Gravitation

Day 2 Your favorite anime series so far?



This is not a hands down, not by a long shot. I happen to both love (and hate) many anime for many reasons. Today I will say "Gravitation." Why? I think discovering "Gravitation" was a kind of tipping point for me. The manga came first. Until then I had been collecting mostly American comics, long boxes full of superheros and arty/alty stuff, picking out trades and graphic novels. Every new comics day I was at the shop picking up my "stories," watching the dorky boys at the games tables rolling their 7 sided die, and semi-browsing the videos and discount comics section to see if there was anything that appealed to me.

I'm not sure how it happened really. I had bought this kind of silly manga, "From Eroica with Love," which is about this very flamboyant art thief who is always trying to get the goat of the handsome man who is trying to catch him. I got it as a joke to read to my blind friend who I often read comics to. It annoyed him, but it fascinated me. I mean what were these somewhat racy books doing at a comic shop in the midwest? And who were they meant for? I started reading more about genres in manga and found myself fascinated with the idea of shonen ai and yaoi-- the type of comics that might cause seizures of disdain in any self respecting straight and narrow type, and also made girls squee with delight.

That's when I discovered "Gravitation" in all its glory and ridiculousness. I started buying the manga and plowed through it. I was fascinated by Shuichi and Eri and their rock star / romance novelist antics. The comics, frankly, had all the elements of melodrama which I loved and studied in college and grad-school. Give me Thomas Hardy. Give me Maki Murikami.

Naturally, it followed, that I loved the anime, which I felt was more coherent and ultimately better done than the manga.