Kare Kano

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Kare Kano
Original title 彼 氏 彼女 の 事情
transcription Kareshi Kanojo no Jijō
Logo kare kano.png
genre Shōjo , romance, drama, comedy
Manga
country JapanJapan Japan
author Masami Tsuda
publishing company Hakusensha
magazine LaLa
First publication February 1996 - April 2005
expenditure 21st
Anime television series
Country of production JapanJapan Japan
original language Japanese
year 1998
Studio Gainax , JCStaff
length 25 minutes
Episodes 26th
Director Hideaki Anno , Kazuya Tsurumaki
production Hiroki Sato , Noriko Kobayashi , Takayuki Yanagisawa
music Fumiya Fujii , Shiro Sagisu
First broadcast October 2, 1998 - March 26, 1999 on TV Tokyo
synchronization

Kare Kano ( Jap. カレカノ , actually: 彼氏彼女の事情 , Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo , dt "his and her circumstances.") Is a closed manga series of Japanese graphic artist Masami Tsuda , the first time in 1995 appeared. It comprises over 3,800 pages and can be assigned to the Shōjo genre. The manga that takes place in Kawasaki , Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture , is a love story.

action

Yukino Miyazawa ( 宮 沢 雪野 ) is perfect at school and everyone except her family. She is considered good-looking, is a model student and is admired by her classmates, but hides behind a facade. In reality, she is selfish and sloppy. At school she plays for everyone to be admired and loved. In high school, she sees her new classmate Soichiro Arima ( 有 馬 総 一郎 ) as a rival, because everyone sees him as just as perfect as her. Although she is friendly towards him, she has an inner grudge against him. When he surprisingly confesses that he loves her, she doesn't answer. Soichiro eventually discovers that Yukino is not entirely perfect. He, too, hides the real self. His parents are criminals, which is why he lives with his aunt and uncle. He thinks that because of his parents' wickedness, he is a bad person deep down too. He fears becoming like them - useless and shunned by society.

First, Soichiro uses his knowledge of Yukino's real character to let her do work for her. But they become friends and decide to be more themselves. They become a couple and get closer and closer, although Soichiro's boyfriend Hideaki Asaba ( 浅 葉 秀 明 ) is initially against the relationship. He would have preferred to tear up as many girls as possible together with Soichiro, but eventually befriends Yukino as well. This draws the envy of other girls because of the relationship with the popular Arima, which is fueled by her classmate Maho Izawa ( 井 沢 真 秀 ). She also gets into an argument with Tsubasa Shibahime ( 芝 姫 つ ば さ ), who has long been in love with Arima. One day Yukino loses patience with both of them and the argument escalates. This is how the other students notice that their good behavior was just a mask. But she finds new, good friends in Tsubasa's friends - Tsubaki, Aya and Rika - and finally in Tsubasa and Maho too, with whom she can be herself.

When Soichiro cannot be with his lover in the summer because of a kendo competition in different parts of Japan, she realizes that she is very lonely without him. After the competition is over, Yukino realizes that Soichiro's appearance has changed a lot in this short period of time. The two fall in love again and have sex for the first time. Everyday school life returns to Soichiro and Yukino's life. The school's cultural festival takes place and Yukino and her friends perform a play written by Aya, which is very well received by the audience. The class is also going on a school trip to Kyoto.

Tsubasa, who is popular for her childlike appearance, was friends with Soichiro in middle school and considers him a big brother. She also closes off her true feelings. When Soichiro opens up to Tsubasa and her father remarries, she turns to her stepbrother Kazuma instead. He is known for his open manner and plays in an indie band that is becoming more and more successful. Tsubasa and Kazuma fall in love and later marry.

Soichiro becomes a student with the best grades in Japan and because of this and his success in kendō competitions, he not only receives increased attention at the school, but even in the media. This makes his birth mother aware of him. She tells him more about his past, that she got him when she was twenty and saw no other way than to give him away, that his father was seventeen at the time and that she no longer has any contact with him. Soichiro closes himself more and more to others, including Yukino, and spends time with his mother, although he initially rejects her. Soichiro slowly and fully remembers his childhood, which was unhappy as his mother kept beating him and eventually leaving. He no longer sees his mother and realizes that he kept his heart closed for so long because he wanted to love someone. Soichiro's biological father, Reiji, is a famous jazz pianist in New York. He comes to Japan and meets his son, who immediately establishes a good relationship with him. He also threatens Soichiro's mother with a gun so that she can finally leave him alone. He is leaving Japan again, but promises to come back regularly.

Just before finishing high school, Yukino becomes pregnant. Although she originally wanted to go to university and become a lawyer, she decides not to study and instead devotes herself to her child first, then to catch up on medical training and to take over the clinic from Soichiro's father. Yukino and Soichiro promise to stay together forever and want to get married. Soichiro decides not to study either and instead becomes a police officer right after graduation.

Sixteen years after graduating from high school, Soichiro and Yukino are happily married with a fifteen-year-old daughter and fourteen-year-old twin sons. Your career aspirations have come true; Soichiro is a police officer and Yukino is a doctor. At a concert by Kazumas, a band that has since achieved world fame, the two meet their former school friends.

Publications

Kare Kano was published in Japan from December 1995 to April 2005 in 102 individual chapters in the manga magazine LaLa . The Hakusensha publishing house also published these individual chapters in 21 edited volumes. By December 2003 the anthologies had sold 11.15 million copies in Japan.

The manga appeared in Taiwan, France, Spain, Brazil, the USA, Italy, Korea and Germany, among others. The manga was first published in German in Daisuki magazine from the beginning of 2003 and, since December 2003, has also been published by Carlsen Comics in anthologies, all 21 of which have been published. In 2005 the manga was taken out of the magazine, in which it was often voted the most unpopular series of the magazine. The translation is by Antje Bockel.

filming

The animation studios Gainax and JCStaff produced a 26-part anime series for the first eight volumes of the manga. The series was directed by Hideaki Anno until episode 18 . Anno then left the project and left the final episodes to Kazuya Tsurumaki . Masami Tsuda was not satisfied with the implementation of her work because Anno would have emphasized above all the comedic elements of the manga in the first volumes of the series. Anno himself, who, like the whole studio, was working on a Shōjo series for the first time, chose Kare Kano because of the humor. For research, Hideaki Anno also visited some schools and interviewed students. In addition to classic cel animation , images of the manga were also filmed directly during production, photographs and still images or text overlays were used. Because of the frequent re-use of cels, only an average of 697 cels were required per episode instead of the usual 2,500. The scripts were written by Hideaki Anno and Hiroyuki Imaishi. The character design comes from Tadashi Hiramatsu and the artistic direction was Masaru Satō . The responsible producers were Hiroki Sato , Noriko Kobayashi and Takayuki Yanagisawa . Because of the disagreements with the author of the manga, the anime was not continued after one season.

The anime was first broadcast on the Japanese television network TV Tokyo from October 2, 1998 to March 26, 1999 . In Germany it appeared on eight DVDs by Carlsen Comics . However, Kare Kano remained the publisher's only anime releases. the German version is offered as a stream on MyVideo . An English version was broadcast by the stations Anime Selects and FUNimation Channel and offered as streaming on various platforms and published on DVD. Spanish, Italian and Filipino translations were also shown on television and, like French and Chinese, published on DVD.

Voice actor

role Japanese voice ( seiyū ) German voice
Yukino Miyazawa Atsuko Enomoto Rubina Kuraoka
Soichiro Arima Chihiro Suzuki Constantin von Jascheroff
Hideaki Asaba Atsushi Kisaichi Nicolas Artajo
Maho Izawa Junko Noda Giuliana Jakobeit
Tsubasa Shibahime Mayumi Shintani Cathlen Gawlich
Kano Miyazawa Maria Yamamoto Anja Rybiczka
Tsukino Miyazawa Yuki Watanabe Diana Borgwardt

music

The music for the series was composed by Fumiya Fujii and Shiro Sagisu . The song Tenshi no Yubikiri by Fukuda Mai was used for the opening credits . The credits were underlaid with the title Yume no Naka e by Enomoto Atsuko and Suzuki Chihiro, at the end of the 25th episode Kaze Hiita Yoru by Yuki Watanabe and Maria Yamamoto was used. The soundtrack and the opening and closing credits were each released on CD.

Reception and analysis

The main plot of the manga focuses on the two protagonists, Yukino and Soichiro, and shows, as the title suggests, the problems or "circumstances" ( Jijō ) of the two young people. Jason Thompson sees Yukino's "circumstances" as more of a "normal person" , while Arima's "circumstances" are more of a gloomy nature - child abuse, trauma, and utter despair - and to a mood change in the manga from Volume 13, in which Soichiro's past is increasingly being treated. In subplots, secondary characters are introduced in more detail over several volumes, such as Tsubasa. Patrick Drazen describes the two main characters Yukino and Arima, with their really ambitious, envious and possessive characters, as an alternative to the usual protagonists in Shōjo manga directed at girls . The female figures in particular often followed the image of a friendly, compassionate (“yasashii”) girl. The German magazine AnimaniA calls Kare Kano one of the “most convincing shōjo mangas” of his time. The developments of the characters "are described by Masami Tsuda in moving and psychologically refined words" . However, the reader has to accept irregular character design that takes getting used to and frequent reuse of backgrounds.

Patrick Drazen describes the animation techniques and staging of the anime adaptation as groundbreaking as those of the series Neon Genesis Evangelion , which Hideaki Anno and Gainax previously produced. Anno use many techniques that have already been tried and tested at Evangelion - fast text overlays, long static shots, collages and images from the manga - and supplement them with representations in the super-deformed style. The message of the series is reminiscent of Aqua Age . In the Anime Encyclopedia , the series is compared with Ally McBeal , but is more innovative in the dramaturgy and with the use of the super-deformed representations in comic scenes. The anime builds on older series like Goldfish Warning and Ruko Shidatori I Presume . With the animation techniques adopted from Evangelion and further developed, it was possible to perfectly capture the quarrels and hypocrisy of the pubescent characters. Kare Kano is "a very funny satire about unpleasant but somehow sympathetic characters" . According to Animerica , the appeal of the series isn't just about the interesting characters and the melodramatic situations they get into. A look into the thoughts and motivations of the characters and the reasons why they wear their "masks" will also be given. The topic of the “mask” that is worn towards others is something that many viewers can identify with, especially in the context of high school and puberty. The often used unusual techniques and staging are very successful and support the simple but powerful plot well. Kare Kano has set new standards for school comedies.

The AnimaniA praises the courageous use of the unusual techniques and that the style of Masami Tsuda, which took a lot of getting used to, was "tamed" by the character design of Tadashi Hiramatsu . The background music was very suitable and the German synchronization was also successful. Unfortunately, the series breaks off in the middle of important storylines. The magazine Funime draws direct parallels to Evangelion , so "also Karekano plunges into the abysses of the human soul in order to deal with it." With the use of images from the manga, however, another technique is added to the techniques from Evangelion and in contrast to In the previous series, the conflicts at Kare Kano usually end happily. The two protagonists, who initially only live for themselves, find the balance in their relationship and friendships in order to solve their emotional problems. In addition to this serious topic, Kare Kano also contains "classic soap topics about enmity, intrigue and jealousy" and a "swarm of quite stereotypical, but no less lovable characters" . The plot, “essentially a kind of development film about a group of Japanese students” , is also loosened up by inserting some entertaining short stories.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Historic Shoujo Manga Circulation Numbers , ComiPress, May 24, 2006
  2. ↑ a b Jason Thompson: The Complete Guide to Manga. Del Rey, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-345-48590-8 , p. 179.
  3. ↑ a b c Funime 19/2001, p. 24 f.
  4. ↑ a b c d AnimaniA 12/2003, p. 12 f.
  5. ↑ a b c Patrick Drazen: Anime Explosion! - The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation . Stone Bridge Press, 2003. pp. 126-129.
  6. ↑ Jonathan Clements, Helen McCarthy: The Anime Encyclopedia. Revised & Expanded Edition . Berkeley 2006, Stone Bridge Press. P. 283 f.
  7. ↑ Animerica Vol. 10, No. October 10, 2002. p. 54.