bookshelf

A cute book full of inspiration for a retro girly aesthetic! It unfortunately made me realize I'm more of a 90s nostalgia kind of girl lol but it is filled to the brim with examples of how the kawaii culture boomed from stationary sets to band-aids, and I was particularly interested in the electronic toys section...

Doki Doki! Precure is one of my favorite Precure series, so when I was browsing through the Kinokuniya Bookstore in San Francisco I just had to buy this artbook... It includes early sketches of each design and storyboard sketches for each transformation sequence too!

The French title is "211 Ideas to Become a Brilliant Girl" which I admit made it a little more appealing. I was very young when I first read it, so I naively thought it was all genuine advice... but the reality is that while some of it is, most of it is satire lol. Even now when I weigh myself I still think of "if you want to lose weight fast, shave your head and legs".

While some of the advice in there might have become a little outdated, I think it still has some solid tips on topics such as salary negotiation, which I was completely clueless about until then (well, I can't say I nailed it either way, but at least thanks to this book I was prepared and knew what I was doing). It's also very eye-opening in many areas, and I'd recommend anyone of any gender to go through it.

An obvious must-read for anyone interested in Lolita fashion. I had only seen the 1951 Disney adaptation before reading it, and it was a lot more captivating than I thought it would be! Through the Looking-Glass especially had a lot of material that usually isn't explored in adaptations and retellings.

Content warning: child abuse, sexual abuse
I consider this to be another must-read for anyone interested in Lolita fashion. While I absolutely do not support anything related to the main topic of this book, I think it's important to be well-informed about the novel to refute any ignorant arguments who will too easily conflate it with the fashion style.
As for the book itself, I read it more than a decade ago, so if I re-read it today my opinion of it might have evolved, but I found it surprisingly humanizing, both regarding the perpetrator and the victim. It made me see that what is often portrayed as an "inherent evil that must be purged from the earth to protect our children" is actually a pathology that is mostly enabled by the dynamics of perceived authority between adult and child.

Content warning: unhealthy relationships at the very least lol
Like most girls I discovered Yazawa through NANA, of which I received volume 13 in a Secret Santa in middle school... It was a very confusing first contact, and while I loved the art style I was much less interested in the love and sex-related drama that was already very advanced in the plot at that point lol
I then tried ParaKiss, and between the beautiful covers (the French edition had extra illustrations printed on tracing paper iirc) and the intricate outfits, with a hint of Lolita fashion, I was completely sold. I re-read it recently and it still holds up!
But damn have we evolved from early 2000s shoujo when it comes to hot and problematic boyfriends lmao fuck that George!!

Content warning: graphic violence, gore, abuse, anything you can imagine
I decided to check it out after having seen a compilation of panels featuring Marie-Joseph Sanson. While the contents of the story are filled with very violent, very graphic scenes (it is about a family of executioners during the French Revolution after all...) it's one of the most beautiful mangas I have ever read. It hit the nail on so many of my interests, Marie-Joseph is a visual kei feminist anarchist lesbian icon, and Marie-Antoinette's downward spiral into decadence and debauchery is portrayed wonderfully through distorted rococo interiors and an 18th century version of Twitter.

Yumeiro Patissiere, Natsumi Matsumoto

When I first made this page I realized: I haven't really read that many shoujo mangas... So I wanted to catch up on that missed knowledge and started looking for something short and sweet and related to cakes, and tada! If you're not used to shoujo the art style is a little rough to get accustomed to at the beginning, but I somehow found myself absorbed by the simple yet engaging plot, and I ended up reading the whole thing (I might have missed a few chapters because I couldn't find the scans...).
It's a manga that will definitely make you more interested in pastries (either baking or eating them), and I was glad to find both Petits Fours, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte and Croquembouche being featured in it!
It seems like at the time you could get transparent trading cards when purchasing a volume, which you could layer to build and decorate your own cakes... A simple yet genius idea, fan merch creators should take inspiration from it imo

Content warning: graphic violence
"oh fuck, not another magical girl", the ink on the page turns neon pink, the bad guys explode in bursts of blood, before you know it it's over and there is no plot, but I'm glad I re-read this just for this review.

Content warning: sexual abuse
An autobiographical graphic novel about competitive ice skating, growing up gay, and trauma. If you're looking for a western comic to start with I'd definitely recommend this one. I think it depicts really well the overall lassitude and yet constant pressure put on teenagers who are just out there struggling to find themselves. I first discovered Tillie Walden through her webcomic On a Sunbeam, which I also recommend!