Tag: romance

Amateur Slugger manga review

Amateur Slugger is a baseball romance drama manga, this time not about high school baseball or professional baseball but about amateur sandlot teams sponsored by local businesses. Apparently they’re quite common in shopping districts in Japan. Kousuke, a college player, plays for one of those teams. As a high school player his one claim to fame was hitting a homerun off an amazingly good pitcher during his final Koshien tournament. Now, as a sandlot player, Kousuke’s motto is “Don’t put pressure on me.”

One day, however, Yuuki Tsukasa, the girl on the cover, shows up at a game and strikes him out with ease. Turns out she’s the sister of Yuuki Toujiro, the pitcher he hit the homerun off, and she wants revenge. She even promises to give him her first kiss if he ever gets a safe hit off her.
Long story short, he gets the hit and she gives him the kiss. Turns out that while she did start out looking for revenge (because the homerun exacerbated her brother’s already terrible pre-game nervousness), she quickly discovered that Kousuke isn’t a guy who hates pressure, despite his claims, but rather one who performs best under pressure. She decides its her job to provide that pressure and one day get him to move up to a bigger stage in the baseball world. That’s it for the story.
Despite the “1” on the cover, Amateur Slugger is complete at one volume. While the story starts out about Kousuke, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that he’s a boring, overrated player and that Tsukasa is by far the more interesting and promising player. I mean, when you think about it seriously, a player who performs excellently under pressure but is meh everywhere else is basically useless. Sure Kousuke would probably play great in the playoffs, but you wouldn’t even get to the playoffs with him on your team.
01_016Tsukasa, on the other hand, is a fantastic pitcher. Despite being a high schooler of diminutive size, hitting her pitches is enough to train Kousuke to handle her brother Toujiro’s pitches when said Toujiro shows up to challenge him. At that point Toujiro is a major league starting pitcher, which means Tsukasa is on the major league level as far as speed and form go. This makes her one of the best pitchers in Japan (if we can believe such a thing is possible), and a shoo-in to be a softball star if she ever takes it up.
If the manga had continued and had not ended with Kousuke and a starry-eyed Tsukasa starting a lust-fueled relationship, I’m sure eventually she would have noticed his feet (and whole body) of clay, as opposed to her own overwhelming talent, and the whole basis for their relationship would have crumbled into dust. As it is, things end pretty well. Kousuke gets his hit off Tsukasa as well as a base hit off her brother, Kousuke and Tsukasa hook up and may or may not start dating, Toujiro returns to the majors and continues to dominate, and business continues as usual in the shopping district.
Apart from the needless fanservice, some rather bad art, and the tendency of Tsukasa to do and say stupid things (like promising her virginity to the opposing pitcher if he wins), Amateur Slugger not a terrible manga by any means. The short length definitely works in its favor. Worth a read if you like sports romance manga and don’t mind some awkward fanservice.

Ah! Seishun no Koushien manga review

Ah! Seishun no Koushien (ああ!青春の甲子園) is a 7-volume collection of romantic stories by Yamasaki Juuzou and Adachi Mitsuru. As expected of Adachi (though he was only the artist, really), all the stories involve baseball players and, as per the title, the National Koushien tournament, but that’s as far as the sports goes.

I know I’m on a baseball manga kick, but that doesn’t mean I’ll read just anything with ‘baseball’ in it. I read the first two or three chapters of volume 1, then flipped idly through the pages until volume 3 and hated it more with every passing page. After that I stopped reading it, because while I don’t hate romantic series, I do hate those with a foregone conclusion where the writers nevertheless spend way too much time trying to make us wonder “Will they or won’t they?” We know they will.

If I recall correctly, the first story was about the female manager of a baseball club. Junk-o, I think her name fittingly was. She has a crush on the pitcher Shun. Shun’s catcher Dobashi has a crush on Junk-o. Shun has a crush on Junk-o too, he just doesn’t know it yet. But he finds out pretty quickly when she forces her way in to live with him in the name of ‘taking care of him’ when his father moves to Kyushu on business. After that they just play baseball and waffle on and on for a while, and, I’m supposing, eventually get together. Whether they win the tournament or not is another issue, but the story never does anything to make you care about it. Not when the battery and their manager have nothing in their heads but romance.

The second story was even more off-putting. It started out very well with a sweet almost-romance between a girl named Natsuko and a boy named Hongo, who is in the kendo club. Wait, kendo club? But this is an Adachi series! The pitcher always gets the girl! That’s right, so it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s already lost the game. This is only confirmed when the pitcher appears in the form of a Wild Transfer Student, basically Ranma before there was a Ranma. Natsuko starts out a little prickly towards him, but we already know she’s going to waffle back and forth between the two guys and eventually pick the pitcher (because he’s the pitcher in an Adachi series) so, yeah.

I’m going to try to read something a little more drama-free next time. This crap just put me in a bad mood. I should mention before I go that I don’t dislike Adachi manga at all. I read both Cross Game and H2 with enjoyment (while the pitcher didn’t get the girl in the latter, she very definitely preferred him). He’s a great writer now, but his partner in this series, Juuzou Yamasaki, is not quite as good at creating likable characters and believable romances. I’d give this a miss unless you’re a die-hard Adachi fan who will read just about anything he has ever touched.

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…

Dragonaut: The Resonance anime review

Or, “Boobs and Dumb Women – the Anime.” It’s been a while since I watched something this horrible and yet so compelling. Dragonaut: The Resonance started out with a fairly good premise about humanoid dragons, the humans they have formed pacts with and the ominous “Thanatos” creature that was drawing nearer to the Earth every day.

Then it turned into a stupid rescue romantic farce where the main character Jin chased his lady love Toa for endless episodes, Toa always managing to either run away or get herself captured as soon as Jin found her. It’s revealed halfway through that Toa is directly responsible for the death of Jin’s family, but this is tossed to the side like it means nothing. Hos before even families, huh? Even Kouta from Elfen Lied wasn’t this faithful to his romantic needs.

From that point I was just watching to see how bad the series could get. And boy did it get bad. Toa! Jin! Toa! Jin! I want to see Toa! I want to see Toa! Jin! Jin! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHH! *pukes* Phew, that’s better. You know, the dragon transformation sequences should have clued me in from the start that the creators had no idea what kind of series they were trying to make, but I foolishly persevered. In the end Jin and Toa manage to persuade Thanatos to leave Earth alone by showing her the Power of Love – as if it wasn’t bad enough when Gankutsuou did it – and they go back to Earth to live happily ever after. They’d better, after all the happiness GONZO robbed me of just by making this show exist. I’ll think twice before I try anything from that company again.

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.