Konshuu no Renai ~MaiHiME’s Shizuru and Natsuki~

Wow, I just realised that I started Konshuu no renai on a Wednesday, so that makes it really inconvenient for me to get it all typed up at home with nice user friendly pictures. Therefore this weeks entry will be typed up here at medschool and pictures added later (if I can be bothered, of course ^_^)

This week,

Mai HiME's Shizuru and Natsuki

Shizuru and Natsuki (or Shiznat, as how it is known to the English speaking fanfiction community) is one of my favourite pairings at the moment. However, as the anime itself is barely a few years old, the amount of fanwork for it is less than other series, (for example last week's CCS feature)

But why Shiznat? Why does the relationship work so much better than the other canon shoujo ai pairing in the series, Haruka/Yukino?

In my opinion, the main thing that helps the pairning work so well is that both the characters in question are main characters and so they have a good background development, so you get to know each character well and the pairing makes a lot more sense, whereas both Haruka and Yukino are probably the least developed characters in Mai Hime and so the viewer feels a lot less affinity towards them.

In Hime the relationship is (for the most part) subtext with some consummation, yet in Otome, the relationship is actual canon with very little reference to what is actually going on behind the scenes as it were. I actually prefer the subtext of the first series as fodder for shoujo ai and fanfiction as it has a great feeling of "Illicit love" on the part of Shizuru and wrestling with her own feelings (although her transformation into Evilyuri girl was surreal to say the least)

And who can't say that Shizuru fighting for Natsuki's love and approval wasn't romantic?

I think that the makers of the anime went to great lengths to show that the reason for the pairing was that the two characters complement each other in that they are almost polar opposites of each other in many respects and each girl offsets the other's personality well. Take Shizuru, for example, who is gentle, graceful and traditional with a lot of inner strength and sense of what she wants, whereas Natsuki is a rebellious and gung-ho lone wolf with buckets of inner insecurity and no idea what she wants despite her gruff outer coating.

Since they are both attractive characters in their own rights, a relationship between the two has all sorts of paths and storylines it can take, especially (the hardest) marriage and leading a normal life.

Therefore, it is surprising that the MaiHiME Shoujo ai community is relatively small, most fiction focusing on the relationship between Mai and Yuuichi. A relevant community on fanfiction.net are the Fuuka Gakuen – A Shoujo-ai fanfic community.

Also worth looking at is the Mai HiME page on Shoujoai.com.

I offer these links though most of the fanfiction I have read of this pairing is strictly average…no offense to the authors of course, but nothing has really grabbed my eye in terms of storyline or quality of writing…I will review my collection and recommend the best when I get home later today. However, one author I heavily recommend is dauthik, who is a fan of the pairing and has a good list of Shiznat fic on her Livejournal. She has written 3 excellent fics, "Another Chance to Bloom", "Forgiven" and "Two plus Two equals Five" I will mention her much more when I get round to doing Konoka x Setsuna later on. Also worth looking at is the Shizuru x Natsuki fanlisting "Into the Sunset" which has a small collection of fanfiction.

Another interesting fanwork unfortunately not in English at the moment is a webnovel in which Shizuru and Natsuki are married and have children (who are clones of themselves, as far as I can work out); though the rest of the storyline is a mystery to me, it is definitely worth checking out.

Apart from fanfiction, the pairing has generated huge amounts of fanart and doujinshi which can be found online (for example in danbooru's Mai_hime and Mai_Otome pages).

Shiznat forever ^_^