Covers Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty by Megumi Morino (all six volumes of the series)
“I can't believe Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty single-handedly convinced me that manga was not a mistake.”
“This is up there with Erased and Princess Jellyfish for me as far as human relations go.”
“I don't know if I'm going to be able to go back to manga after reading this manga, it was everything I ever wanted in a romance manga.”
“This manga is much better than you would expect since nobody’s hyped it up — and we want to be the hype.”
Quite simply, if you’re not reading Megumi Morino’s debut series, Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty, you are missing out. It’s easily the most underrated shojo manga of the year. It’s short and sweet and you should read it. If you want to find out a bit more before committing to the six volumes, give the beginning of this a listen. The story follows a girl who gets possessed by ghosts, and a boy who is afraid of ghosts but ends up falling in love with her. Except it’s so much more than that. The Ashes delve into who their favorite spirit is, and then explain why actually, everything about this ends up being your favorite. SHIZU AND TETSU AND HARU AND AKIRA AND LITERALLY EVERYONE ARE JUST TOO GOOD Y’ALL.
REFERENCES

Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty is available from Kodansha USA
Haikyu!! and Kuroko’s Basketball are available from Viz Media
Other shojo manga with male leads: HatsuHaru, The Young Master’s Revenge, DNAngel, Banana Fish
Manga that also understand human relationships piercingly: Erased, Princess Jellyfish
Can’t have a podcast with the Ashes where they don’t mention Maid-sama! every ten minutes
Bleach by Tite Kubo, one of Ashley’s favorite shonens (sometimes we let those be referenced here)
Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya is available from Yen Press. Also we did an epic trilogy of podcasts about it with Jacob Chapman.
Outro song: “From Memory” by Ketsa

CONTACT US

Asher on Tumblr: @asherdashery
Asher on Archive of Our Own: dashery
Shojo & Tell on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram
Ashley on Twitter: @AshMcD00
Ashley and Asher’s cowritten Digimon fic: Digivolve Your Differences

If you have any comments or questions about the episode, email us at shojoandtell@gmail.com, reach out to us on your preferred social media network, or comment on the episode page.