I reached 25,000 hits sometime last week.  I can’t think of anything particularly deep or retrospective to mark the occasion, though, so let’s just keep going.  Thank you for reading my blog.

Otoyomegatari, page one.

Victorian Romance Emma is one of my favorite manga series.  Kaoru Mori’s line work is gorgeous, and her historical research is obsessive in a way that only a woman with a peculiar lust for English maids can pull off.

Mori’s newest project, Otoyomegatari (or A Young Bride’s Tale), is a departure from Emma in many ways:  As before, we have nineteenth century lovebirds, but this time they’re from the nomadic clans of Persia, and they’re already married by family arrangement.  So immediately there’s a different dynamic, focused more on these two getting to know each other rather than struggling simply to have that privilege.

Also, the couple in question is a twenty (not eighteen– thanks, Anonymous!) year-old girl married to a twelve year-old boy.  But that isn’t nearly as disquieting as you’d think it would be, probably because Karluk acts far more mature than any twelve year-old I’ve ever met.

To be fair, he has to keep up with his wife.

Youth culture is a recent invention.  Its development is actually pretty simple to outline:  After the industrialization of England and the movement of people into cities, something needed to be done about the children of common workers.  The public didn’t want kids in the factories, but there was nothing else for them to do.  And so the Victorian Age saw the advent of public schools, which resulted in a new type of person who wasn’t a child, but wasn’t yet qualified to take the responsibilities of adulthood.

Over the last century and a half, the concept has been refined, processed and exported around the world.  Now youth culture is ubiquitous– Just look at all that stuff I wrote about Durarara!! in my last entry.  But it hasn’t always been this way.  In the time of Otoyomegatari, at least, it doesn’t exist.  Karluk was a child, and now he is a man.  He still defers to his father, but he is expected to take care of his house and look after his wife, both of which he does admirably.

Of course, we’re getting a very rosy portrait from Kaoru Mori, rooted more in romance and the exotic than anything else.  But Karluk and his behavior is a nod to how we’ve historically treated adulthood, and that’s pretty intriguing.  What were teenagers like before they were expected to rebel?

Twelve years old. God, I love this kid.

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