For You In Full Blogging

[hanakimi2000vs2025]

Nakajo's taste as revealed through HanaKimi (vol 23)

I'm going through all of Nakajo's music recs - and other culture refs, like visual art and theatre - from those side panels in HanaKimi.

I'm going in reverse order, starting from the last page of vol 23 and working back to the first page of vol 1.

I've started making a YouTube playlist, but I'll only publish it if it gets long enough to be worth it.

Without further ado:

This was a more recent staging of the play by the same theatre, different actors, I take it.

Not sure which Patlabor series she had in mind. I assume she meant this Ghost in the Shell series, given the timing.

Look like this was his version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. When I looked this up, it turns out he was a big deal, known for staging Japanese interpretations of Shakespeare, plus Greek tragedies. His work looks really cool.

Wait, this is still on?! I'm so devastated I can't go see it! Also, damn, I would have paid so much more attention to Shakespeare if the actors I saw had looked like that... By the same guy who directed As You Like It, above. Wow. He directed eight versions of Hamlet.

All in all, a little music, a lot of conbini food, and a few plays. That's all from this volume!

[hanakimi2000vs2025]

Hisaya Nakajo's sketches for Hanakimi

Lest anybody think it, these are not my drawings, obviously. These are the real deal from the manga-ka herself.

Yeah. I went all out and got the Hanakimi Character Book from way back in 2000. Omg. I've never let myself do anything like this before.

It's only sold in Japanese, as far as I can tell. And I don't speak Japanese. So don't expect me to report too much!

But I thought I'd share some snippets here for any Hanakimi or Hisaya Nakajo fans who stumble on this one day.

I remember this panel. Maybe I'll try to find her finished version so you can compare.

I'm not going to post much, because fair use. And I want to respect her work and ownership, even if it's been a while and she's passed on, may she rest in peace. But at the same time, I know it's hard to get hold of this book. So that's why I've posted!

And yes, I know the photos are terrible quality. Great drawings, terrible photos of them. I have limited time, health and capacity. I figure something is better than nothing.

I can't believe she was so talented she could just sketch a full page like that. You mean there was really a time before people glued everything together digitally? I wonder how manga-ka do it these days.

If the copyright holder wants them taken down, please let me know. I will of course take them down. Just bear in mind I'm not on here very often, so please forgive me if it takes me a while to get your message.

[hanakimi2000vs2025]

Hanakimi vs homophobia

In case it's not blindingly obvious, all pics here are from HanaKimi by Hisaya Nakajo and not by me. In my dreams.

The 2000s were a different time (kind of). On Friends, queerness was played for laughs, and homophobia always seemed to win out.

Hanakimi was different. In Hanakimi, homophobia was played for laughs, and queer dignity always seemed to win out.

I watched Umeda roll his eyes at all the homophobes, completely nonplussed. I saw him drily nudge them into line after homophobic outbursts. I saw him razz them with their own homophobia to make a gentle point, or perhaps just for his own mild amusement.

He was a three-dimensional character. I saw him... have an actual personality of his own. His dry sense of humour, his mildly jaded manner, his love-avoidant dating style, his big brother/mentor role with the students, flashbacks to his high school days, his family relationships.

I saw camp cliches of westernised gay men on 2000s Queer Eye or Will & Grace: frivolous, unthreatening, comical, ditzy. "It's okay if we're gay," they seemed to say, "because we're only here to make your girlfriend look fabulous. And gay sex is funny." Perhaps I am wrong, totally wrong, but they sometimes came across to me as... self-deprecating.

I mean, hey, nothing wrong with gay guys having a few laughs. Nothing wrong with being camp or lighthearted. I'm just saying, I needed some broader representation beyond that.

Umeda was dignified and droll. He took himself seriously. He took space - then let go of it, cos he was more interested in getting on with other things.

Hell, he even seemed to satirise the campness that might have been expected of him. (I mean, I don't know. What would I know about stereotypes of gay men in 2000s Japan?)

There were a couple of other extracts I wanted to put in here, but I don't have them on me.

Also, I very much want to respect copyright. I figure this is well within fair use rules, but even so, if the publisher/copyright holder wants me to take this down, please just say the word! Just forgive me if I'm not on here very often.

I do also want to talk about Hanakimi, binders and Ashiya's cross-dressing being the best and closest thing I had to transmasc representation in the 2000s. I realise that Ashiya's character was very much a cis-het girl, and not at all a trans man. Transmasc representation was sparse in the 2000s, okay? Another time.