.the princess portal.

I was a little bit naughty and started reading this book before I had finished my other ones, but I couldn’t help myself! I just love the film so much, I’ve watched it many many times and whenever I feel a little down or disillusioned I watch it and it cheers me up.

Kamikaze Girls is the american title for Novala Takemoto’s novel Shimotsuma Monogatari and the movie they made of it. I’m not really sure why they changed the title but it is still Shimotsuma Story to me so I shall refer to it as that. This is the story of two young japanese girls, one an independant, solitary lolita, the other a Yanki and a member of a female biker gang. It seems unlikely they would ever be friends, in fact the Lolita, Momoko, doesn’t want any friends at all but gradually they come to understand and respect eachother. It is an interesting look at the various japanese sub cultures and their differing ideals and values. I also find it a very heartwarming story.

I really love Momoko, not because she is a perfect lolita but because she is quite a flawed character and this makes her interesting. She really doesn’t care much about others and is quite selfish - she’s even aware of this and seems proud of it. I think she really grows a lot through the story and develops as a character.

The translation seemed a little awkward actually, I’m not sure how close it was to the japanese original but it didn’t flow very well. It was easy to read and enjoyable but I felt they had tried to americanize it quite a bit, I would rather that they kept some of the japanese slang and terms in there and provided an explanation rather than using american terms that aren’t really synonymous. Just a warning for readers, there is a lot of swearing in this book.

I am glad I bought the book because there are some real gems in here, one of my favourite lines was; “When you find something really precious, you have to hold on to it with all your might and never let it go, whatever else you may loose. After all, there are lots of people that die without finding something that’s really precious to them.” However I think I enjoyed the movie more. Someday I would like to read the original japanese book and see how different it is.