Relationships, Who says manga or anime are useless in giving life lessons.

Hi everyone,
Recently I've came across a manga (comic if you prefer) that is based dominantly on interpersonal relationship. Friendships, love or mere acquiantances. It's Boyfriend, by Yamada Daisy. It's a story of a high school student, Hijiki, who just transfered to a new school. There, she met new friends and found a crush.
http://www.mangafox.com/manga/boyfriend_yamada_daisy/

Now, before you pass it off as a usual plot for a meaningless manga, think about it as something that brings to light seemingly overlooked moments in life. In the first chapter, it reminds us of the anxiety from going to a new school without knowing anyone. This shows that interpersonal relationship has become an important aspect of our lives. After all, when you need mental support or companionship, the other choice other than family are friends and lovers.

When it comes to choosing friends, usually one would feel more comfortable with people one shares at least a common ground with. The communication studies term for this is Similarity. It gives us a sense of familarity with each other and hence, enforce the relationship with each other as well. Of course, there are also relationship with those who may be significantly different than oneself. As in the example of the manga, the main characters, Hijiki and Hourai, have seemingly opposite personalities. Rather than saying differences cause conflicts, it is more of complementary differences. For example, one can be an optimistic and very cheerful and full of life, while the other can be very practical and down-to-earth. Such a couple can help each other understand and learn to see things from each other's perspective. They give each other support in their own way, and for romantics (like me), it just makes the relationship more loving. The 'Opposites Attract' plot is pretty common in many storylines. Another more well-known manga between manga readers that uses theories like complementary differences are 'Fruit Basket' and 'Cardcaptor Sakura', for movies, the 'Chipmunks', for books, 'Harry Potter'. Naturally, there are also a lot of other examples.

In 'Boyfriend', chapter 4 reminds us again that relationships can be brittle. There are different types of conflicts that can break a relationship. For example, jealousy as used in the manga. In order to maintain relationships with anyone, be it family, friends or couples, it is important to develop good communication skills such as talking about matters when one feels uncomfortable. This is called Self-Disclosure, which is to share information of oneself that the other party did not notice.

However, there are some concerns from reading mangas too much. For parents, considering that manga usually use high school students for romance stories often, they may say that students of secondary schools may be influenced by the stories in having boy-girl- relationships. To this matter, I feel that falling in love is not something that one can control,  but what we can control is how we deal with it. After all, the relationships are at the mercy of personal decisions, with external influences of family and friends of course.

Truthfully, I find that manga and anime are more open in using relational communication,especially those under the 'slice-of-life' genre. There can be times when one can learn some tips in handling relationships from them, especially if one does not have the experience in, let's say, a commited relationship like being a couple (dating or married).  Of course, the settings used in the stories may be a far cry from reality, and real-life situations are also better for us to learn from, but they do let us see how to behave in general in relationships. Not to mention, reading mangas and watching anime can serve as a way to relax from day-to-day life.