Manga

From the back cover:
A new student starts out as Risa’s rival for love, but ends up proving how important it is to be honest with yourself!

Review:
Okay, it’s official—I love Love*Com. Of all the series I’ve started recently, this is the one I’ve been most eager to continue.

I adore the two lead characters, especially when they’re being honest and/or sweet with one another. We don’t really get events from Ôtani’s perspective, so I tend to like Risa a bit more, but he has his moments. I like that Risa wasn’t swayed by Haruka’s love confession, thus saving us a long and annoying trip down a relationship road we all know will ultimately lead nowhere.

I also like the realism in the series—there aren’t any perfect bishounen here falling for clumsy girls. There’s only a girl with a mad crush on a guy friend who sees no reason to suspect that he could ever return her feelings. I think most adolescent girls have experienced that at one time or another!

The art also continues to be both cute and strange simultaneously. I still love the facial expressions, but have now noticed a new body part that’s occasionally too big—earlobes! Some of these characters have great big fat earlobes! And then, sometimes on the next panel, they don’t anymore. Or sometimes the left one will be fine and the right one will be elephantine. It’s kind of distracting.

Wacky earlobes aside, this manga is great. Go read it!

From the back cover:
Risa’s getting really confused about her feelings for Ôtani—she doesn’t know if she wants to help him get back together with his ex-girlfriend or keep him all to herself!

Review:
I didn’t like this volume quite as much as the first, but it’s still really good. This volume hits several major holidays: Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day. At this rate, I wonder how we won’t be through with the characters’ high school years in just a few volumes. I hope this won’t be one of those stories where the author just keeps the characters in the same year even though the seasons are changing around them.

The Christmas story is my favorite of the volume. Nakao, one of the group of friends, has acquired tickets to see some obscure band on Christmas day, and only Risa and Ôtani are particularly keen to go, so they make arrangements to do so. Then Ôtani’s ex shows up and desires to impart a special message to him at a Christmas party. Risa encourages him to go, but then feels all lonely when her all friends have other plans and she’s left to attend the concert alone. Of course, Ôtani shows up at the last moment to keep his original promise. It’s a great moment between them.

A new character appears in the last two chapters: Haruka, a childhood friend of Risa’s who has a hero-worshipping thing going for her. He belittles Ôtani every chance he gets, and I thought it was pretty out-of-character for Risa not to curtail that sooner than she did. There’s some good stuff between Risa and Ôtani near the end of the volume, but I still like these chapters least.

From the back cover:
Risa Koizumi is the tallest girl in class, and the last thing she wants is the humiliation of standing next to Atsushi Ôtani, the shortest guy. Fate and the whole school have other ideas, and the two find themselves cast as the unwilling stars of a bizarre romantic comedy.

Rather than bow to the inevitable, Risa and Atsushi join forces to pursue their true objects of affection. But will their budding friendship become something more complex?

Review:
This is really good! It’s almost got kind of a Marmalade Boy vibe to it somehow, though I can’t really explain why. Maybe ‘cos it’s romance-centric without some other plot figuring in, too.

I like both the lead characters. They think and act the same way, and like the same things, and I’m surprised how much I actually want to see them end up together, though I hope it takes a long time. In this volume, they initially attempt to help the other secure the affections of a crush, but when the crushees take a liking to each other, they transfer their efforts to getting those two together so they can just move on, already.

The art is also neat. Sometimes it’s not super pretty, and hands can be a bit big, but there’s a lot of variety and subtlety in facial expression that I appreciate. Nakahara also draws some really cute hairstyles.

Onward to volume two!