, melodramatic, and the constant miscommunication and quick assumptions got to be annoying. It plays transphobia/misogyny and homophobia for laughs too often, as well. I am firm that Kirika should have been a trans boy. To be honest, this series had so much potential to be really queer and fun, but it's clearly meant for an immature audience--the fact that it began as a joke that developed into something more due to popularity is evident, as the plot and various events strike me as botched together and nonsensical (despite it being a magical girl series).

Genuinely the best recently published manga I've read. It's so silly yet heartfelt, and strangely helps my mentality toward eating and food. Such a wide cast of characters, yet each are endearing and compelling. The main theme is so well developed and culminates perfectly in a meditation on the meanings of life and death--the conduit being desire, which was explored in a way that felt affirming to the pursuit of pleasure. Overindulgence is made out more to lead to social alienation rather than sin, something greatly appreciated. I'm glad I finally finished this manga after initially following it as it was ongoing, then forgetting about it. It's a series I'd be invested in having physical copies of, frankly.

Incisive indictments of and calls to moving beyond Desire, gender, health… it’s short but illuminates many problems with body positivity and the myopia of self-love, how neither will lead to revolutionary consciousness or praxis.

The relentless misogyny pisses me off but I’d love to see certain scenes onstage. The language and wordplay are fun, as well, and the interrogation into what constitutes “Spirit” or “Understanding” to invoke Hegel, but I can’t stand the suffering piled onto Gretchen as a vehicle for Faust’s enlightenment.

Interesting forays into transforming negative affects to potential collective and individual liberation, as grounds for acknowledging and resisting injustice and oppression. Happiness as banal is a concept I’d like to reflect upon, because I don’t think it is quite so simple, for all that it’s championed as an “ideal” state of being.

Probably one of the most important books I’ll read in my life, introducing me to a man who makes me feel like life as I am and want to be is possible.