Feb 27, 2010
I expected this to be better than your average love-manga, and I was right. It wasn't all that I hoped it would be, but it still provided a good read.
The story is centered around a clumsy, yet sympathetic boy (Akitsuki Yamato) entering high school in Tokyo (where have I heard this before?), where he almost immediately proceeds to fall in love with a girl (Asahina Suzuka) in the track and field team. The story then pretty much is all about how he tries to win her over while dealing with additional love interests and the ever obstinate Suzuka herself.
The story in itself isn't very exciting,
...
but the author has still managed to make good use of it. A story like this is built on individual scenarios, all of which seem to play out in almost the same way. I applaud the author for skillfully repeating the same two patterns over 166 chapters without me noticing it too much.
The repetitiveness of each scenario is linked to the character design, where the titular character, Suzuka, is too "complex" for the good of the story. Most of the scenarios start out with Yamato trying to do something good towards her, while she somehow always takes it in a negative way. The frequency of which she does this is staggering, and it feels like the author has clearly gone out of his way just to think of new ways to misinterpret the intentions of Yamato. Whenever Yamato interacts with Suzuka, you can expect her to get frustrated in response to his actions at some point later on, it's just a question of when.
Other than that, I think that the feelings of the characters are conveyed well. Some actions and feelings are a bit questionable (yes Suzuka, I'm looking at you), but it's mostly the opposite. As the characters develop, so do their emotions, which gets portrayed relatively well. Story-wise, the strongest side of the author is probably the romantic climaxes (dramatic more than sexual), which are delivered with great timing and feeling. Thankfully, these are not as forced as many other story-related components.
The artwork is great, with nice backgrounds and well done characters. It shows that the author is already a skilled with the pen, and there is really nothing to complain about in this aspect. The good art is a solid cornerstone for this manga, which made it much more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.
All in all, I did not feel that I was let down by this manga. There were some parts which could have used some work, but they weren't too much of a nuisance. I can recommend this to fans of high-school romance mangas, but perhaps not to people not already indoctrinated.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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