Watase, Y. (2006). Absolute
Boyfriend, Vol. 1. San Francisco, CA: VIZ Media LLC.
ISBN-13: 978-1421500164
Genre: Romance, Shojo, Nonfiction
Reading level/
interest age: 15+
Plot summary:
When Riiko Izawa returns a lost cellphone to a salesman, she
gets more of a reward than she bargained for. The salesman tells Riiko she can
go online and order herself a boyfriend. Thinking it must be a joke, Riiko does
as instructed and comes home to find a box with a naked man inside. To her
surprise, the box contains a manual instructing her to kiss the figure to turn
it on. Riiko ends up naming him Night and realizes that he might be just what
she ordered. Only, the salesman did not mention that she only had a free trial
period to test him out. Now, she either owes the company a million dollars or
she can keep Night on loan to collect information on her about his model. Being
a high school student living alone, Riiko is forced to keep Night and allow him
to collect data on how well he performs to her needs. The terms of the contract
also state that Riiko cannot mention what Night is to anyone. With her best
friend living next door, Riiko must keep Night’s existence quiet while trying
to figure out just exactly what “data collection” entails.
Critical evaluation:
The art style chosen for this manga is beautiful and
romantic. Most lines are very soft and curved and none of the characters come
off as harsh or even close to unpleasant. Despite the unrealistic depictions of
standard humans, Absolute Boyfriend
is still a good read full of romance.
While this manga may come off as giving young girls
unrealistic expectations of men, the series ends abruptly with the main love
interest eliminated. Throughout the series, Night is portrayed as a knight in
shining armor but Riiko’s best friend’s opinions end up swaying her to make a
difficult choice. Night can never grow old, Riiko cannot marry him, society
would not approve of their pairing, and they cannot have children together.
Riiko develops from a young girl just interested in having a boyfriend into a
young woman who questions what she wants out of life. Night’s elimination from
the storyline is beneficial to Riiko’s further development. While she is sad,
Riiko views it as a stepping stone and is grateful for the experience and all
she learned while dating Night. Absolute
Boyfriend develops from a mushy romance with light and easy humor into a
surprisingly darker life lesson on growing up.
Reader’s annotation:
If you can’t seem to find a good guy why not just buy one?
It’ll only cost about, oh, a million dollars. Instruction manual included.
Author information:
“Yuu Watase,
born March 5, 1970 in Osaka, is a Japanese shoujo manga author and artist. She
received the Shogakukan Manga Award in shoujo for Ceres, The
Celestial Legend in 1998. Since writing her debut short story
‘Pajama de Ojama’ (‘An Intrusion in Pajamas’), Watase has created more than 50
compiled volumes of short stories and continuing series. Because of her
frequent use of beautiful male characters in her works, she is widely regarded
in circles as a bishounen mangaka….
“Yuu Watase's best known work is probably Fushigi Yugi - and
if you're a shoujo fan and haven't read this series (or watched it, the anime
is surprisingly close to the manga) you owe it to yourself to pick it up.
The story revolves around Miaka, a fifteen year old exam student living her
life for everybody but herself and hating it. One day while visiting the
library she gets sucked into an old Chinese spell book and becomes the
Priestess of Suzaku. She's supposed to find the seven ‘celestial
warriors’ and summon the beast god Suzaku. Of course, it isn't going to
be easy. And Miaka's rather easily distracted... Of course, if the seven
warriors destined to protect you were all hot guys you might be distracted
too... A warning that there is the obligatory shoujo ‘cross-dresser’ and some
ambiguous reference to some adult matters, but for the most part Yuu Watase is
very clean. As with any manga, please pay attention to the ratings - they
are there for a reason” (Mirage-Moon.net, 2014).
Curriculum ties: N/A
Booktalking ideas:
1.
Would you have taken the deal the salesman
offered?
2.
How do you think your friends and family would
respond to you having a robotic significant other?
Challenge issues: N/A
Reason for including
the material:
I included Absolute
Boyfriend, Vol. 1 because I know how popular manga have become. I also wanted
my small collection for this blog to have some diversity of media. My
neighborhood contains quite a few English as a Second Language (ESL) students
and I believe that some of them might be able to transition easier to the
English language and culture with the inclusion of these types of materials in
the collection. I also wanted to include this material for reluctant readers as
many teens are are familiar with manga and anime which might pique their
interest.
Reference:
Morage-Moon.net. (2014). Mangaka in the Spotlight: Yuu Watase. Retrieved August 23, 2014 from
http://ea.mirage-moon.net/files_main/Spotlight_Yuu%20Watase.htm
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