A young, relatively average, girl-crazy guy is pursued by two girls, a blonde and a brunette, who are also friends except where it comes to him. The brunette is the more sophisticated of the two, and the one the guy seems to prefer; the blonde is more openly interested in him than her sometimes cold friend. On the other hand, Betty is the cooler of the two, a direct reversal of the KOR situation.
A young, dark-haired, attractive, sword-fighting ruler of a kingdom, falls in love with a 15-year-old schoolgirl from another world who wins over EVERYONE with her optimism, personal strength, and short little skirt. She maintains her feelings for an attractive comrade in arms, however, which you might say bothers His Majesty just a tad.
Sano, by the way, is the future husband of my friend Rachel. She also likes Amiboshi, of Fushigi Yuugi. Same voice actor. Van (a Rachel guy) and Chichiri (my first husband) are voiced by the same person (try and process THAT). He also did Kamui's (Rach) voice, and Koji's (mine - he's Tasuki's dark-haired friend.) Allen and Keisuke (Miaka's attractive brother) also share an actor. I understand hiring many of the top voice actors for your big projects (which is what most of the series we even hear of tend to be), but nonetheless, it's a bit weird. For me. Maybe not for you. A little information snippet: Allen and Amano, understandably enough, share an actor. So do Millerna and Hitomi's best friend from Earth. Interesting, ne?
Don't get me wrong, I adore anime. It's far easier for me to get than manga, though I do have my ways now... However. It seems that whenever a really good manga is made into a really good anime, they cut out much of the manga story, add in stuff of their own, and then end the anime before the manga's done. This is especially egregious with Kenshin, it seems. At one point I kept two browser windows open so I could read and follow one pivotal scene between Kenshin and Kaoru that simply isn't animated, at least not yet. Maybe in the OVA, but I thought the OVA only covered the events in the past that caused the revenge story arc, not the revenge arc itself. Other examples: Fushigi Yuugi. "Let's create an OVA all our own, then severely condense the second part of the manga when we animate it!" Ugh.
Yes, I realize my words above sound like a purist rant. But I'm not, entirely. It'd be nice to trust to just one definitive version of something. But if there's noticeable differences between two versions of the same story, oh well. Ranma's a good example. I'm no great fan of the "Outta Control" series, which seems not to be based on the manga. But I don't see anything wrong with hinting that Shampoo might have feelings for Mousse, even if the manga didn't have that. It's the fanfic deal. I can read several fanfics giving entirely different followup endings to, say, Final Fantasy 3; I don't take them as canon, but I enjoy them and go on. That's all. I will take a stand against the Ukyo-Ryoga thing, as it's just WRONG, and I like my fanfics to stay in character, but that's it. For me, the Ranma anime (including the dubbed version) stands on its own; it's the definitive version for so many people it's ridiculous to even try with the "I don't accept Viz's translations," or "The anime's wrong here." You can apply that to yourself if you want, but not the rest of the world.
Yes I'm opinionated.
For those who don't know, Ayashi no Ceres is the manga project that Watase-sama took up after finishing Fushigi Yuugi. The story (from what I've gathered from webpages) concerns a "bright, shiny high school girl," 16 years old, who inherits the power of "Tennyo," which seems to translate as "heavenly maiden" most of the time. She's either a descendant of the Tennyo, a reincarnation, or both. The Tennyo story is where I draw the parallel, though. For those who haven't seen it (it wasn't on the scale of, say, The Matrix) The Secret of Roan Inish is one of those small, interesting movies that's more focused on telling a story than getting the stars naked. It was, I think, made in Ireland, and certainly cast and filmed there. Forgive me, because my writing has gone all to hell in the this paragraph. The story involves a little girl who finds out that, years ago, one of her ancestors fell in love with a selkie (a woman who, on putting on a sealskin, becomes a seal). He saw her bathing, with her sealskin off, and he took the skin away and hid it, then went to her. She fell in love with him as well, and because she couldn't return to the sea, she married him. Years later, one of their children asked her about it, not knowing... she took the sealskin back and went back to the sea, having no choice. Afterward, the seals always watched over the family, as long as they lived on the island where she had lived.
Then, there's Ayashi no Ceres. (The name more or less means Unearthly Ceres.) The Tennyo story is very similar to the selkie one... a fisherman sees several Tennyo bathing, and finds their robes hanging on a tree. He takes one and returns home. All of the Tennyo go back to Heaven except for the one whose robe was stolen. She finds him and asks him to return it to her, but he wouldn't. She "cried and cried and became the man's wife." She had children, and hears one of them singing a song that tells her where her robe is. She takes the robe and goes back to Heaven, leaving behind her family.
There's much more to the manga, and the movie (which was based off a novel) than just the two legends, but I thought the parallels were really interesting. I got my Ayashi no Ceres info from:
Tasuki no Miko's Ayashi no Ceres Page - Another excellent page from Tasuki no Miko. Plenty to see and do, and like all her pages, it's well-done.
Yuu Watase's Ayashi no Ceres - Another good page, one that (yataa!) pairs manga summaries with scans. Watch out for spoilers, though, they're not confined to the summaries.
The triple Goddess, with the aspect of maiden, mother, and crone, is a concept I know of but can't speak of with any real authority. I associate the idea with Wicca; others will associate it with Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Whatever works for you. The idea of the three roles for women, corresponding to stages in their lives, is also carried out in anime. Except the roles aren't quite the same. It's not maiden, mother, and crone; it's tomboy, homemaker, and temptress. AKA Skuld, Belldandy, and Urd. Or Akane, Kasumi and Nabiki. Or to a lesser degree, Kaoru. Tomoe and Megumi, orrrrrrrrrr.... can't think of any others. Not specifically. I did notice the pattern in some random thing Animerica profiled that was about ninjas. I believe it may also hold true for Maho Tsukai Tai, though I didn't see enough of it to be able to tell accurately. The interesting thing isn't the mother figure, which makes sense, or the maiden, though that one's usually a bit more combative than your stereotypical European maiden. My favorite is the temptress, a term that doesn't do the role justice. Look at the ones I've compiled. Nabiki, Urd, Megumi... all are intelligent, two doctors, the other a con woman. They dress more overtly sexy than the other two do; the mother-types favor long dresses, aprons, etc. Unless they're in Ruroni Kenshin, in which case all the groups wear kimonos. No matter what series you're from, if you're the Housewife, you can cook. The maidens are the most violent, and tend to stick to their school uniforms, unrevealing, unremarkable regular clothes, or martial arts and athletic uniforms. Kaoru's the exception; she has a pretty good selection of kimonos, which are apparently quite sexy. But like all the other maidens, she can't cook when she tries. Temptresses are often above trying. They keep up a front of sarcasm if not downright bitchiness, despite often having manifestly deeper feelings under the surface. See the "Kenshin didn't say goodbye to me" scene, or the part where Urd picks an exhausted Keiichi up by the head and deposits him in bed, if you don't believe me. I have no proof for Nabiki, but that's okay. I've probably rambled on this long enough, so it's time for the next one.
These, too, follow a pattern. Check out Orange Road (Madoka and Hikaru), Kenshin (Kaoru and Tomoe), and Fushigi Yuugi (Miaka and Yui). There's the more mature girl, physically prettier, evidently more intelligent, but also more reserved, seemingly haughty, or perhaps just WEIRD (::grrTomoegrrr::). Then there's the younger one, cute rather than beautiful or sexy, much more emotionally open, friendly and outgoing, often willing to make the first move emotionally (or in Hikaru's place, willing to hump a guy's back in a department store.) She may also appear to be stupid, but Kaoru's NOT, dammit! Hikaru's not really stupid, just deluded and annoying and 13. Miaka is pretty dense. She's not academically intelligent (no attention span) but she can be perceptive about people when she tries. I'm not saying these are the only types of female characters in anime, just that it's interesting how often the opposition is used, especially for romantic rivals. Honorary member of this: Maison Ikkoku, with Kyoko as the mysterious older woman and that short-haired girl whose name I don't know as the chipper young girl.