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I kept seeing Marmalade Boy pop up in my anime searches...and I never even LOOKED at the stuff. "Marmalade Boy -- what a dumb name," is what I thought. Then after dinner one night with my dear friend Rika (who is from Japan) she handed me a tape and told me to watch it. It was Marmalade Boy. Reluctantly, I put the tape in and I started watching. The tape was in horrible shape, very fuzzy. With men in the room talking and kids running around playing I didn't think I was going to be able to focus...but then I already knew I wasn't interested in it right?

It took me about...oh 5min into the first episode before I was completely hooked. It starts out with this cute red head Japanese girl named Miki having her parents come home from vactioning in Hawaii. They call her down from her room and serve her tea... then sit down and tell her how they met another couple in Hawaii by the name of Matsura. They go on to say Pappa had fallen in love with Mrs. Matsura and Momma had fallen in love with Mr. Matsura (and vice versa) so they have decided to parter-swap and divorce and remarry. Furthermore...in order to not change the parent/child relationship, they had rented a large house where both families would live together and the children would be adopted by their respective real fathers so their names don't change.

Children? Oh yeah, the Matsura's have a son about Miki's age...didn't we mention that...

Miki, being a normal teenage girl is mortified...she is convinced her parents are absolutely nuts. Skip forward some...still episode 1... you meet some other characters between that and dinner with both families that night. Dinner you meet the Matsura's and their son Yuu arrives a bit late. And Yuu is a doll... and no one but poor Miki is opposed to what is going on...

When we went home, the tape went with me. It contained the first 4 episodes... I can't remember any more, but I think I got 2 more tapes like that from Rika...then she didn't have anymore. We watched them all in a few days...but that wasn''t all...and the anime store here in Houston (Planet Anime) didn't have it...because it wasn't released in America. I was stuck...I didn't know about fansubs yet or how to get them... I was very upset and frustrated because I really liked the story.

I was buying Marmalade Boy cels from Bruce Duffy. It wasn't until later (near the last episodes) I connected thje two...and felt REAL DUMB...because if it wasn't for the Duffy's (particularly Karen) {Big plug for the Duffy's here out of a deep and genuine gratitude for their - particularly Karen's - painstaking labor of love to translate the series for those Americans that won't understand it in raw Japanese and wouldn't otherwise have access to it... like me}

Anyway, I met the president of the Anime No Kai club, which is the anime club at the University of Houston one night at Planet Anime. In fact it was Rika, who worked there at the time, who pointed her out to me and told me to talk to her. So I told her of my problem and my quest to find the rest of Marmalade Boy... and the club had it. I became a member and finished Marmalade Boy rewatching from beginning to end . From the first night at Rika's and the day I saw the last episode, less than 2 weeks had passed. My adversion to subtitles was gone...in fact I REALLY dislike dubbed voices...and a whole new world of fansubbed anime was open to me

Just in case you can't tell... Marmalade Boy is my #1 all time favorite anime. In fact, it is more than that it is my #1 FAVORITE STORY in any media. It had me literally on the floor laughing at times and it made me cry rivers of tears like the anime characters cry.. I cried a LOT near the end...I won't say where or why because I don't want what I am saying here to have spoilers...if you have seen it you most likely can figure it out anyway.

I cried for 3 days straight when it was over because I do not think I will ever be able to write such an emotionally powerful story.

This section will probably continue to grow for awhile. At the very least, the Cel section will continue to grow. If I put this section up before all the links are active, don't worry, they will be active soon. If people start sending me fanart and fanfics, ect I will probably make a new section to display those as well. I won't put anything ugly or negative or hentai here though.

Given the above statements, I will tell you right now it is HIGHLY unlikely I will sell any of my MB cels. When I end up with multiples of the same cel sequence I will sometimes resell those, hence a small For Sale section. The only real way to get me to consider parting with MB cels in my collection would be to offer me a different Marmalade Boy cel that is something I don't already have. There are a LOT I don't have and still want too. Also if you have a MB collection you want to sell, please talk to me...or if you have exceptional cels you might want to trade for cels of a different series.