Gabrielle Zuniga

Manga Response

I have read a handful of manga in high school, and for the most part enjoyed what I read. I always gravitated toward the shojo/romance titles. There were some tropes and cliché things that I would be criticizing. However, being the hopeless romantic, so I still stay for the end and I still care about the main characters and want them to be happy.

Cinderella Boy had a romance that I had criticisms about. The female main character kept being over-apologetic, and easily made sick by a minor thing happening. She and cried after seeing the guy she has feelings for embracing another girl in an acting scene. That being said, she also had moments where I cheered for her. She did her job as a fake pop star boy, and eventually didn’t back down from being herself to her fans. I criticized her especially at the beginning, but still stayed til the end and even looked for the second and third chapters to see if they ended up happily together.

This tends to describe my relationship with manga, especially romance-based manga(not all romance-based manga): overly weak, damsel in distress female characters, and rude, mean male characters. But, if not too heavily filled with tropes or clichés, I usually find the characters and romance endearing enough to stay until the end.