Mar 18, 2009
From a summary, one would assume that this is a stereotypical high-school romance where opposites attract, but this reviewer assures you, it is far from that. Absolutely ridiculous, yet that's what makes it so enjoyable. We've no average character tropes here; Hana is the total antithesis to the banal class representatives previously seen. She's violent, completely lacks common sense, isn't all too clever. She usually scores lower than Shinagawa, leading to amusing score face offs. Whenever she decides to pull an all niter with regards to study, she ends up falling asleep during the study, and can't be woken the next day, for the
...
actual test.
Daichi Shinagawa is known throughout the school as a 'yankee'. He's foul-mouthed, bad tempered, skips classes on a regular basis, and is failing the majority of the classes. He finds school incredibly boring, until the class representative, Adachi Hana, happens to peer down at him when he's in the bathroom, and attempts to get him to come on a school trip. From this point on, Shinagawa is constantly roped into Hana's schemes, whether he wants to be, or not.
One of the more amusing points of this manga is Shinagawa under the impression that Adachi has feelings for him, hence why he thinks she is always roping him into everything. In one chapter, Daichi even writes, 'there's this girl who clearly likes me, what should I do?' to a suggestion box made by Adachi herself, and she remarks that the guy is 'clearly delusional'.
Although the two main characters are the story's strength, there's an amusing range of side characters, too. We are first introduced to the one time hikikomori Seiya Chiba, where Hana thinks that he won't come to school over Shinagawa being too fearsome. It turns out that Chiba is far more fearsome looking himself. We've Hana's underling from middle school, Rinka Himeji, who goes so far to be at Hana's side that she transfers from her own school to where our heroine is. And there's Gaku Izumi, an exceptionally clever student who's forever locking heads with Shinagawa.
The artwork is rather pretty, and has a certain flair to it. Yoshikawa excels at facial expressions, especially the 'yankee' facial expressions. Whenever a character tends to make a, 'yankee face', one would almost heAR the stereotypical yankee accent resounding in their head.
At time of this review, there are eleven volumes out in Japan, and four have been translated. If you're getting annoyed with the generic high-school romances that adorn manga, I'd advise you to give this a go. Certainly different, and thoroughly enjoyable. Hopefully you'll adore it as much as this reviewer currently is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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