Similarties and Differences-Billion Girl and Million Girl

Welcome to the first issue of similarities and differences.

Premise:

In Million Girl(by Kotori Momoyuki) Sachi’s mom is dead and her family went  bankrupt. The head of the family ran aways, selling Sachi for about $100 million, to some dudes. She’s encouraged to take part in the schools “money games” as a way of raising capital.

In Billion Girl (by Miwa Sakai), Kanoko’s parent’s confectory is in the toliet, so her father and grandfather borrowed some money from crimnals. This does not go well for them, and their business/house is about to be repossessed, unless they come up with a billion yen. Her father tries to kill himself, and some wandering hobo saves him. The hobo promises to give them the money, but wants to marry one of the daughters in return. After, her two older sisters refuse, Kanoko volunteers (she’s 16 by the way). And thus begins her adventures with her new husband.

I’m a little disrupted by how often the “OMG we’re in debt, let’s sell our daughters/ourselves” comes up in mangas set in modern times. Is it that prevalent in Japanese society?

Heroine

Kanoko is your basic “dense, easily led” heroine”, who consciously needs to be rescued. She also gets kidnapped more than Fuu from Samurai Champloo. That said, she gets bravery points for volunteers to marry some stranger to save her family’s ungrateful behind (though they do care about her more than they let on).

Sachi, is way more proactive. She’s slowly paying the debt off by her own work. She does gain a few allies as time goes on, but she earned those and she’s still essentially on her own. She, also has a hair cutting scene that rivals the one is Disney’s Mulan for badassry.

I will also note that both girls have that annoying, yet endearing shojo manga heroine character trait, which let’s them forgive people who screw them over with relative ease.

Other Characters

I’m fairly sure, both our lead boys are rich boys, than again there are only a handful of shojo manga male leads that aren’t. Leon has an eyepatch, and is pretty mysterious so far (keep mind that I’m only on chapter 5). You can’t really tell just yet, if he actually wants to help Sachi or if he’s just giving her hints and such because it amuses him. I take option b myself. Taiga…he’s pretty much your atypical MANPAIN ridden shojo male lead, but is also a writer of Erotic novels, which is a nice tradeoff.

In each series there are also a few other characters. In Billion girl, there’s the usual loyal servant character (who isn’t a bishe for once, thank God), and what I like to call the three bishie stooges: basically three classmates who are worried about the strange people who take Kanoko to school everyday. They include a homosexual (possibly bisexual) best friend, a pure, pure boy whose in love with Kanoko, and an aspiring candy maker who wants to marry Kanoko so he can work in her family shop.  Million Girl, has so far a shota type named Keito, who continuly spends gets into dept because of the “Money Game”, and Aki, a girl who is the Queen of the Game. Aki up to chapter 5 seems like a female version of Leon, ie. interested in Sachi and creeply obcessed with the game . I kind of love how everyone treats the Money Game like it’s serious business, but also genially seems to enjoy the crazy of it.

Mood

Million Girl in a word suspenseful. Billion Girl=meloadrama (but in a good way).

Final Verdict

While, they have similar titles, and both deal with debt as a plot justification, the stories execution and characters are very different from each other. Billion Girl has more in common with SDC or Stepping on Roses, than it does with Million Girl, which probably has more in common with something like Arisa.

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