Otomen

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Otomen
オトメン（乙男）
Genre	Romantic Comedy
Manga
Author	Aya Kanno
Publisher	Hakusensha
Demographic	Shōjo
Magazine	Bessatsu Hana to Yume
Original run	2006 – ongoing
Volumes	5

Otomen (オトメン（乙男）, Otomen^?) is the latest work by mangaka Aya Kanno, running in Bessatsu Hana to Yume since late 2006. Although it is a fairly new serial, it has gotten quite popular scoring high on Oricon's weekly comic charts.^[1]

1 Plot
2 Characters
3 Love Tick
4 Title
5 References
6 Links

[edit] Plot

Asuka Masamune- the coolest, manliest guy in his whole school. He excels in judo, karate and he's the captain of the kendo team and he's even the best player in the country... but he has a secret: The things he really loves are sweets, cute things, cooking, shōjo manga and sewing. He hides this part of his life from everyone else but then he meets a girl named Ryou Miyakozuka...^[2]

[edit] Characters

Asuka Masamune (正宗飛鳥, Masamune Asuka^?): The main character of the story. He's very masculine and cool but secretly he loves girls' things. This, however, does not stop him from being necessarily tough on occasion- he can defend himself and his friends. When Asuka was young his father left his family because he wanted to become a woman. This affected Asuka's mother severely and when she saw that her son was starting to like girls' things she forced him to be masculine. Asuka also clearly states that while he likes girly things, he does not want to become a woman. When a new girl in school, Ryou Miyakozuka, is being bullied he defends her and afterwards falls in love with her. Among his talents, besides sports, includes cooking and sewing. He also enjoys reading the fictional manga "Love Tick" which runs in "Hana to Mame"- a play of words on the actual manga magazine Hana to Yume- the sister magazine in which Otomen runs.

Ryou Miyakozuka (都塚りょう, Miyakozuka Ryou^?): Ryou is a new transfer student at Asuka's school. She lives with her father who is a very tough man. Even though she is a girl, she cannot sew, cook, bake, make bento or do any other "girly" things with which Asuka helps her. She also likes fighting movies.

Juuta Tachibana (橘充太, Tachibana Juuta^?): A playboy who befriends Asuka and Ryou and helps Asuka with his relationship with Ryou. Tachibana is actually the mangaka, penname Jewel Sachihana, of Asuka's favorite manga "Love Tick".

[edit] Love Tick

"Love Tick" is a shōjo manga that runs in the fictional manga magazine "Hana to Mame", authored by Jewel Sachihana.

It parallels the personalities and relationship between Asuka and Ryou, with the characters even sharing the same name pronunciation. The major difference being that Love Tick's Asuka is written in katakana rather than the actual kanji that is used for Asuka's name and Ryou's name is assigned a kanji character rather than her actual hiragana name. Another difference is that the genders were flipped.

[edit] Title

The title, "Otomen" is a pun. "Otome", meaning "young lady" or "mistress", and the English word "men" put together. The characters refer to Asuka as an "otomen" and even he himself has done so.