Category: Manga

Futari no Kimochi volume 1

The official English title of Futari no Kimochi (ふたりの気持ち) is “Feeling of Lovers.” It’s an 8-volume romance manga by Takami Mako, who appears to specialize in relationships between younger men and older women.

Kan (18) is in love with his brother’s ex-wife Fuyumi (23). In order to be together they’ll have to overcome their age difference and the inevitable opposition from their families.

Like most romantic series, the conclusion was a given from the start. Of course they’re going to end up together, it’s just a matter of how. What I wanted to see was the romance would develop and how the author would handle this unusual premise. I didn’t bank on the plot crawling along at a snail’s pace or the characters being childish, petty and completely unlikeable. Kan gets a pass for being 18, but Fuyumi is even more spoiled, naive and empty-headed. They make a good (idiotic) couple, but not one worth reading about.

Nothing much happens in volume 1. Fuyumi and Kan reconnect 3 years after the former’s divorce. They start dating pretty much right away (Kan first kisses her in chapter 1!) and then they spend the rest of the book having silly misunderstandings and petty little fights. “OMG he’s talking to another girl/she’s talking to another guy, s/he doesn’t like me after all!” Clear up one problem and another one arises, just as childish and petty as the last. If that’s what I wanted I’d just read a regular shoujo manga.

I skipped the rest of the books and read the blurb for volume 8 to find out how it ended. Predictably enough Kan’s parents have a fit when they find out the two are dating, so Kan and Fuyumi run off and shack up together and eventually have a baby. In the end the two families kind of make up and the two lovers and their baby attend Kan’s brother’s second wedding. So happy I saved myself several hours worth of reading teenage-level excrement in manga form.

What annoys me the most is that the romance could have been very easily derailed if Kan’s parents had just accepted the relationship in the first place. It’s pretty clear the two of them were getting off on the secrecy and sneaking around, so adding more drama and creating an “Us against the World” situation was a surefire way to make sure they ended up together. Especially since her mother-in-law was the main reason why Fuyumi divorced Kan’s brother in the first place. A pointed “It’s so nice to have you back in the family!” would have gone a long way towards cooling her ardor.

…You know a romance manga has gone all wrong when you’re rooting for the evil mother-in-law…

Fushigi no Kuni no Sen’ichiya manga review

Also known as A Thousand and One Nights in Wonderland, Fushigi no Kuni no Sen’ichiya is Sone Masako’s ancient shoujo classic about a princess who is brought up as a prince to save her life… who later turns into a real prince and lives happily ever after with the help of his magical horse Hendek Atlatan.

That’s the cliff-notes version. It’s hard to get across in so few words just how fun and silly and heartwarming this manga is. A lot of the fun comes from the “Thousand and One Nights” part, where the author plays around with all kinds of fairy-tales and concocts new ones as she goes along. For example Snow White is actually every bit as bitchy and competitive as her stepmother, and Sleeping Beauty is actually a hideous hambeast who is convinced she’s the hottest creature on the planet (and who never gets round to falling asleep). It’s a colorful, magical world full of ghosts, fairies, dragons, immortals, magical earthworms and more.

At the center of all this is our star, Seblan. Probably the first manga character ever with full-blown Gender Dissociative Disorder. In fact, calling him a man in a woman’s body is an understatement, because he’s even more manly than his uncles he grows up with. When a ridiculously convenient dragon’s curse turns him into a man for real, he hardly skips a beat.

Throughout the series, it’s Seblan’s job to roam the world getting into one scrape or another so that his horse Hendek can rescue him with his supernatural knowledge of just about everything. There’s pretty much nothing Hendek does not know and he always manages to save the day somehow. Equus ex Machina, shall we say?

And yet they make such a great team that they’re impossible to dislike. Honest, headstrong, foolish Seblan charges into adventure with wise, longsuffering Hendek backing him up. Together they manage to pull off feat after feat of derring-do across the land. And the best part is, almost no one ever dies. I can probably count on one hand the number of bad guys who were killed off for real in the series, Seblan and Hendek usually managing to trick or trap them somehow and get their way. That’s what contributes to making it such a happy, feelgood series when it’s all said and done.

The one fly in the ointment? The characters of Milty, Seblan’s wife. Ditsy blonde with the IQ of a dead sparrow. Far too much of the series is spent on matters concerning her. First Seblan has to win her hand in marriage. Then he has to save her when she gets kidnapped. Then about 50% of the series consists of Seblan trying to convince her that babies don’t come from a stork (I could feel his blue balls from here). Eventually she gets a clue and settles down a bit, but she still managed to almost get him killed by moving his body when she was expressly told not to. What an idiot.

A fun, happy series all around though. The art is lovely too, for such an old series. I’ll be paying more attention to Sone Masako’s other stuff from now on.

Chou (Super) Virgin manga review

A seven-volume romantic/cross-dressing comedy by Uchida Fujimaru. The protagonist is Hanazono Ippei, a middle-school student who suffers from the interestingly-named “Cherry Boy” Syndrome, which means he freaks out completely whenever he even goes near a girl. Thanks to that he fails an exam for a co-ed high school, which means he loses a bet he had with his dad and has to dress up like a girl and work in their restaurant.

However, Ippei finds out that as a girl he has no problem at all talking to girls and gets a crush on one of the customers on the same day. This is good news for him… right?

Uhh, not quite. It’s never that simple. Dressed as Ichiko, Ippei manages to win Rika (his crush’s) trust while simultaneously sort-of dating her as Ippei. And then there’s the fact that Rika is a pro-wrestler whose her arch-rival falls in love with Ippei, which means you’ve got the beginnings of a far-from-ordinary romantic comedy.

Chou (Super) Virgin! was pretty good, since it had a good balance of romance, action and comedy. Ippei gets involved in pro-wrestling, has to save Rika from the clutches of a rival (who then falls in love with Ichiko), has to navigate his way through several tiffs with Rika, and has to keep his secret from coming out while slowly getting over his Cherry Boy Syndrome issues.

The ending was happy, but left a bit to be desired. SPOILERS: Rika finds out about the deception and is rightfully mad, but then Ippei goes “I love you! I only did this because I love you!” and then everything is somehow okay again and they’re a couple. The ending shows he explained his problem to her and that she forgave him, but it really is sudden. And they haven’t shown how they’re going to resolve the issue of her being 19 and on her own and he being 16 and in school. 10 years from now it won’t even matter, but right now they’re at very different places in life.

But well, all’s well that ends well. It was a fun series, not too many wacky hijinks, an interesting cast, and a happy ending. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Ten yori mo Hoshi yori mo manga review

A classic shoujo romance manga by Akaishi Michiyo. Ten yori mo Hoshi yori mo is at least 35 years old at this point, but a good romance is a good romance. About the only thing “off” is the lack of mobile phones, which made me go “Why don’t you just call him! Oh wait…” many times.

The story is about three high school kids who find themselves with superpowers, the love triangle that develops between them and their quest to find out who they truly are and where those powers came from.

Since it’s that old, I don’t mind spoiling: The girl Mio, and her beloved Sou/Rei turn out to have been Shizuka Gozen and Minamoto Yoshitsune from ancient Japan, finally reunited in the present. The bad guy Tadaomi is Oda Nobunaga reincarnated, meaning he has nothing to do with those two lovers and is just an interloper. He most likely mistook Mio for someone else, but this is never gone into.

The series ends with all three getting shot by policemen who mistake them for monsters. Tadaomi jumps into a fire, and that’s the end of him. Mio and Sou walk into the ocean, where presumably they are finally together in death. It’s possible that Mio used her powers to shield them from the water until they got further away, but not only has she exhausted her powers stopping a tsunami right before, but they have also both been, you know, shot, so it’s unlikely. So yeah, it’s not a very happy ending.

As far as romances go it was good, though. There’s no waffling between lovers, no silly misunderstandings, no petty squabbles between the lovers and lots of love and mutual respect. Mio and Sou find each other early and stay true to each other in the face of adversity. The cast is also kept reasonably small, allowing the story to be focused and fast-paced. I like that. If all shoujo romance series were like Ten Yori Mo, Hoshi Yori Mo, I wouldn’t have a problem with them at all. Except for, you know, the whole miserable ending thing. I still recommend it as a very enjoyable read with memorable characters.

Cherry manga review

Cherry is a short romantic comedy series by Eisaku Kubonouchi. I quit after one volume, then skipped to the end to find out it was all a dream… or was it? The story is about two young adults from the boonies who meet, fall in love “at first sight” and run away together to Tokyo to avoid a forced marriage.

At first Cherry seemed like it would be an interesting look at the difficulties of city life for a pair of outsiders with no money. Can they overcome the barriers, or will they be forced to go home in despair? Will Fuuko’s rich family come looking for her? Will the police? Where will they live? What will they do for money? What— stop worrying. Kubonouchi took the easy way out.

The couple almost immediately run into helpful people who give them a place to live, both Fuuko and her boyfriend find part-time jobs almost immediately, everybody loves the innocent, cheerful Fuuko, and Sakurabou’s only worry becomes “When can I have sex with Fuuko?” Every time he shows up, that’s all he can think about. I felt filthy just reading it, so I quit.

*spoilers for how it ends*
I skipped to the last chapter and it turns out everything was a dream. The house Fuuko supposedly lived in is ruined and empty, the people he “met” are probably people he imagined from reading about them in a magazine, and his ex-girlfriend is the one who runs from her wedding to be with him, not Fuuko. Fuuko never existed in the first place…or did she? There are a couple of problems with this:

1. This setup would have worked for a 1 volume series. After 4 volumes, however, the readers have grown to know and love the cast. Fuuko in particular has been shoved heavily down our throats, and now you say she never existed?
2. Several months must have passed in Sakurabou’s dream. In that time he must have fallen head over heels for Fuuko and forgotten all about his old GF (Meguppe who?). You can’t send him back to the beginning and tell him to re-fall for Meguppe, it’s not so simple.
3. Meguppe leaves her wedding to come see Sakurabou. But he still has no job, no prospects, no place of his own and no proper education. As long as he doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, he can’t take care of anyone else. They have no future.
4. In the original timeline Meguppe turned into a skank who insulted and dumped Sakurabou very cruelly after leaving for Tokyo. Having seen this side of her, he’ll probably never be able to see her in the same light again. At the very least he’ll never trust her, so this relationship is not going to work.

In other words, “It was all just a dream” doesn’t solve anything at all! Thanks for that slap in the face, Kubonouchi. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.