S.A. (Special A) Mini Review (manga/anime)
April 16th, 2008 by Lianne
PG-13, probably, for romantic hijinks and some violence; official website (manga) and official website (for unlicensed anime)
In the way that I think Itazura na Kiss displays most of the good qualities of 90s shoujo, S.A. (which stands for the uncreative “Special A”) is a showcase for most of the bad of the year 2000+. Let’s list out the crap, shall we?
1.) The school for our schoolgirl lead has some ridiculous hierarchy that makes little sense and is actively annoying. A class for ONLY the top seven students of the school, where all members get their own SPECIAL uniform (ooh, that word’s in the title!) and breaks/maybeclasses are held in a giant, exclusive greenhouse? I HATE YOU.
2.) In an attempt to make the boys as homoerotic and non-threatening as possible, they all have big eyes, soft features, and soothing, calm voices that sound the same (and the same as the girls) if you’re not listening close enough. Oh, and they all have nearly the exact same character design with roguish short hair, but stamped in a few colors: blue, brown, darker brown, other brown, and a bonus of purplish for the girl who looks like a boy. I HATE YOU.
3.) Character humor that isn’t funny. Being “the loud one” or “the one who likes to eat,” or, kill me now, “the girl who’s cute and mute” (STOP PUTTING CREEPY BOY FETISHES INTO MY GIRL COMICS) doesn’t make you funny, especially when your jokes center on you parading your one-note characterization around with some wacky background text. YOU PERSONALLY OFFEND ME.
4.) In an attempt to simultaneously make the main girl “tough” and the boy “cool,” they’re rivals in all things - oh, except that he’s better than her at everything, so the story is pretty much about her second-place complex. I know that’s the premise of the series, but really, do we need another shoujo telling little girls that they’ll always be second to boys in society, no matter how hard they try? We can’t even have a complementary relationship or something, where the boy brings something to the table and the girl brings something else? No? Well, I HATE YOU.
Also - this comic/anime is boring. You can make a romantic comedy exciting and entertaining, but this is neither, and any attempts at plot are so lame I almost wish the mangaka hadn’t bothered. I really wanted to like this series, since an issue of Hana to Yume I bought a long time ago came with a hilarious little S.A. face towel as a furoku, thus I’ve been rubbing the two leads of S.A. into my face for years. But the first volume of the manga and first episode of the anime suck. If it doesn’t get better, I’m going to be perpetually pissed when I wash my face in the morning.
Initial impression: Boo! Hiss! (Lianne)
THANK YOU! I’ve read so many “ooh, this is fun!” reviews of SA over the last couple of days that I thought maybe I was missing the comedy inherent in watching a boring character getting crushed by huge stone letters again and *again* while all the other sickeningly privileged, boring and/or creepy characters stand around being boring at each other. Ugh.
Agreed. It began to disturb me how she tries soo soo hard and can never beat him. In ANYTHING. How she is great, but finally is beaten by a guy, but no one beats the guy. So the lesson that someone’s always better than you doesn’t even apply.
They’re privileged because they’re smart and rich, and everyone looks adoringly at them. What the heck? And the characters are an absolute bore. It’s not even funny privileged like in Ouran Host Club. It’s not my fave manga, either, but the careless heroine, pointless but actually funny (if generic) humor, and privileged guy who is interested in “peasants” but is part of the whole rich class thing is 10x better than S.A. Really, it had quite a lot of potential…Competition shojo manga like Beauty Pop’s been raved lately. But S.A. can only be raved by teenage fangirls.
Michelle,
You’re right - Ouran does a much, much better job of “super rich kids and their eccentricities” than S.A. Of course, Ouran’s premise is satirical, whereas S.A.’s is not.
And NotHayama has some pretty scathing things to say about Beauty Pop’s disturbing focus on appearance. Cripes, can’t we have a girl comic that’s just a LITTLE less superficial and/or sexist for the young ones?! At least the most feminist shoujo in English right now - Love*Com, High School Debut, and Skip Beat - are only about PG-13, so I guess a fair amount of younger girls can read those. Read them and leave crap like S.A. in the dust!
I haven’t read the manga, and maybe never will. I started watching the anime due to a rise in reviews around blogs and such (which doesn’t always mean it’s good). I made it halfway through episode 2 and still haven’t gone back to finish.
I noticed how they wanted to make this very Ouran-esque, but it doesn’t work out really well. The later volumes of Ouran are great, but the beginning ones was pretty average. The Ouran anime made every single episode feel like a masterpiece, including the storylines from the beginning volumes.
It makes me wonder if they took the budget for the S.A. anime and instead put it towards a Skip Beat anime down the road.
I do agree that probaby how Ouran was made was good, but S.A is not too bad.
I probably agree that maybe the anime was OK to me, but the manga , or what you call, the ‘comic’ is not boring.
If you read further, there is more to the plot, and it gets better now, though Hikari is too dense, which slows down the story.
It does seem irritating that Hikari never beats Kei in anything, or even once, but still, you know how unrealistic manga can get.
The anime doesn’t quite bring the humor, the manga, IMO is a lot more better in comparison. Maybe people should give it a shot, rather than watch the anime. Anime’s sometimes disappoint me.
Sometimes I think it’s better to start off with the manga, because when I watch the anime, I feel like I don’t need to read all that again, which makes reading sort of pointless. You may be disappointed with the anime, but still, I get the feeling of not being bothered it read it all again. The other way round is different, because somehow, you get the feeling of wanting to see and hear the characters..Because you just can’t be bothered to read still drawings. in BLACK and WHITE.
Everyone has different view points, so I don’t expect everyone to like it, but just like everyone else commented, it’s our own opinions. It’s not like a comment in a blog is going to change it. So, you don’t like it. I don’t really care, I’m just defending the anime/manga. It’s really not so bad.
I started off with the anime, which I thought was quite good, eventhough it reminded me slighty of vampire knight (I haven’t read ouran yet) because of the setting with different classes. I liked HikarixKei interaction and it got me to start reading the manga.
However, as the story progresses the plot turns increasingly boring IMO. Attempts made in creating humour feels very forced and awkward. Certain arcs are so lame (eg. hikari-turned-guy-to-wreck-kei’s-omai) that I simply skim through it without much thought. Besides that, I also feel that the author inserted too many character self-thoughts among the conversation bubbles that it can get very confusing as I try to differentiate the contents of self-thought and conversation.
Well, I guess I will drop the manga and continue with the anime since I am still fine with the way that the anime conveys the story.