...Curtain.: Sensei to Kiyoraka ni Dousei

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As with all shows and mangas that have more then one story, I will be splitting them up to talk about.

First is Curtain. It’s actually a cute story about how a young girl and her love ends up living under the same roof. Just as a rather young and naive girl can be, she has a lot of problems when it comes to things on her own like cooking so she ends up showing this to her love threw little problems. Despite that, she didn’t really tell anyone about her birthday so when Shibasaki finds out about it; he goes threw all the trouble to ... make sure she had a cake and candles. In the end, they fell in love, or at least confessed to being in love and that’s when it gets into a bit sexy time. The artwork is rather gentle and sweet, being rather cute at times. The shadows are soft and really bring out the romance within the manga chapter.

The next called Love Duet, the girl is more like a stocker then a naïve girl because she even ends up taking pictures of him at work. She ends up playing the piano with him after his sister has an accident. In the end, its to much for her to bear and she asks for another teacher but with the last performance, he does the music with her. The artwork again is gentle but yet has a lot more comical feeling to it. I was happy that the characters seemed to have a way different personality then the first couple and luckily, this One Shot didn’t really end with sex although they hinted they were going to do it. There was no art of them ‘getting it on’ and that means that the story didn’t need it.

With Sweet Days for You too, it’s a bit surprising that the women seems to actually be the stronger individual. She stops someone who has stolen the guys wallet then finds out that the happy go lucky guy she just helped works on creating spices for her company. Since she is a strong willed and diligent worker, seeing a guy like this makes her think that he is actually not doing his work and so she thinks little of him. Threw him, she learns to slow down at some points, and think about herself rather then work. In the end, he’s the one that rescues her from the problems she had with her boss and they learn to accept each other. If you don’t want a sexual story then this is the one you want because it has nothing to do with that.

Impassioned Drawing is about two architects that don’t really seem to see eye to eye. But unknowing to there company, the two are actually in love and living together. If the company found out, things would be rather bad for the both of them, making one quit and one leave the company for good. When they had to do a big compaction together, it drives them apart and leaves the women wondering what she should do now, leave the company or put her feelings aside. This one was much more drama filled and so it was almost like it would break my heart when the women tried so hard to have the man she loved back in her life. The artwork is pretty much the same as the others so not much to say on that.

This one surprisingly actually dives into the Impassioned Drawing one where we have the came characters. We follow the women wondering if her lover really does love her even if he doesn’t show it. I’m not sure if I understand this because he did all he could for them to be together. This one was a face palm chapter because the whole idea was that the women wouldn’t let him have sex with her till he actually said he was sorry for not showing his feelings. At least the other one didn’t revolve around sex but this one does. It makes the characters feel shallower and breaks the sweet drama they had before.

While I'm not a huge fan of the artwork in this story, both the characters are much too middle aged looking for shoujo, the premise somewhat demands it, so I'll let it slide. Overall, there is very little character development, and it's exceedingly obvious characters do something because they're "supposed to".

Koutaro and Ema work in the same research facility and it's clear Ema is suffering from quite an infatuation with the serious and disinterested Kou. Ema has also recently been fascinated with playing the piano and she's planning on performing for an audience soon, only her teacher who was to accompany her has injured herself. ... That isn't the real kicker though. What really sets the stage (and is completely impossible except in shoujo world) is that Kou is the instructor's BROTHER, that Ema has never seen him at her house before and she knew nothing of his very hightened musical or teaching abilities. Of course!

Anyway, the plot is thin, the story is too short, it's not intimate or well executed. Everything plays out like clockwork... initial attraction and flat out rejection, chance meeting, growing feelings, sudden urgency to distance from each other, unexpected climactic arrival, kiss. Ugh. If you're a fan of the mangaka from 7 Kiss or Love Lover (which were a lot better than this one!), you may read this, just out of curiosity, but other than that, you're not going to gain anything out this one.

Girly shoujo manga aren't exactly my favorite genre, so out of the 5 one-shots, i only read the first: "...Curtain"

Story: 7/10
Definitively this manga's strongest point. The author really managed to put a lot of romance development into just a few pages, maybe to his fault at times. The curtain gimmick is a really fun one and adds a lot to the story

Art: 5/10
Not a fan of this art style but I don't think I'm letting this influence me when I say that this is bad art. The eyes are very "floaty" (if that makes sense?) and the background is sometimes nonexistent.

Character: 5/10
Here is where the ... story fails, but because I use 2 different criteria I still gave the story a good score. However, characters are another thing, the male-sensei clearly just did whatever was necessary to progress the story, seemed like he had no will for himself. The main heroine had the opposite problem, most of the stuff involving her happen only inside her head, her ACTIVE participation in the story in just nonexistent. Both of the main character feel like plot-devices, not people.

Overall (6/10) and conclusion:
I'm reluctant to give this one-shot such a high score but at the same time, a 5 wouldn't seem adequate for its above-average plot, even though poorly played by both its main parties.