Dawn Is Me

(Yes, that really is a line from a song and 75 points if you can figure out which song it’s from)

I don’t know if I mentioned this before but one of the nice things about having younglings around you is that, if you’re open to that sort of thing, they can tremendously expand your horizons.

That explains why I’ve gotten into reading shojo manga.

This is something of a guilty secret. Shojo manga is sort of a cross between comic books and Young Adult romance novels, with the sort of cultural twist you might expect from artists (mangaka) who do not hail from the Judeo-Christian West.

The result is a set of stories that are not as sappy as what you’ll find from a love story written for the average American 15 year old.

Not as sappy but often just as stupid.

When I read romances written by Western authors, I find myself wondering how the girl could possibly ever have fallen in love with a guy who treats her like that?

On the other hand, when I read shojo manga, I wonder why there never were guys in the western hemisphere who were more like that.

My hunch is that the guys portrayed in those manga probably resemble real men and boys as little as the men in Harlequin Romances do. I just think it’s interesting, these cultural differences in tastes in men.

Then again, given how many young American girls drool over shojo manga, it may be that women’s taste in men is undergoing a shift.

Don’t say you weren’t warned, fellas.

Another of the things I’ve been doing that falls under the category of ‘expanding my cultural horizons’ is listening to J-Pop. Well, oriental pop, I guess.

I make you two gifts, by way of example.

This is Sera by Jeo Qu-Cheon. I first heard it in a flash movie called “Hot Fish,” fell in love with it and then spent years trying to find it. Now that I have, I couldn’t not share. It’s good music to make slow, sensual, erotic love to.

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And, just so you don’t think I spend all my time doing the horizontal mambo (or thinking about it), here’s a party song called Hero’s Come Back by Nobody Knows +. Actually, it’s theme music from somewhere in the Naruto anime. I can’t tell you where, since I’m not a Naruto fan; you’ll have to get somebody else to help you out on that one.

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Turn up the speakers and par-tay!