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The magazine catches the corner of her eye, and she just has to speak up.
“Teshima-san… Ha… Have you…”
Onoda figets a little bit and stares at her fingers. “Hm?” says Teshima, looking up to face her, sliding an old issue of Shonen Jump back into his school bag. His eyes are wide, attentive. Onoda decides to bite the bullet.
“Have you read anything other than sports manga? Watched any magical girl anime, perhaps?”
Teshima smiles, amused now. “My older sister watched Revolutionary Girl Utena but I never really got into anything like that myself.”
“I think… you should try it!” Onoda picks up steam. “My favorite right now is Love Hime! Have you heard of it? Have you seen the posters or the merch?”
“Oh… uh.” Teshima recoils a little bit. He looks disgusted. He looks like he’s judging me, she thinks. And something inside Onoda dampens, but it’s nothing new, because she’s used to that look, after all, after middle school.
“It’s… it’s got good characters,” Onoda mumbles, dropping her gaze to the corner of the room. “Kotori’s a hard worker. I want to be like her.”
“Onoda, that’s… are you sure?” She raises her head again and he’s looking at her, one eyebrow raised. Onoda thinks it looks like genuine concern. He’s her captain, and he’s been nothing but supportive since the day after they met, and even if there’s a chance he’s judging her, she still wants to have this conversation, with him.
“It really is good. Will you give it a chance… for me?”
Teshima sighs and parks himself on the bench in the clubroom. This is a good sign, Onoda feels. At least he is open to discussion. Naruko often says he has a soft spot for her and she is not above leveraging it for the sake of anime.
“Onoda, no offense to you, but that show looks kind of gross,” says Teshima. “It’s the same artist as Rurumo, right?” Onoda nods fervently. So he does know! “Some guys in my class were reading that series and… man, it’s such tropey bullshit. How can you stand it?”
“It’s good, honestly Teshima-san, it’s got good characters. It does start of kind of tropey but they’re very earnest and by volume two it’s already subverting expectations.”
Teshima still looks skeptical. “How can anything with moeblob designs like that be any good?”
“Oh, I can’t possibly spoil it for you, but they’re given such neat story arcs and motivations!” Onoda might be getting ahead of herself, assuming Teshima will give Love Hime a watch, but she’s too excited to think about wording at this point. “Don’t just judge it on its appearance, Teshima-san!”
He furrows his brow in thought. “Well, I’ll give it a look if you’re vouching for it. But how much have you read outside your genre?”
“I’m not… sure what you mean?”
“Like… have you read a lot of shonen? Are you able to judge Love Hime fairly against it, instead of against a bunch of formulaic harem shows? You know shonen manga usually gets bigger, better plot arcs and more original or experimental premises, right?”
Almost as though a switch has flipped, Onoda jumps to action, indignant. “Love Hime isn’t a harem show! And I have read shonen manga, and I enjoy it, of course, but doesn’t it bother you that all the girls are just background characters or eye candy?”
“Are you telling me Love Hime doesn’t pander to the male gaze? Have you looked at the cover art, Onoda? It’s got, like, seven different moe archetypes on it.”
“Male gaze… it stops being as prominent midway through the first arc… and at least Love Hime has more than one girl in the main cast! And they interact with each other, and female friendship is important!”
The conversation was so heated now. This wasn’t how Onoda had planned for it to go. Still, it was… fun in a way? She liked getting to engage in this meta discussion. With Imaizumi-kun, who accepted the show right off the bat, she had been able to jump into shipping talk and fandom memes almost immediately. But it was worthwhile to think about the anime industry as a whole and its treatment of women, and even though Teshima-san hadn’t questioned it enough, he was at least aware of the disparity in content.
“You feel that strongly about this show, huh?”
Onoda’s face crinkled up with too many mixed emotions. “I do, Teshima-san! I really do!” She was happy and nervous and self-conscious and unapologetic and so, so grateful that she had someone who could talk about this in the first place. “Girls aren’t often afforded the dignity of the storylines that Love Hime offers. I’ve waded through a lot of bad shoujo, and a lot of good shonen too, and I’d stake my reputation on this!”
She had this cinched, she could feel it, the way any climber could feel when they took the peak. Onoda could sense traces of the same inexorable force that signaled to the winner to raise their arms and face to the sky; and the same rush of affection towards the opponent for giving her an opportunity to exert herself, even if it was intellectually instead of physically this time. Teshima smiled at her from the bench.
“Would you be able to lend me the first DVD?”