10 replies to this topic

[PaterFrog]

Hey everybody,

 

I really like AKB48 (the manga), but there are a few details about the way Minori is handled that I find inconsistent in relation to the rest of the manga.

 

For example, early on it's said, that Minoru has a girly body and that his silhouette from behind was mistaken as that of a girl, so why does his body look like that of a man, even if he is one?

How come he can be so popular, if he doesn't look cute at all? You really notice the disparity between the cuteness and sexiness of all the other idols and him. Personality isn't enough for the kind of popularity he's given, even more so if you consider his goal of being number one, so he can give the top center position to Yoshinaga. That's not the real problem I'm seeing here though, I just wonder, why isn't he doing whatever he can, to at least look like a girl? That includes maybe a corset, to give him a more feminine waistline, a girls behaviour (no really, a girl doesn't sit on her heels, spread legs to pick up the shards of a broken platter).

What I also don't like, is that even though he's using makeup, his face isn't given any sort of feminine vibe to show it. We all know how makeup can really change the lines of your face, but that just gets ignored here.

 

I understand if the author wanted to break away from the ridiculous degree most other genderbender manga use, where the crossdressing boy is really just a girl, but he's gone a little bit too far in the other direction. If Minoru has a girly body that even gets mistaken by girls for a girl's body, then he should look the part, especially in girls' clothes. If his body changes over the years to look a bit more masculine, shouldn't he be doing what he can to ensure he continues to look feminine? Why isn't he using breastpads anymore? His life as an idol is pretty much his only life, wouldn't he do everything he can to make sure it works out?

And lastly, in the chapters where he gets thrown into the pool by Okabe, it's ridiculously obvious that he's not a woman. Why does that go plainly unnoticed? This is where I really started to think, how conveniently the author is just skipping past belief.

 

Where is the focus on his voice? I mean, there is so much singing in this manga, why isn't there any talk about his voice (except for the very beginning). I know some girls who have a very husky voice, one could even be male almost, so I'm cool if his voice isn't considered very feminine. But why isn't that tied in with his appearance and the songs and everything?

 

 

As I said before, I enjoy reading this manga and I think it's high quality work. I just don't like the way Minori is being handled and that it requires the wrong kind of "suspension of disbelief".

 

What are your opinions?

Edited by PaterFrog, 18 May 2013 - 03:05 AM.

[Evan Dark]

Ok, so I guess not everyone has caught upon this yet.

 

The author draws Minori more girlish or boyish, depending on NOT his actual appearance, but to match Minori's current feelings and behaviour. When he's on the stage he's almost always drawn girlish, but when he interacts with the other girls, or just generally being sloppy he's drawn boyish. This is done, so you can see Minoru's mood and (internal) expressions better, even when he's disguised as Minori.

This means, of course, that in most of the manga Minori looks boyish to the readers, after all he's a normal, straight boy, and the only place where he's an idol, and feels like a pretty girl, is the stage. But that's just for the readers, and otherwise he looks very girlish (except, that in the first few chapters, he was still an amateur, and both Maeda and Akimoto has recognized he's crossdressing).

Oh, and there are also moments when he's drawn as a gag-character. Please just ignore those, let the author have his fun too...

 

As for his voice, each nation has differences, how the gender affects a person's usual voice. Japanese language uses the pitch of the voice to indicate the tone of the speech, so the usual "feminine" pitch for women no longer exists. it's still possible to tell the gender by the voice, but it's much harder to do so, compared to most of the european languages.

 

I hope that most of your questions got answered, if isn't so, feel free to ask!

Edited by Evan Dark, 25 May 2013 - 03:16 PM.

[PaterFrog]

Ok, so I guess not everyone has caught upon this yet.

 

The author draws Minori more girlish or boyish, depending on NOT his actual appearance, but to match Minori's current feelings and behaviour. When he's on the stage he's almost always drawn girlish, but when he interacts with the other girls, or just generally being sloppy he's drawn boyish. This is done, so you can see Minoru's mood and (internal) expressions better, even when he's disguised as Minori.

This means, of course, that in most of the manga Minori looks boyish to the readers, after all he's a normal, straight boy, and the only place where he's an idol, and feels like a pretty girl, is the stage. But that's just for the readers, and otherwise he looks very girlish (except, that in the first few chapters, he was still an amateur, and both Maeda and Akimoto has recognized he's crossdressing).

Oh, and there are also moments when he's drawn as a gag-character. Please just ignore those, let the author have his fun too...

 

As for his voice, each nation has differences, how the gender affects a person's usual voice. Japanese language uses the pitch of the voice to indicate the tone of the speech, so the usual "feminine" pitch for women no longer exists. it's still possible to tell the gender by the voice, but it's much harder to do so, compared to most of the european languages.

 

I hope that most of your questions got answered, if isn't so, feel free to ask!

That certainly answered some questions, I noticed the fact that Minori was drawn cuter in certain situations, but to me it seemed like only those special situations were drawn that way to signify his inner state at the moment and that the way Minori was drawn with a male figure in all other situations was how he really looked.

I'm German and I've lived all my life in Germany, but I've never had any trouble differentiating between genders based on the voice. That goes for all people and also all animals I've heard. There's just... "something" that's different in a male voice and a female voice. I remember hearing a singer about 10 years ago and at first I had difficulty deciding whether that was a male or a female teenager singing, so I spent a lot of time just thinking about it and analyzing that voice without any external stimulae like checking up on wiki or anything. It might be that I kinda trained this ability to notice that "something" at that point and I haven't lost it since.
I'm not saying that I'd always be correct when making the determination whether a voice is that of a male or a female, but it seems that I'm a lot more sensitive to it.

[kyou96]

Have you ever thought the author do that on purpose?

I mean, we readers all know that Minori is Minoru - a guy, so I think it's pretty normal for the author to try to make that fact clearer. Drawing him a bit more masculine and a little less feminine might be the author's way to remind all of us: yeah, he's a guy, no matter what he does. Something like that. 

[Evan Dark]

I'm German and I've lived all my life in Germany, but I've never had any trouble differentiating between genders based on the voice. That goes for all people and also all animals I've heard. There's just... "something" that's different in a male voice and a female voice.

 

What you don't realize is, that how much "voice" depends on the languages. Speech sounds different in each language, and male or female voices are pretty different in each language too. I agree that it's hard for a male to use a female voice in German. But they speak Japanese, and (for the reasons I explained before) I think it's easier to imitate a female voice in that language. As for appearance, look up some Japanese cross-dressing photos: you won't be able to tell the difference. Not easily anyway.

[NishiNegi]

Have you ever thought the author do that on purpose?

I mean, we readers all know that Minori is Minoru - a guy, so I think it's pretty normal for the author to try to make that fact clearer. Drawing him a bit more masculine and a little less feminine might be the author's way to remind all of us: yeah, he's a guy, no matter what he does. Something like that. 

This. And as previously stated, the appereance of Minori depends on the feelings and the part of Minoru that the author wants to show to us. There are inconsistencies, of course (my main problem is... how does Monoru do for going from the dorms to the same school as Yoshinaga without she actually realises it? ), but I don't think that his/her appereance is a main issue. There have been a lot of girly guys and tomboy girls in manga and anime. Not that big a deal.

 

About the voice, it is true the language issue. I'm a linguist and I can tell you that you do not use the same part of your throat for X or Y language. And not only that, me, for instance, when I pick up the phone and speak in Spanish (my mother tonge) I'm usually called "Ms." or even "Mrs" as my pitch is really high. And in Japanese could be ven more confusing. Take, for instance Edward Elric from FMA. You could think his a regular boy, but oh! His voice is form a woman called Paku Romi. Take also Kobayashi Yuu, her tone of voice is kind of tomboyish. Take the singers from SCANDAL, Haruna's voice (the lead singer) is lower than Tomomi's (a more girlish high pitch voice). Examples are tons in the Japanese entertainment indistry.

[Grifford]

About the voice: it was handled pretty early in the series. Minoru has a fairly high-pitched voice for a guy but he himselfs mentions as Minori that he has a relatively low voice for a girl. That's why he asked Takamine for singing lessons, after which they went to karaoke and she taught him how to properly sing high pitched notes. (It's also the time she fell in love with him / her and the time of the "divine drink").

About the body: like already mentioned there are tomboyish characters like for example "Saya-nee" so I think he is save there. But one inconsistancy that comes to mind on that point is the development of his body. At the beginning he 16 years old. He is now 18 something. In those 2 1/2 years he danced for about 7 hours a day (I think it was mentioned somewhere in the story). A normal male body is in the height of the growth period. The body is producing a lot of Testosteron and he should at least have some abs cause dancing focuses a lot on the "core area" of the body. But in a recent chapter where his body is shown he was rather undeveloped and just plain flat. Just look at how professional dancers look... they are slim yes but they sure have at least some visible muscle cause of the way the male body is built. So that would be the only "inconsistancy" I would think of really in that department.

[Aereus]

As far as the voice goes, I imagined someone like Miyuki Sawashiro as Minori/Minoru's VA. Since she has a rather deep voice, and does convincing boy and girl characters.

[Kuroi Mato]

About the voice: it was handled pretty early in the series. Minoru has a fairly high-pitched voice for a guy but he himselfs mentions as Minori that he has a relatively low voice for a girl. That's why he asked Takamine for singing lessons, after which they went to karaoke and she taught him how to properly sing high pitched notes. (It's also the time she fell in love with him / her and the time of the "divine drink").

About the body: like already mentioned there are tomboyish characters like for example "Saya-nee" so I think he is save there. But one inconsistancy that comes to mind on that point is the development of his body. At the beginning he 16 years old. He is now 18 something. In those 2 1/2 years he danced for about 7 hours a day (I think it was mentioned somewhere in the story). A normal male body is in the height of the growth period. The body is producing a lot of Testosteron and he should at least have some abs cause dancing focuses a lot on the "core area" of the body. But in a recent chapter where his body is shown he was rather undeveloped and just plain flat. Just look at how professional dancers look... they are slim yes but they sure have at least some visible muscle cause of the way the male body is built. So that would be the only "inconsistancy" I would think of really in that department.

well you could explain this with pure will. you would be suprised how much the pure will can onfluence bodywise.

[Aereus]

As mentioned elsewhere, Minoru's level of "girliness" fluctuates. Artistic license is heavily used depending on the scene. He's usually androgynous, at times rather masculine looking, and other times considerably feminine.

[-世界死神- chaos_animagic]

Sounds like Minoru should have been an actor instead of an idol... he changes his personality all the time, LOL.

Edited by -世界死神- chaos_animagic, 19 October 2014 - 02:09 PM.