First Love

One of my favorite things to do is mocking common tropes in shoujo manga. The image on the left, for example, is a comic I did about a year and a half ago making fun of the phrase "only look at me", which I've come across in a surprising number of books). Now I'm a big fan of shoujo, and I admit to getting teary-eyed and moved by a lot of titles in the genre, but I'm secure enough in my love of it to realize that shoujo can be pretty ridiculous at times. But then again, that may be why I love it so much. No surprise that I'm a fan of romantic comedies, I guess.

はつコイ(Hatsukoi or First Love) is a short story along those lines. It was the second (and unfortunately last) comic I got to make for the manga club I joined at Doshisha University, so it was originally written in Japanese and is read right to left. I made it fairly quickly, in about a week, because I only had a week before I left to go back home. Nonetheless, I think it served its purpose and I'm quite happy with it, even if it isn't a technical masterpiece (there are some places I'm itching to redraw but alas, that's what you get when you do things quickly). At the end of the day, the most important fact was that it was fun!

So I've translated the story here so you can read it (it's also on my site). Enjoy!

One funny side story about this comic--when I finished writing it, I gave it to one of my Japanese friends to read it in order to check the Japanese. Halfway through she suddenly started giggling, and said, "Suddenly you switched (from standard Japanese) to kansai-ben!". Kansai-ben is the local dialect of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area where I was living (I was taught with standard Japanese but living in Kyoto it was hard not to pick up that way of speaking). I didn't even know I had done it, funnily enough!

The Beginning

I needed a place where I could post all my comics as I finish them that's not my livejournal, and I had a blogger account lying around...why not use it? This is more accessible to friends and acquaintances not on livejournal, so it seems like a good enough idea.

So if you're here for the first time, hi! Here's a little self-intro. My name is Yasmin Saaka, I'm currently entering my last year of undergraduate studies with a major in Japanese, and I really love to read and draw comics. I just came back from studying for a year in Kyoto, Japan at Doshisha University and I had an awesome time combining both my love of Japanese culture/language and comics during my stay there. I'll talk more about that in later posts, but I thought I shouldn't make this first post too big. Instead, I'll just show a little bit of what I've been working on lately.

Lately I've been developing a story I've had in my head that actually started off as two separate ideas. Its name as of now is Lucky No. 8. I really like stories with cutely depicted demons and slightly off-kilter ideas of the underworld, so this story is something along those lines. So far I only have two pages done (since I just started working on it). It stars a little low level imp called Ari (real name is Ariel but don't call him that!) who is resentful of his low position but too apathetic to do anything about it.

Ari's one of those characters I always wanted to draw in something, but never got the opportunity to...and just as expected, he's extremely fun to render. He's the type of person who can't help but show his feelings, and I think that's what makes him easier to draw. And out of all my characters I've used and reused in the past, he's the one who has stayed the most genuine over the years while other characters have changed a lot.

Stylistically, I'm trying for a cute and quirky look to this world and its characters. To be honest, I'm more of a person who draws really soft, flowy and flowery things (I blame all the shoujo manga I read in elementary and middle school!), so I'm trying for something more solid, more robust for this comic. I'm sure for some parts I will definitely fall back into some old habits (I can't help it...I like pretty things!), but for the most party I'm attempting to do things a bit differently. Let's see it it works out!

This is just a project for fun so I don't have any sort of schedule or deadline with it, but if I get enough pages done I might think of making it into a proper webcomic. As it is now, I think I'll just update on its status on this blog as I work on it.


And that's it for now! I hope to update this pretty regularly, and if you feel like following, stick around! I'm sure it'll be a fun ride. ★