Valentine's Day, Japanese Style, Part 5:

Jawbreaking Love and the Battle of the Sexes

By Margaret O'Connell
March 16, 2009

Being the recipient of homemade Valentine's chocolates prepared by girls with more love than culinary expertise is no picnic, as a number of male manga characters can attest. In volume three of Shuri Shiozu's boys' love manga Eerie Queerie! (TOKYOPOP), short, cute teenage-boy protagonist Mitsuo is being courted by two male classmates, Hasunuma and Ichi, who are both significantly taller and more popular with girls. As Valentine's Day approaches, the two taller boys discuss the dubious bonanza of chocolate each of them received the previous year. "I found something funky in one of the chocolates I got last year," Ichi remarks. "I thought someone was playing a joke on me." The hunky Hasunuma replies, "I got one that had a clump of hair in it, but at least I caught it before I took a bite."

As unappetizing as this sounds, at least even the "funky" piece of chocolate that Ichi apparently bit into caused no permanent damage. The same could not be said of the chocolates created by fourteen-year-old Tamako, the heroine of Meca Tanaka's Pearl Pink (TOKYOPOP).

In volume two of the series, the tomboyish Tamako starts working on her Valentine's Day offering so early that she winds up presenting it to Kanji, the older boy she first proposed to at age four, a day in advance. But the homemade candy still comes out so rocklike that the apparently indestructible Tamako herself is the only one with teeth tough enough to safely eat it. Her aspiring idol-maker crush initially refuses to even accept the chocolates from her, demanding that she first change into something more feminine than the sloppy martial artist's uniform/leg warmers combo and "exam warrior"-style headband she had tied around her forehead while cooking. Kanji also insists that Tamako abandon her "completely not sexy" initial shonen (boys') manga-style challenging approach to offering the chocolates (complete with voiceover caption box announcing "It's war!") and instead "seduce" him into accepting them in a more conventionally girlish manner.

"What's with the stupid bandana and cheesy coat?!" the vicariously fashion-conscious teenage showbiz Svengali rages. "If you want to challenge me to take your sweets, you need to dress cuter, frillier, feminine! Just because we live under the same roof [for business reasons] doesn't mean I'll go easy on you! Here, I'll dress you right!!"

"Um ... doesn't that defeat the purpose?" wonders Tamako's onlooking mother, a deceptively young-looking TV starlet who is the chief client of Dog Run, the small talent agency run by Kanji's goofball father. "He's just looking for an excuse," another watching Dog Run client assures her. In fact, the ultra-competent, metrosexual high school-age Kanji is a perfectionist who for much of the series displays little interest in the boisterous teenybopper Tamako as a girl except when seizing the opportunity to dress her up like a human Barbie doll in clothes more stereotypically suitable for a budding ingenue.

Duly re-outfitted in heart-shaped earrings and a flouncy floral print dress with lace trim, Tamako returns to the attack. When the shonen approach ("Right! Here I go! Kan-chan, I challenge you!!") again fails miserably despite her wardrobe change, Tamako finally takes Kanji's irritated instructions about employing feminine methods to heart and changes tactics. Apparently drawing on skills picked up by observing her glamorous mother, currently the star of a series called Idol P.I., Tamako abruptly switches into defenseless fragile-maiden mode. She tremulously begs, "Um ... excuse me? I-I hope I'm not bothering you ... but I made these chocolates just for you. They're probably not any good, but ... if you'd kindly accept them ... I'd be so happy!!"

This performance, which comes complete with strategically-timed blushes, faux-shy body language, and marginal notes from the mangaka on "How to Fake Cuteness" the way Tamako just did, has the desired effect of causing the thunderstruck Kanji to reach out and accept the miniature bag of chocolates from her hand in a dreamlike, half-mesmerized state. Tamako reacts by pumping her fist in the air and shouting, "Victory!" in her usual boisterous manner. Her cranky childhood sweetheart promptly snaps out of it, squawking, "What the hell? Who taught you to act like that?"

Compared to this comedically heavy-handed demonstration of how to win the battle of the sexes through skillful use of enforced "gender-appropriate" behavior, Kanji's reaction to the chocolates themselves is a mere afterthought — literally. Tamako doesn't even remember to ask her putative fiance how he liked her homemade candy until they're walking to school the next day. Kanji carelessly reports that it was hard as a brick. "I couldn't eat it .... I was scared I'd crack a tooth." An adjoining panel verifies this, displaying a still-intact chocolate ball scarred with tooth marks from Kanji's unsuccessful attempt to bite into it.

The other recipients of Tamako's Valentine's Day goodies are more determined, but live to regret their persistence. Tamako's second batch of homemade candy, belatedly whipped up after one of the witnesses to the big "How to Fake Cuteness" presentation scene eagerly asks "Where's my chocolate?" is apparently even more unchewable than her first effort. As the literal end-of-chapter damage report recounts, Kanji's father Kinichi gave up on his Tamako-created Valentine's chocolates after losing a false tooth at the first bite. Boy-band member Raizo, another of the agency's clients, stubbornly persevered long enough to eat one-third of a chocolate ball, with "extreme pain in jaw and lower face" as the result.

Evidently such incidents are not merely typical over the top manga exaggerations, either. In one of her "free talk" behind the scenes reminiscences in the margins of The Gentlemen's Alliance Cross, volume two (Viz), mangaka Arina Tanemura recalls actually losing a tooth when "my older brother gave me a chocolate he had received for Valentine's Day — and when I bit down, the chocolate was so hard that my tooth broke!" The damage was so bad that Tanemura was forced to get a dental implant to replace the affected tooth.

However, at least she got a plot point out of it. Tanemura cites her own experience with artificial dental replacements as the inspiration for Gentlemen's Alliance heroine Haine Otomiya's similarly missing two front teeth and the replacement implants whose temporary loss in mid-bread race causes her to freak out on sports day at the prestigious Imperial Academy.

A rare instance of actual store-bought chocolates being exchanged on Valentine's Day — the only one I have encountered besides Himawari-chan's belated gift to Watanuki and Domeki in Xxxholic, volume four — occurs in Toru Fujieda's Oyayubihime Infinity, volume four (CMX). When heroine Kanoko Himemiya's persistent admirer and alleged past-life lover Arata Takami, leader of the popular boy band Splash, shows up at her school to not so innocently inquire, "Are you giving chocolate to anyone I know today?" he immediately recognizes her rather half-hearted offering as "a 'Godiva' special Valentine's box, with a special large heart-shaped chocolate in the center!" Arata rather tactlessly goes on to explain his expertise in identifying the exact variety of chocolate Kanoko has bought for him by remarking, "I know this one very well — my fans always send them!!" When Kanoko unenthusiastically responds, "Oh .... really? So I guess you're swamped in these today, then?", Arata quickly attempts to redeem himself by adding, "Well, of course I would eat yours first, and they would certainly be the most delicious!!"

The presumptuous teenage pop star gets his comeuppance when he opens the candy box later only to discover that the heart-shaped chocolate designed to go in the center is symbolically missing — an absence which he correctly interprets as meaning "It seems that she is not yet mine." Kanoko's thoughts confirm that this is exactly the message she had intended to convey: "Yes, that's right. I have no intention yet of giving my heart to anyone."

Kanoko also removes the heart-shaped central chocolate from the identical Godiva assortment she gives to her other would-be boyfriend, her eccentric amateur nail-stylist classmate Tsubame. Tsubame, like Arata, had become fixated on Kanoko because the butterfly-shaped birthmark on her finger convinced him that she was the reincarnation of Agemaki, a geisha he was in love with in a past life. But he developed feelings for the present-day version of Kanoko in her own right even after he realized that she was not, in fact, his once-beloved Agemaki reborn.

Unlike the more sophisticated but still destiny-fixated Arata, Tsubame fails to realize the true significance of the chocolate heart missing from the Godiva assortment Kanoko gave him for Valentine's Day. Instead, he innocently conjectures that "You ate it, didn't you? You musta been hungry!!" Kanoko guiltily plays along with this misconception, thinking, "I really like him. A lot. It's just that I want to be ... free. For now."

However, Kanoko's Godiva assortment has an energizing and creativity-nurturing effect on Tsubame despite her rather mixed motives for giving it to him. After offending both Kanoko and his best friend Mike, Tsubame had been holed up in his apartment trying to come up with some way to make it up to them when Kanoko came by and left the shopping bag containing the box of Valentine's chocolates hanging from the doorknob. The chocolates became his main form of sustenance while he spent the next several days crafting handmade jewelry to present to his friends as a peace offering.

As Tsubame explains, "I had a bunch of materials, like, nail supplies and stuff, and I'd tried to make this kinda stuff before .... I never had much luck with it, though." He attributes his success at producing professional-level decorative accessories this time to Kanoko's Valentine's gift: "Thanks to your chocolate, I was able to unlock my true power!!"

Next week: Part Six!