Marmalade Boy

Marmalade Boy is a shoujo anime that shows the love stories of Miki and Yuu, and their friends, through high school adventures involving many interlocking triangles.

The Marmalade Boy anime consists of seventy-six half-hour episodes that aired in Japan between 1994 and 1995, plus a short movie. It is based on the eight-volume manga by Yoshizumi Wataru. The plot of Marmalade Boy occasionally drags on because it has been greatly expanded from the original manga story, but for the most part, this show is engaging, amusing, and sad, in turns. Highly recommended. It is a perfect example of the category of anime and manga called shoujo, or "young girl." This does not literally mean that only young girls are likely to enjoy this series, but it does mean that the story is very focused on relationships and love triangles. So girls are more likely to enjoy it as a result of its themes.

The story centers around Miki Koishikawa and Yuu Matsuura, who become half-siblings when their parents decide to divorce and remarry each other, switching partners in the process, and also moving in together. In real life, this would probably be a recipe for trouble, but in the anime, it merely sets the stage for the initial situations involving their children, whose personalities clash at first. This ends up giving rise to the series title when in a fit of annoyance, Miki calls Yuu a "marmalade boy." Yuu retaliates by calling Miki a "mustard girl." Quirks like this really give the show its charm.

As mentioned, Marmalade Boy focuses heavily on relationships; in fact, most of the plot comes from a series of interlinked love triangles involving the two main characters. At first, there is only the tension between Miki's attraction to Yuu and her long-time crush on her classmate, Ginta. As the series develops, Yuu's ex-girlfriend Arimi, Ginta's friend Tsutomu, Miki's best friend Meiko, another classmate Satoshi, the homeroom teacher Shin'ichi Namura, and a host of other characters spanning Japan and America become involved in a shifting web of friendships, crushes, and relationships. Much of the fun of watching it is in keeping track of who likes whom and who is actually going out with whom, and how they ended up in that situation.

Some might consider it just a soap opera, but the series becomes much deeper than that, dealing with issues like trust and separation. For instance, when Yuu decides to go to New York City to study architecture, Miki, who has been Yuu's girlfriend for some time by that point, has to deal with his absence, including dealing with suitors who try to take advantage of her loneliness. Yuu has his own share of problems with cute American girls intrigued by him. Add to the mix speculations about Yuu's parentage that keep appearing throughout the story, involving suspicions that he could actually be related to Miki by blood, and the plot winds tighter.

The art style is very pretty, while still being quite typical for a Japanese anime. One notable effect is that the eyes of Westerners, specifically the American characters in the New York City arc, are drawn much more exaggeratedly than the eyes of Japanese characters. I think this is intended to show a reverse exotic effect: that is, Western features seem exotic to Japanese minds. This seems reversed when Westerners then watch shows intended for Japanese viewers. Nevertheless, it is an extremely cute effect and appears very similar to the way the manga artist group CLAMP draws all of their eyes.

Other similar anime series include Kodomo no Omocha (called A Child's Toy in English) and Hana Yori Dango (Boys Before Flowers in English).