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!
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.
Even though I didn’t understand more than half of it, I really liked this manga. It’s a shame and a surprise no scanlation group has picked up this gem.
Didn’t see this comment till recently, but I agree it was pretty good. I had zero expectations when I first picked it up, so it surprised the hell out of me.
My Japanese has become a lot better and I have imported the manga since my first comment. The first time I read it I used the scanned volumes which I found online, but when you love something you just gotta put your money where your mouth is. So I´m reading it again and enjoy it every bit as much, actually more since I understand most of it now, as the first time.
When looking for more of the same author I was surprised to see only one other series which consists of just two volumes. That´s really disappointing because I was hoping for a lot more since this manga is pretty old.
It’s awesome that your Japanese is coming along so well. Scanlators do their best, but there’s so much manga out there that they’ll never be able to cover everything. That’s not the only reason why I learned Japanese, but it’s part of it. I encourage every serious manga fan to do the same.
Too bad the author gave up on manga. Mangaka are very poorly paid though, so if his other manga didn’t work out then I guess he just gave up. Pity.