Once a Stranger

*cries* I'd written a fairly lengthy reply when Firefox crashed. Life isn't fair.

But anyway--I don't know how you'd feel about Glass Mask, but I really enjoyed it for the most part. You can stream it on Crunchyroll like I did! It seems like it took a week or two to get through the first fifteen episodes, and then the rest just flew by.

I should take the time to jot down my thoughts on the things I like so that I'll have something to recommend them with, but I feel like my thoughts on things usually don't evidence the quality of the work or even the components... I feel like, in almost every instance, what I get out of something is different than what almost everyone else does, and I can't say why or how this happens.

Glass Mask is a series about Maya, a fourteen-year-old girl of the lower class who helps her mother at work when she's not in school in order to get by. She's prone to distraction and gets treated like garbage for it, but the thing is, she isn't stupid--she can memorize an entire movie, action for action and word for word. Of course, as far as her mother is concerned, this makes her even more useless.

Maya's talent for intuiting the capricious drama of human heart and the spirit of pretending is never recognized by anyone who knows her. Instead, she's chastised for neglecting any of the never-ending demands of other people and constantly repressed as punishment for being who she is. Fate intervenes when she's discovered by Chigusa Tsukikage, an aging stage legend and recluse. She happens upon Maya while Maya is acting out scenes from a film for a group of children, and Tsukikage is shocked to discover that Maya has memorized the details of the film by heart having only seen it once. She quickly devlops a powerful intention to train her as an actress.

Maya has to leave home to pursue acting as a way of life. She and her so-called rival from a famous inner-city troupe both vy for an exclusive and universally coveted role. Their dynamic as it was executed in the animated series was one that I liked: not unconventional, really, but... unique. But this is the third adaptation of Glass Mask, so they've had time to play with everything. There were a few other characters I liked, too: sweet Sakurakouji, and especially Masumi Hayami.



Actually, the one series I've been wanting to recommend to you but keep forgetting to is Oniisama e. It's the best shoujo series I've ever seen: masterfully done, and I think it fits into a lot of your kinks.

Brief description picked from Wikipedia:

The story is about 16 year old girl Nanako Misonoo (御苑生奈々子, Misonoo Nanako) who attends a prestigious academy and deals with life as a high school student via writing letters to her "brother."

The anime series spans 39 episodes and ends when Nanako is eighteen. The show's themes are dark and controversial. Among them are suicide, abuse, incest, lesbianism, drug addiction, violence, divorce, and disease.

So, if different is what you want... :)

I can upload the first five episodes to give you a taste. It takes a little while for the show to take off, but take off it does.

The episodes I have were ripped from the Spanish DVD release and re-subbed in English by a friend, who referenced the fansubs from the early nineties that were distributed by mailing list on VHS tapes and later brought to Youtube. The fansub translations were a little stiff and the picture quality was poor, so I feel fortunate to have these instead. You'll have to bear through a handful of jokes inserted in place of filler lines for a few episodes in the beginning, but the jokes more or less disappear as soon as the story gets serious. Just letting you know in advance, lest you decide to give it a try and find yourself boggling at some of the lines. A few are a tad bizarre.