If I’d known 5 Ai no Rule
Anyway, the story is about a girl named Maho Asano, dirt poor and working for a small publishing office. One day her sister Rie, who wants to be a model, runs into a guy named Takami in a bar who gives her a lot of money. When Maho goes to return the money she discovers he’s a top guy in a PR company, and he offers her a job as a copywriter in the new startup he wants to found.
So far, so good, but then things get complicated. It turns out Takami is an expert user and manipulator who is doing everything out of his own shady motives. To that end, when he discovers that Rie is in love with him, he pits her against his fiancee Yuri, with tragic consequences for both girls. Having discovered Takami’s true nature, Maho decides to stick around (you think she’d just quit her job and go back to the countryside but nooo) and “become a woman worthy of him”, I quote. The story ends with Takami on the verge of success, but having lost something very precious to him at the same time.
As expected of something written in 1976 the art is ancient, but the fashions still look good. Maho is a bland spectator of all the colorful drama going on and the reader never gets into her head, but the crazy happenings in the story more than make up for that. It started a bit slow but it really got going after a while, so it’s just too bad that Ichijo Yukari never got round to finishing it.
If you like afternoon soap operas like The Young and the Restless, this is pretty much the same thing without the sex. Enjoy.
