Line #23 Manga/Gravitation


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gravitation.jpg]]
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3	->''"Love, the one force that simply won't be denied!"''
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5	''Gravitation,'' created by Maki Murakami, is a [[YaoiGenre Boys Love]] manga that ran from 1996 to 2002 in the [[ShoujoDemographic shoujo]] magazine ''Kimi to Boku''. For many years it was known as one of the few mainstream BL manga and anime series out there, partly because of the non-explicit nature of the romance between the two main male characters, and also because it had an actual plot to it instead of the [[PornWithoutPlot Plot? What Plot?]] typical of many BL series at the time.
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7	Shuichi Shindou wants, above all, to find success as a singer in his band Bad Luck along with his best friend Hiro. But life has something else in store for him: While walking through a park at night, the song lyrics he had been working on are blown out of his hand, and picked up by a [[TallDarkAndSnarky tall, blond, and snarky]] stranger who mercilessly criticizes them. A hurt Shuichi is determined to track down the stranger (later found to be famous romance novelist Yuki Eiri) and demand an apology. But wouldn't you know it, he finds himself being strangely attracted to him by that unstoppable force called gravitation...
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9	The rest of the series is about Bad Luck's rise to fame and the development of the rocky relationship between hyper Shuichi and emotionally cold Yuki who has a [[DarkAndTroubledPast dark past]] of his own. They break up and get back together as the series continually [[MoodWhiplash seesaws between angst and comedy,]] but the gravitational pull of love keeps them together in the end, in spite of, or maybe ''because'' of, their [[OppositesAttract vastly different personalities.]]
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11	''Gravitation'' was first adapted into a two episode [[OriginalVideoAnimation OVA]] series in 1999, and then later remade into a 13 episode anime series that aired from 2000 to 2001.
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13	''Not'' to be confused with ''Anime/{{Gravion}},'' nor with a famous textbook on General Relativity by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler, nor with Jason Rohrer's [[http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/ videogame.]]
14	----
15
16	!! '''Some tropes include:'''
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18	* ArtEvolution: Compare earlier volumes of the manga with later ones and it becomes very obvious. The sudden improvement happened to coincide with the author acquiring a troop of assistants.
19	** It goes even further. Compare the last chapter of the original manga to the last released chapters of ''Gravitation Ex.'' The style seems to devolve into in very simplistic style by comparison, though this may have been an indication of her eventual hiatus.
20	* BetaCouple: [[spoiler: Hiro and Ayaka.]]
21	* BigApplesauce: The story arc introducing Reiji takes place in New York.
22	* CastFullOfPrettyBoys: Again, unavoidable given the genre.
23	* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: It's easier to count the characters who aren't, as most of the cast aren't exactly people with their heads well placed on their shoulders. Especially in the manga. See character page for specifics.
24	* DenserAndWackier: Hits the manga hard from Volume 6 onward.
25	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: In the OVA with [[http://i.imgur.com/iSMpFuk.jpg Shuichi's mouth and K's gun.]]
26	* DudeShesLikeInAComa: Strangely enough, this is averted in ''Gravitation Ex.'' when [[spoiler: Shuichi really ''is'' in a coma.]]
27	* {{Eagleland}}: A significant amount of the manga takes place in [[BigApplesauce New York City.]]
28	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The high school setting and considerably more even tone of the first couple volumes of the manga are very much this.
29	* {{Engrish}}: Unavoidable with so many {{Eagleland}} characters in the cast.
30	* {{Expy}}: A lot of characters are this in relation to the ones in ''Help!'' See {{Pilot}} below.
31	* FakeBand: Bad Luck, Nittle Grasper, and ASK.
32	* FreudianTrio: Both Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper.
33	** Bad Luck: Shuichi (id), Hiro (ego), and Suguru (superego).
34	** Nittle Grasper: Ryuichi (id), Noriko (ego), and Tohma (superego).
35	* FunWithAcronyms: "Bad Luck" is occasionally abbreviated to "BL." Right, [[YaoiGenre that's what it stands for.]]
36	* GameShowAppearance: Multiple times in the manga, with the same host despite the game show being a different one each time.
37	* {{Gayngst}}: Shuichi exhibits some of this occasionally, but Yuki actually plays this trope, er, straighter, given his backstory and how it is implied he became aware of his own sexual orientation.
38	* GroupieBrigade: Used to show Bad Luck's increasing popularity. Taki also uses an escape from one of these to win Shuichi's trust.
39	* HaveIMentionedIAmHeterosexualToday: Yuki in the beginning, Hiro throughout. Shuichi also takes very much care to remind people that actually, he's bi.
40	* HumongousMecha: Reiji's preferred method of travel is a giant panda mecha.
41	* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Subverted: At one point [[spoiler: Yuki seems to suffer from this condition, even going to the extent of coughing up blood. However, the illness turns out to be ulcers and goes away on its own.]]
42	* InterruptedSuicide: In the final episode of the anime [[spoiler: Shuichi arrives just in time to keep Yuki from committing suicide. Keeping up with the spirit of MoodWhiplash of the series, Shuichi is ''wearing a dog suit'' as he bursts through the wall just as Yuki is about to shoot himself.]]
43	* IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy: Ayaka, Yuki's fiancee, willingly gives him up to Shuichi. Hiro might also do this with Shuichi to an extent, depending on how much you read into the HoYay. Reiji eventually delivered this to Shuichi as well.
44	** Hiro actually quotes the trope at the beginning.
45	* LoveCanMakeYouGonk: Shuichi does this on the rare occasion when something good happens with Yuki.
46	* LoveTriangle: The series progresses through several with Yuki and Shuichi being two sides of it at any given point, but it’s not until EX that this trope is truly played, er, straight, with [[spoiler: Ryuichi]] making an open declaration of love to Shuichi and Tohma apparently forgetting that he has a wife.
47	* MayDecemberRomance [[spoiler: Noriko and Tetsuya.]]
48	* MeetCute: Yuki and Shuichi do this twice; first when Yuki catches Shuichi's lyrics sheet in the park, and then when Shuichi jumps in front of his car in the rain. Hiro and Ayaka also do this, when he and Shuichi save her from the guys who were hassling her.
49	* MoodWhiplash: Any time a scene starts getting serious or dramatic it ‘’will’’ be derailed into over-the-top SuperDeformed madness.
50	* MythologyGag: Tatsuha and Ryuichi share their names with the characters in Help! who were used as the basis for Yuki and Shuichi. Tatsuha's [[StalkerWithACrush ''thing'']] for Ryuichi is a reference to this.
51	* NoAccountingForTaste: Shuichi and Yuki. Noriko and her husband as well. Also Tohma and Mika. Kind of a running theme in this series.
52	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Not in the standard sense, but both Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper both contain blatant [[{{Homage}} Homages]] to actual musicians:
53	** Nittle Grasper has the most direct example with Tohma, who [[http://oi57.tinypic.com/2iw0o02.jpg is a very obvious]] CaptainErsatz {{Expy}} of Daisuke Asakura and Ryuichi is [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute suspiciously similar]] to Hiroyuki Takami, the other member of access, a RealLife music group Murakami's circle was well known for writing {{Yaoi}} {{Doujinshi}} about prior to Gravitation. Tohma and Ryuichi look nearly identical to the way [[http://i60.tinypic.com/ot235f.jpg Daisuke and Hiro were drawn in the doujinshi.]]
54	** Bad Luck shares a similar origin: [[http://oi61.tinypic.com/728g.jpg their designs are recycled from the yaoi doujinshi that Murakami's circle also drew]] about Music/{{Bz}}, and have the same positions in Bad Luck as their RealLife inspirations. This influence became more of an artifact once Suguru was added and Shuichi's design became influenced by Music/TMRevolution.
55	* OcularGushers: A common feature of Murakami’s flavor of SuperDeformed.
56	* OneHeadTaller: Yuki and Shuichi.
57	* {{Paparazzi}}: Once Bad Luck hits the big time, they become a recurring obstacle/antagonist.
58	* PetTheDog: Yuki starts getting these moments in Episode 8.
59	* {{Pilot}}: Gravitation is an expanded rewrite of an earlier doujinshi series by Murakami, collected under the title of Help! It was about a singer named Ryuichi Sakuma and how his relationship with novelist Tatsuha Uesugi affected his work in his band, Nettle Grasper. Ryuichi and Tatsuha were used as [[Administrivia/TheSameButMoreSpecific the basis for Shuichi and Yuki]] [[MythologyGag as well influencing the characterization of their namesakes]] in Gravitation. Secondary characters from Help! were moved into Gravitation without any real changes to their names or personalities. Short chapter summaries of Help! can be found [[https://web.archive.org/web/20050311050810/http://www.nittlegrasper.com/nittles/gravitation_nittles_help.shtml here.]]
60	* PopStarComposer: Daisuke Asakura, who composed and produced the entire OVA soundtrack. He also produced the TV series soundtrack and composed or co-wrote all of the vocal tracks and their remixes. (Koji Sakurai wrote the rest of the BGM tracks for the TV series.) This is especially important to note given the NoCelebritiesWereHarmed situation.
61	* PuppyDogEyes: Murakami’s brand of SuperDeformed features a very, er, special variation of this.
62	* RapeAsBackstory: See SympatheticMurderBackstory below.
63	* RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler: Shuichi is gang-raped on the orders of rival musician Taki Aizawa in order to protect Yuki's reputation. But though Shuichi suffers physical injuries over it and has serious angst over it, he gets over the ordeal relatively quickly. The fact that he's able to do so [[OOCIsSeriousBusiness makes Yuki cry for the first time in six years.]]]]
64	* RearrangeTheSong: The ''Gravitation TV-tracks'' soundtrack consists of multiple versions of the four vocal tracks ("SUPER DRIVE", "Glaring Dream", "Sleepless beauty" and "THE RAGE BEAT"), with one piano/synth version and one electronica-based remix alongside the main version ("SUPER DRIVE" also receives a variant on acoustic guitar.) The "sacred beauty air mix" of "Sleepless beauty" was turned into a vocal version in the anime, when Ryuichi sings to crash Bad Luck's concert.
65	* RefugeInAudacity: Once the DenserAndWackier sets in, the entire manga is basically this.
66	* ReusedCharacterDesign: Gravitation recycled the character designs from Help! which was already reusing the designs from Murakami’s access and Music/{{Bz}} doujinshi. See also NoCelebritiesWereHarmed above.
67	* ShoutOut: The series is built on this trope, and becomes immensely more enjoyable when you know exactly what is being referenced and why. The most obvious is Bad Luck and Nittle Grasper's origins (see NoCelebritiesWereHarmed above). The storyline about Shuichi obsessing over going to Disneyland with Yuki (and chanting "Mickey " repeatedly) is one enormous shout-out to Daisuke Asakura's well-known love of all things WesternAnimation/MickeyMouse. There's also a glance at an Oricon chart featuring [[Music/TMRevolution S.M.Revolution.]]
68	** Features a character named [[Music/XJapan Yoshiki]] in a series featuring part of the Japanese music scene [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything who just happens to be transgender,]] though if Yoshiki's name is really a shout-out, YMMV on whether it’s meant to be a positive ShoutOut or more of a TakeThat to Music/XJapan and/or VisualKei.
69	* SlapSlapKiss: Much of Shuichi and Yuki's interaction in the first episode consists of Shuichi yelling at Yuki that he has no right to insult his lyrics and Yuki coolly responding that he really has no talent, climaxing in a kiss. Interestingly, this WillTheyOrWontThey phase is much shorter than typical because Shuichi from then on becomes [[ClingyJealousGirl completely devoted]] to Yuki, who plays the part of the [[{{Tsundere}} cranky but ultimately protective lover.]]
70	** 80% of Shuichi and Reiji's interaction boils down to this, but with grudging acknowledgment rather than actual kissing [[spoiler: save for one incident where she finally gave up on him.]]
71	* SmokingIsCool: The entire Uesugi Clan. And K. And Noriko. And Hiro.
72	* SpeakIllOfTheDead: Very rarely does anyone say anything nice about [[spoiler: [[AssholeVictim Yuki Kitazawa.]]]]
73	* StupidSexyFlanders: Shuichi might be a victim with a notoriously open mind, considering how he never shows any interest in men except for Yuki; particularly in the manga, where he actually has some brief displays of interest in ''women.''
74	* SuperDeformed: Quite a bit of the MoodWhiplash, especially in the manga, can be attributed to this. Murakami has a very special, very over-the-top and extreme way of doing this.
75	* SympatheticMurderBackstory: [[spoiler: Yuki]] killed someone but it was in self-defense, they were trying to rape him. This trope is actually {{Invoked\|Trope}} in-universe when he reveals it [[spoiler: because he does so in an effort to repel Shuichi. It only makes Shuichi like him more.]]
76	* TerribleTrio: Ask.
77	* ThereAreNoTherapists: Averted. Yuki starts seeing a psychiatrist who is actually good at her job, prescribing him meds and giving him proper counseling.
78	* ThereWasADoor: Shuichi does this ''a lot.''
79	* UpdatedRerelease: The infamous [[HotterAndSexier Remix,]] doujinshi by Murakami and her doujin circle, that is ''far'' more explicit than the original series. And then the ''Megamix'' series, which is even more so.
80	* WrestlerInAllOfUs: OVA Shuichi handing out ''German Suplexes.''

Context Manga / Gravitation