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1[[quoteright:270:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lady_15.jpg]]
2''Lady!! (レディ!!)'' is a Japanese shōjo manga by Creator/YokoHanabusa. It was published by Akita Shoten in the magazine Hitomi Comics from 1987 to 1993 and collected in 12 tankoubon volumes. The manga series was adapted into two anime television series, entitled, ''Lady Lady!! (レディレディ!!)'' and its sequel ''Hello! Lady Lynn (ハロー!レディリン)'', produced by Creator/ToeiAnimation Co., Ltd.
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4Its main character is a five-year-old girl named Lynn Russell, the daughter of an English Lord (Sir George Russell/Viscount Marble) and his Japanese second wife (Misuzu Midorikawa). During The Roaring Twenties, Lynn has lived all of her life in Japan, but when she's five her mom decides to travel to England with her so she can meet up with her dad. Too bad that, as Lynn and Misuzu were on their way, their car gets in an accident and Misuzu dies while shielding Lynn...
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6Lynn wakes up at the hospital and George is next to her. He doesn't tell her off the bat that Misuzu has just kicked it, though; since she's too young to properly understand death, he just tells her she's gone to a "far away place since it was God's will" and doesn't clear it up. Then he takes Lynn to the family home, Marble Mansion, where she has to adapt herself to the British way of life. Though she has the support of her father and her half-sister Sarah Russell, Lynn is bullied by her paternal cousins Thomas and Mary Wavebury, and the Wavebury's mother Baroness Madeleine doesn't like her either. However, even after properly realising that her mom has died, Lynn decides to not give up and promises to her mom's spirit and to herself to become a proper lady and reach for her happiness.
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8!!The whole ''Lady'' manga/series has the following tropes:
9* AdaptationDistillation: The anime changes a lot of content from the manga including [[spoiler: George's marriage to Madeleine, Lynn attending school in Japan, Mary coming to Japan to live with Lynn's grandparents, George's wedding and Sarah and Arthur's wedding]]. Instead, Lynn never returns to Japan and the characters she meets there are woven into the second season under new names, [[spoiler: while Mary becomes the final villain of the series]].
10* AdaptationalAlternateEnding: [[spoiler:The anime ends with Lynn winning the Lady's Crest and George never marrying Madeleine, ultimately surviving.]]
11* AllGirlsLikePonies: The second season takes place in an elite school for the English, and has a whole club of horse girls - Lynn, Cathy, Vivian and Betty, amongst others, love horses and horse-riding. Lynn later ropes her friends Dorothy and Lara into joining it.
12* AlternateCharacterReading: Lynn's name is written in kana and can be read as "Rin". Sometimes she is also referred to by the name "Rin Midorikawa", coming from both this and her mom's maiden name.
13* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: Has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ9mQanyZdI French]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRf1HX_0yR0 Italian]], [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wxQd6iaFJ0 Korean]] and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxlAucJgDkQ Arabic]] ones.
14* AmbiguousTimePeriod: Supposedly taking place in the 1920's, the manga has things such as push-button phones (when candlestick phones would be the norm) and characters dressing in more contemporary fashion.
15* AristocratsAreEvil: Madeleine Waverly is an aristocrat and an unlikable bitch, as her two children. [[spoiler: Duke Warbawn is also quite mean due to his pride, pressuring George to go the GoldDigger way via marrying Madeleine and refusing to meet Lynn due to being the kid of George's second marriage ''and'' half-foreigner.]]
16* BatteredBouquet: When Lynn shows up to the Marble Mansion for the first time, Sarah refuses to acknowledge her as her little sister. Lynn decides to earn Sarah's friendship by surprising her with some flowers and spends the day in the Russell's garden picking out the prettiest ones. When she gives them to Sarah, Sarah, who at this point is angry that Lynn won't take the hint, smacks them away and causes them to burst all over room. Lynn is so hurt she runs away crying, while Sarah tries to hide her own shame. When Arthur retrieves a fainted Lynn, Lynn once again presents Sarah with the flowers she picked. This time, Sarah accepts.
17* TheBigRace: [[spoiler: In the GrandFinale, Lynn rides Andrews in the Olympic games's qualifier race, competing against everyone else from her school, as all the friends she's made throughout the series watch in anticipation. Lynn wins, not only receiving the Lady's Crest, but another unintended reward - her RacistGrandpa who refused to acknowledge her entire life for being half-Japanese, Duke Warbawn, finally accepting her.]]
18* BlackAndWhiteMorality: The original manga by Yoko Hanabusa is this. You're either 100% on board with Lynn, or an unlikable bitch, a jealous rival or a HateSink of some kind. The vast majority of the female cast despise Lynn for being more [[TheAce skilled/"better" than them]] (Sonoko, Sarah, Mary) or because [[DudeMagnet Lynn]] has a shot with the guy they like ([[spoiler:Cathy]] and again, Mary). Lynn's stepmother is also a horrible, abusive woman, unlike her father who's an angel. The anime adaptation adds grey zones here and there (e.g. Sophie is mean to Lynn because of [[spoiler: her mother's abuse]], Mary has a few moments of regret and shock after bullying Lynn), while toning down the unlikable characters Lynn meets and and giving them some AdaptationalNiceGuy.
19* BreakingTheFourthWall: [[spoiler: In the GrandFinale, after Lynn's glittery and lavish ImagineSpot, she turns to the viewer and thanks them for watching. She then states that from now onwards, she will be a ProperLady, making it sort of a DistantFinale.]]
20* CatsAreMean: Subverted and played straight. Mary's cat Prince is brash and aggressive, but Lynn's cat Queen is much sweeter. [[spoiler: When Mary disowns Prince, he's adopted by Lynn and behaves a little better. Later, Prince and Queen have kittens together.]]
21* ChildrenAreInnocent: Lynn and her classmates are all bundles of energy that love cute things and making each other happy.
22* ComingOfAgeStory: ''Lady'' starts with 5 year old Lynn losing her mother in a car accident, her older half-sister wanting nothing to do with her, her own father being away at work and her grandfather rejecting her for being half-Japanese. Lynn also faces severe bullying and maltreatment from her father's would-be wife and her two children, the Waverlys. However, Lynn's spirit isn't broken, and she promises to her mother that she will be a courageous, kind and beautiful ProperLady. One by one, this PluckyGirl rises through each adversary to find happiness no matter what.
23* CreatorsCultureCarryover: The anime has Thomas Waverly (British) bowing to his grandfather upon greeting him...the same Thomas Waverly who wants Lynn to go back to Japan....
24* CreatorProvincialism: Creator/YokoHanabusa is a fully Japanese woman who wrote a manga about a half-Japanese girl named Lynn in England. She's never been there but loves the old England/classic Victorian trope. WordOfGod is that Lynn was made half-Japanese so Japanese readers could understand her predicament.
25* CreatorThumbprint: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youko_Hanabusa Notice]] something about Creator/YokoHanabusa's works?[[note]]They all feature UsefulNotes/{{England}} in same way or another[[/note]].
26* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Arthur and Edward refer to Lynn as "that Chinese girl". This isn't intentional racism, more like them simply not having met a Japanese person before.
27** Also, [[spoiler: Duke Warbawn is pressures George to marry Madeleine to have a [[HeirClubforMen "proper heir"]] since full-English Sarah is a girl as well as sickly and half-English Lynn is the kid of "an unknown Eastern woman".]] Sexism ''and'' racism, [[SarcasmMode yay]]!
28* DubInducedPlotlineChange: Of sorts in the Arabic dub. The original ''Lady!!'' anime series was composed of two seasons, ''Lady Lady!!'' and ''Hello! Lady Lynn''. The [[UsefulNotes/{{Jordan}}ian]] company that dubbed the anime added the episodes of the second season to the episodes of the first one, and also left out the last final episodes (which were mainly compilation/recaps of the prior ones).
29* ExactEavesdropping: [[spoiler: Both Sophie and Vivian happen to hear Mary's plan of {{blackmail}}ing Lynn at different points in the anime, and tell her to ignore it and follow her dreams]].
30* FishOutOfWater: Half-Japanese Lynn must learn how to assimilate in the good ol' U of K. [[spoiler: By the end of the first season, she's embraced her British side and vows to stay in England, and by the end of the second one she's become a ProperLady, just like she's always dreamed.]]
31* {{Foreshadowing}}: [[spoiler: In the ''Lady Lady'' theme song, Lynn has an ImagineSpot where she dances with Arthur. However, while Older!Arthur looks the same, Older!Lynn has long, thin hair and rounder eyes, and looks like ''Sarah''. In the end of the anime, it is actually Sarah who is Arthur's love interest, [[AllLoveIsUnrequited not Lynn]].]]
32* GiantPoofySleeves: The equestrian club uniforms are green, with giant poofy white sleeves.
33* LighterAndSofter: The anime omits [[spoiler: Sonoko's abuse of Lynn with the riding-crop, George's death, and the angst Misuzu's parents have for not treating her right.]]
34* LostWeddingRing: More exactly, [[spoiler: stolen-as-a-cruel-prank "Lady's Key". Luckily, Lynn is able to recover it and in the final episode, uses it to open the box Misuzu gave her.]]
35* LoveDodecahedron: Lynn and Sarah both like Arthur. Edward likes Lynn. [[spoiler: Arthur likes Sarah]]. Unfortunately, [[SchoolIdol Vivian]] also likes Edward. [[AlphaBitch Mary]] is implied to have feelings for Arthur, hence why she blackmailed him to go the ball with her. [[spoiler: By the end of the anime, Lynn ends up with Edward, while Sarah ends up with Arthur.]]
36* {{Melodrama}}: From the point of view of a half-Japanese girl living in Britain as a noblewoman, kept in the dark about the fact that her mother was killed off in a car accident and her grandfather refuses to look at her for being mixed-race. Lynn only finds out because her father's [[WickedStepmother potential new wife]], and her two children rub it in her face. Lynn continues to face maltreatment from them [[spoiler: and upon hearing that her father may marry the aforementioned woman, she's so disgusted she tries to flee back to Japan because she doesn't want her newfound older sister to suffer at her hands, and it takes a lot of convincing for her to stay and the marriage to break off. And the tragedy doesn't even end there, as the woman's daughter is angry about the rejection and schemes to get revenge on the Russells. There's a reason that this series has many sequel manga and a second series[[note]]''Hello! Lady Lynn'', which is sometimes referred to as the second season of the first anime series, ''Lady Lady''[[/note]] that had nothing to do with the manga - there's just so much material to choose from...]]
37* MerchandiseDriven: The main reason a second anime series was produced was because the first one successfully sold a lot of toys. Hence the CanonForeigner Lady's Crest gemstone being introduced - Toei thought that it would drive more sales, and they were right.
38* NobilityMarriesMoney: Lynn's father is the Viscount Marble/George Russell, a British aristocrat. When George was young, he was married to his college sweetheart Frances Russell, with who he had his first daughter Sarah, and after she died in childbirth he married a Japanese woman named Misuzu Midorikawa, with who he had Lynn. Lynn lived all her life in Japan and moved to England at the age of five, but Misuzu died in a car accident on the way. Now that George is single and eligible for marriage, his father, Duke Warbawn, pressures him to marry Baron Madeleine Waverly for her wealth because he's [[RichInDollarsPoorInSense in tons of debt]] for his poor financial decisions. Even though Madeleine has enough money to pay off his debts, George doesn't want to marry her, and opts for earning the money by more ethical means. As the Russells become poorer and poorer, Duke Warbawn's pressure increases, to the point he even offers to accept Lynn (who he previously excluded for being half Japanese) if George marries Madeleine.
39* OfficialCouple: [[spoiler: In the manga, Arthur and Sarah become a married couple and Sarah moves to the Brighton house to live as his lawfully wedded wife. Lynn is happy for them, even if she couldn't attend the wedding due to being in Japan. Edward is then inspired to be honest about his feelings for Lynn, and begins being himself around her more. She realizes she loves him too, and they similarly get married when they're of age. In the anime, while they don't marry, it's Arthur & Sarah and Lynn & Edward.]]
40* OneSteveLimit: Sort of averted. Edward's full name is Edward Philip Brighton (though this is only mentioned in the manga) and in the anime, there's an original character named ''Philip'' Anderson.
41* PhenotypeStereotype: The half-English Lynn is a blonde with green eyes, rather than dark-haired like her mother (though in the anime, her eyes are reddish-pink instead).
42* PinkIsFeminine: Many female characters (Lynn, Madeleine, Mary, Vivian) wear pink, though there are exceptions like Sarah/Isabelle (blue) and Sophie (green).
43* PrivateTutor:
44** Sarah is a DelicateAndSickly IllGirl who's always confined to her room and can rarely go outside. As a result, she has one.
45** Madeleine hires one for Thomas and Mary, but the two proceed to taunt her and make her stay miserable. When they're caught, they pin the blame on Lynn. The tutor manages to figure out Lynn is innocent and tells Madeleine, only to be screamed at and then dismissed from service. As she leaves the Marble Mansion, she fondly remembers little Lynn.
46* PromotionToParent: One of Lynn's classmates, Suzie, is being raised by her eldest brother Eric, alongside her other siblings Paul and Nancy.
47* RaceForYourLove: Not romantic example [[spoiler: back then]]: [[spoiler: Edward and Arthur pull this to convince Lynn to not escape from home and return to Japan.]] In the anime movie, [[spoiler: Sarah and George]] do it instead.
48* TheRival: Lynn has several for the ''Lady's Crest'', the trophy for her school's best and more ladylike sportswoman. Vivian, Sophie, Catherine (FriendlyRival) and [[spoiler: Mary]] are among them.
49* {{Shoujo}}: ''Lady!!'' is shoujo to the core, except it has a "hoity-toity elite" filter, and is set in contemporary Britain. It encompasses many stock shoujo tropes such as the CheerfulChild protagonist with a DarkAndTroubledPast, a hypercompetetive school laden with {{Academic Alpha Bitch}}es, a LoveDodecahedron with the main character at the center and some additional drama with the bad blood between [[spoiler: the Russells and the Waverlys]].
50* ShoutOut: There's an episode where Lynn attacks Thomas after weeks and weeks of bullying, and Thomas' mother punishes Lynn as a result while coddling her baby boy. This is near identical to a ''Manga/CandyCandy'' episode where Neil does the exact same thing to Candy. Some people even [[https://www.dessins-animes.net/t18421-similitudes-entre-candy-et-gwendoline point out]] that shot-for-shot, the scenes are similar.
51* SnowMeansDeath: Narrowly averted when [[spoiler: Mary steals the Lady's Key, and Lynn goes out in the snow to search for it. Lynn ends up going missing, and Mary fears that Lynn might have actually ''died'' while looking for it and is so ashamed she puts the key back (being a rare moment of humility for her, considering she's usually a ManipulativeBitch with a LackOfEmpathy). [[CoolHorse Alexandra]] finds a fainted Lynn in the wild and brings her back the Marble Mansion, and Mary is never found out for causing the whole situation.]]
52* SurpriseCarCrash: This is how Lynn's mother died - she was reminsicing about finally reuniting with George at the Marble Mansion with Lynn, but suddenly, another vehicle appeared and the driver swerved to avoid them....
53* TenderTomboyishnessFoulFemininity: Every AlphaBitch Lynn meets (Sophie, Mary, Vivian) is always hyperfeminine and place great importance on their appearance, desirability to men and popularity. Downplayed with Lynn - while she is girly herself, she enjoys "boyish" actions such as riding horses and wild sports.
54* TimeSkip: The first part takes place when Lynn is a little girl, the rest when she's a pre-teenager. [[spoiler: And the end happens ''several'' years later.]]
55* TragicKeepsake: Lynn's "Lady Key", a jewelry piece that originally belonged to Misuzu. [[spoiler:It's actually the key that opens a vault keeping a valuable heirloom of the Russell clan, but it's not revealed until almost the end of ''Hello! Lady Lynn''.]]
56* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: The car accident that cost Misuzu her life and sent Lynn to Marble Mansion was caused by their car swerving to avoid hitting a child chasing after her and her friends's wayward ball. (In the anime, their car collided headlong with a truck instead.)
57* WorldOfTechnicolorHair: The women of the Waverly family have pink hair, while Vivian, Jeanne and Sophie have purple hair. Cathy has greenish-blue hair. Quite a few background characters have blue or purple hair.
58* VictorianNovelDisease: Whatever Sarah and Isabelle have - they constantly faint, have low energy and in Sarah's case, very overwhelmed on stress. [[WMG/{{Lady}} WMG]] is that Sarah has hypothyroidism.

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