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Story: So I guess the story was relatively unique. It's not often you hear about a girl who can summon demons to do her bidding in exchange for sweets. The individual "contracts" were pretty cute, too. It's very easy to get drawn into the story, and it's an incredibly fast read. I think my favorite aspect of the story is the fact that, occasionally, hilarious lines will be delivered by certain characters (primarily Beaut's shark follower). On such instance came from Frost, a demon:

*spoilers*
Frost kidnaps Mayuri and carries her back to hell in order to cause Beaut pain. Frost is surprisingly gentle despite his initial ... appearance, and it quickly becomes evident that he has no intentions to hurt Mayuri. He sincerely offers her an apple because she's hungry, but when she eats it, she becomes violently ill (since humans cannot eat hell food). He immediately calls in his doctors (which are some weird human/fish hybrids) and they say "first, I will need to look at her gills". At this point, Frost is freaking out. He replies "Mayuri!! Where are your gills?!" I just found this really funny.


Art:
The art is nothing special, but it's everything you'd expect it to be, considering the kind of story it is. The demons are alluring and attractive, Mayuri is plain, and everyone else is in between. I think if it were tossed into a line-up with several other shoujo manga, I wouldn't be able to pick it out.

Character:
I didn't have any problems with Mayuri at first, but the story progresses so quickly that I soon found her to be whiny and obnoxious. I understand that the main point of shoujo manga like this, is to show that even plain girls can get the guy of their dreams, but I like for there to be at least an ounce of credibility. I find it seriously hard to believe that a devil lord like Beaut would put up with the selfish demands of a teenage human. She's constantly crying and smacking him for talking to other girls without even once considering the fact that just maybe he's doing it for her. What I'm saying is, the relationship between Beaut and Mayuri can get annoying at times.

I absolutely love Makoto. Where Beaut's and Mayuri's relationship fails, I think Beaut's and Makoto's relationship (and even Makoto's and Mayuri's relationship) is truly believable and, at times, quite funny.

Overall I'm glad that I gave this manga a try. I always try to take something good from everything that I read, and Akuma to Dolce made it easy with characters like Makoto and the shark.

This will be my first review. I chose Hot Gimmick because it's the least enjoyable manga I've read so I feel like it needs my critique the most.

I think some people might find my scoring a little harsh, but I think my ratings fairly illustrate my feelings toward this manga. There's a simple reason why I stuck with it all the way instead of adding it to my dropped list and it's because I'm not a quitter.

Story: 4

There isn't single scrap of originality to the story. Really the only good thing it has going for it is the perverse way the reader can't ... help but continue reading. It's just your basic love triangle (actually it's more like a reverse harem). By the end of the short series, you don't really get the feeling that the characters matured any and it definitely did not leave me wanting more. I was actually very happy to say good riddance because the plot development was pushing non-existent once I easily figured out all the predictable "twists".

Art: 2

The volume covers are misleading, in my opinion. When you look at the colored chapter images you get a completely different feeling than when you look at the sloppy, chicken-scratch art in the actual chapters. There are times when the art is stereotypical shoujo with big eyes and lots of sparkle (which is fine, I guess) but most of the time (and especially when the characters are shown from a profile view) the art is empty and the characters are ugly. I also hate when manga-ka get lazy and use photo manips for background images instead of drawing it, and manips are used far too often in Hot Gimmick.

Character: 4

The only thing keeping this from being a 3 or a 2 is Shinogu. Even he was lame, cheesy, and his ending was predictable and laughable, but at least he was likable throughout the entire series. I would say my biggest problem with characterizations would be Hatsumi and Ryoki's relationship with each other. *Possible spoilers*
Ryoki was constantly mentally, physically, and sexually abusive to Hatsumi. Hatsumi had the lowest sense of self-worth out of any character I've ever read about. She was a terrible shoujo heroine and I was kind of rooting for her to suffer because anyone that dumb deserves it. I hated Ryoki. Everything about him was disgusting and cruel, which means I hated Hatsumi even more. Weak-willed protagonists are my least favorite things. They were terrible characters.

Enjoyment: 4

I'm being generous. And the only reason it's this high is because I had some kind of weird, morbid fascination that allowed me to finish the series in a relatively short amount of time (a couple of days) rather than tortuously dragging it out.

Overall: 3

I would not recommend this manga to anyone unless you like weak-willed female protagonists who passively tolerate abuse.