Arisa

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Arisa and Tsubasa

Arisa is a shojo manga written by Natsumi Ando, illustrator of Kitchen Princess.

Tsubasa Uehara and Arisa Sonoda are twin sisters who haven't seen each other for three years due to their parents' divorce. They'd communicated through letters, but finally decide to meet each other again.

Tsubasa and Arisa are really different.

Arisa is her class' rep, has the best grades and a lot of friends. She is really good natured and everybody likes her.

Tsubasa is known as the "Demon Princess" of her school, because she is a Delinquent who always gets into fights, and her only friends are boys because the girls are dead scared of her. Also, she's got really bad grades.

So, when Tsubasa says that she's envious of her, Arisa suggests they change places for one day.

However, there are things about Arisa and her school that she hasn't mentioned to Tsubasa -- dangerous things. And when Arisa tries to kill herself in front of Tsubasa and falls into a coma, Tsubasa decides that she must know the truth about Arisa in order to save her.

And then she learns of the King...

Tropes used in Arisa include:

Tsubasa: "How come only the guys befriend me?!"

  • Only Sane Man: Tsubasa, Takeru, and Midori, the only people not being manipulated/hypnotized by the King.
  • Parental Neglect: Shizuka's foster mom.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: Arisa and Tsubasa. So, so much.
  • Poor Communication Kills: Arisa tried to kill herself because she overheard Tsubasa telling her father how homesick she was and she was afraid this would get her taken away from her mother.
  • Purple Eyes: Tsubasa and Arisa have them.
  • Put on a Bus: Mariko.
  • Red Herring: There are quite a lot of suspects for the King's identity. Namely, Arisa who in fact was the King, but not the current, corrupt King, Manabe, Mariko, Shizuka, Midori and Kudou. Subverted with some of them.
  • Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Those who betray or doubt the King are punished by him and ostracized from the class.
  • Same Content, Different Rating: The manga was bumped from a teen rating to an older teen rating due to mature and darker themes.[context?]
  • Secret Keeper: Only Takeru, Manabe, and the King know Tsubasa's posing as Arisa at first.
    • Class 2B shares the secret of the King, as well.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Sure seems like it, with Arisa flatlining and Tsubasa seemingly pushed down the stairs/beaten to death after her identity is exposed. They got better, though Arisa got amnesia and Tsubasa still doesn't suspect Arisa's boyfriend of anything.
  • Shrinking Violet: Shiori.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang
  • Slipping a Mickey: Tsubasa's tricked into eating drugged apple cookies, making her too tired to resist being pushed into the pool.
  • Stalker Shrine: Manabe has one to Arisa, though it's not out of love.
  • Taking You with Me: Possibly what the foreign exchange student is doing with his class: since he's going to die of a weak heart he may as well make everyone else's lives miserable by turning them into a vigilante mob and framing them for arson and murder.
  • Teens Are Monsters
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tsubasa is the tomboy, Arisa the girly girl. Subverted though, because Tsubasa wants to be girly.

Tsubasa: "I want to have girl friends and act all cutesy with them, god damn it!"

  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Invoked; Tsubasa fakes amnesia while pretending to be Arisa. Arisa wakes up from her coma with amnesia.
  • Twin Telepathy: Seen in Volume 8. When Tsubasa is hurt, Arisa flatlines in the hospital. Tsubasa even says not to underestimate the bond between twins as she races to help Arisa.
  • Unperson: Class 2B does this to people marked as traitors.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Class 2B in general, and the King's Chosen Ones.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: At least three of the King's pawns had very sad lives which made it easier for the real King to manipulate them the girl who tried to drug Tsubasa and drown her was shunned and bullied; the girl who pushed Tsubasa off a cliff and beat her own aunt tried to commit suicide and is now paralysed; the guy who tried to burn down a house and apparently stabbed a robber(?) has a weak heart and has been effectively abandoned by his parents.
    • Arisa's boyfriend wants to "erase" Tsubasa because she accidentally drove Arisa to suicide.
  • Yandere: Mariko for Arisa. She gets better.

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