Category: Reviews

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Loco Moco

Also by this author: Pre Mari, Peach Girl, Papillon: Flower & Butterfly

My Thoughts

Love confessions are one of those things from my youth that I honestly miss. Confessing to the person that you have a crush on is nerve-wracking, and when looking back there are often so many missed opportunities. I remember the crushing feeling the first time I found out that a high school crush that I had been nursing for months ended up becoming a friend’s boyfriend. This happened a few times, I never felt sour about it but shrugged it off that I was just too slow to act on those feelings.

This feeling of being too slow forms the basis of Loco Moco. Hiroko feels that she has to keep up with her childhood friend, Tomoko, who seems to have a new boyfriend all the time, so she plays along and brags about having boyfriends as well. When Hiroko finally gathers up the courage to confess to her crush, however, she finds out that her crush is her friend’s new boyfriend.

“Roko-chan, have you tried getting confessed to?”

Loco Moco is a short and sweet series about this predicament, about missed opportunities and trying to cope with a crush that has now become unattainable. While Takeru also has a mild interest in Hiroko, it’s understandable that he dates that cute girl that confesses to him. While the drama between Hiroko and Tomoko could at times be petty, it is understandable when they both realize that the other is a romantic rival.

While Roko and Tomo butt heads at times, their friendship remains intact, and they choose to do what’s best for their friend which made me happy to see a good female friendship take precedence over one’s romantic feelings. There are a few character traits that seem to reappear in all of Ueda’s series, namely the protagonist having a complex about being misunderstood for a physical trait and having a jealous best friend.

I’m glad that I didn’t give up on Ueda’s work, I love her art and characters, but I honestly got mad with the last two Ueda works that I had read. Compared to other works by Miwa Ueda, Loco Moco is relatively tame which I feel made it better. It’s an underrated gem that tackles the drama that comes with crushing on a friend’s boyfriend with relative maturity.

Rating:

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Papillon: Flower & Butterfly

Also by this author: Pre Mari, Loco Moko, Peach Girl

Warnings: Violence, Gaslighting, Grooming

My Thoughts

What a disaster, a downright sloppy mess with an awful plot and annoying characters. Papillon is a drama filled teen romance manga about competing twins that tries to dig into some touchy subjects like insecurity, childhood abandonment, post-partum depression, and traumatic loss.

Ageha is a quiet and shy country girl that feels that she is undesirable next to her beautiful and popular city girl twin sister, Hana. The first few volumes of the manga deal with the twins butting heads over boys. Hana feels left out if she doesn’t receive the same love and affection that her sister does. She reminded me of a toned-down version of Sae from Peach Girl but Hana at least has a backstory to explain the reasons for her garbage actions.

The plotlines are paper-thin and barely have any real development. All of the love interests don’t feel genuine and begin and end quickly. The major romantic interest in counselor Kyuu was troubling. Kyuu is 24 years old and is presented as a legitimate boyfriend for the main character, a high school freshman. He is nine years her senior and is in a position of influence over her as the school counselor. He starts by giving her advice, referring to her as a chrysalis, a pupa that will someday bloom into a beautiful butterfly. He states from the very beginning that he will care for her and help her change. This is troubling, there is no happy message about loving yourself. I can understand the sentiment that if you want something, you put in the work to obtain it and change habits, but that isn’t really what is portrayed.

They’re a terrible pair, with Kyuu expecting a mature woman that would understand that he’s a busy graduate student and works, he can’t attend to her every whim and gets tired and stressed quickly. He is also flirtatious and doesn’t turn away the advances of other women, and doesn’t respect her demands however childish. This leaves the main character feeling insecure and constantly jealous and questioning herself, many readers get annoyed but honestly, this is an understandable way for a teenager to react.

I also took serious issue with the portrayal of counseling in this manga. Obviously, Kyuu was the worst offender, breaking just about every code of ethics about counselor and patient relationships. It is openly stated that he uses love to help students to feel more confident and change themselves and it was honestly upsetting to read. His mentor shows up to also give advice, and when Ageha is stressed over things such as him flirting, it is explained away to her that she can just choose not to be upset about betrayals and choose to be happy instead, and she repeats this to herself several times with every conflict throughout the series.

The entire romance stinks of an older man grooming a teenage girl who is clearly too young to understand adult relationships. This manga wasn’t for me and I was really disappointed with the direction that it took. It starts off okay in the beginning but just becomes so toxic that it became boring.

“There’s a crossroad. The road that leads to happiness, and the road that leads to otherwise. Whichever way I go depends on me.”

Rating:

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Bloom into You

Bloom into You, Vol. 1Title: Bloom into You, Vol. 1
Author: Nio Nakatani
Series: Bloom into You #1
Publisher: Seven Seas
First Published: September 13, 2017
Pages: 188
Genres: Drama, Slice of Life, Yuri
Format: Web
Source: Web
Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis:

Yuu has always adored shoujo manga and yearns for the day when someone might give her a love confession that would send her heart aflutter. Yet when a junior high school classmate confesses his feelings to her -- she feels nothing. Disappointed and confused, Yuu enters high school, where she sees the confident and beautiful student council member Nanami. When the next person to confess to Yuu is Nanami herself, has her romantic dream finally come true?

Rating Breakdown:

Volume 1: ★★★★★
Volume 2: ★★★★★
Volume 3: ★★★★★
Volume 4: ★★★★★		 Volume 5: ★★★★★
Volume 6: ★★★★★
Volume 7: ★★★★★
Volume 8: ★★★★★
My Review:

Bloom Into You is, without a doubt, one of the best coming of age love stories that I’ve ever read. Yuu is a young girl that dreams of experiencing the dazzling love that she sees in books and film. Despite this, she doesn’t find herself feeling at all excited when faced with romantic prospects. There is also some wonderful aromantic and demiromantic representation that I didn’t expect to find in this manga, and the subtle differences between each are written well.

The story is paced well, while many romances fall back on overblown drama to keep the narrative going with many ups and downs, Bloom Into You was consistent from start to finish, like a gentle heartbeat humming with life. The title of the manga is apt, as the characters bloom into love but also into themselves as they discover who they are.

I found myself relating a lot to Yuu, who wants to experience the excitement of love but doesn’t know what it is. It can be easy to fall into the comforts of verbal and physical acts of love to mask a lack of love for oneself, as in the case of Touko; or the admiration of another that you place the other person on a pedestal, like Sayaka. Each of the characters was multilayered and written with such care and understanding of the nuances of romantic attraction.

This manga talks a lot about love, how we fall in love, and what it means to be in love. The fluttery feeling that happens when we find the right person is something that many strive for, but love is more complex than that. People fall in love in different ways, and for different reasons, love is defined by the lover and each person’s experience can be wildly different. Bloom Into You stands out from other romance stories for the way that it presents the concept of love, and the sometimes steady journey toward realizing what it really means. It’s heartfelt and written with so much warmth that it made me feel happy from start to finish.

“What is love, in the end? It’s a word I could never say… Even though I’d always wanted to. But now that I’ve said it, I don’t understand what it really is.”

Trigger Warning: Sex

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Citrus

Warnings: Nudity, Mild Fan Service, Sexual Situations

My Review:

Citrus had been on my radar for a while being one of the more well-known Shoujo Ai manga available in the west. I finally sat down to read it and found myself feeling conflicted about it. The art is spectacular and the manga is worth reading to appreciate that in itself. The characters and the story can be charming and genuinely heartfelt at points, and horribly cliche and boring at other points. My ratings for each volume ended up moving up and down wildly and left me wondering how much I really enjoyed it.

The story follows Yuzu, a loud-mouth gyaru, and her new step-sister Mei, a reserved and goal-driven tsundere. The beginning is rough and the characters are so hot and cold, it takes a while for the romance to feel like it was actually developing. Though Yuzu and Mei’s parents marry, Mei’s father is barely in the picture from the onset, which really made me wonder about the convenient marriage to create a step-sibling scenario. Sibling romance in Japan feels overplayed, and the foundation was so weak in this one. Yuzu and Mei are cute in a way, but they were both so terribly inconsistent that their romance feels forced at times.

I enjoyed the fun female friendships in this series, but each character introduction was frustrating as every new female that Yuzu and Mei befriend happened to be lesbians, and all have some romantic interest in one of the two leads. Most of these brief romantic rivals have next to no good reason to be rivals; the stories that focus on these side stories are so overblown and absurd, it feels like reading a shallow harem manga at times.

The manga does seek to address issues regarding society’s views on homosexuality which I appreciated. The issue of acceptance and support from friends and family is as important as ever, as gay marriage is still not legal in Japan and many other countries around the world. I appreciated the conversation that this story brings to the table about the struggle for LGBTQ couples that have to hide who they are. However, I feel that the reality was not well represented in this series, it explores the issue, and the main characters dating in secret, but it also paints a rosy picture that is not possible for many.

In all, it is a decent series that is relatively tame in terms of sexual content. It isn’t a bad first yuri series for those that are looking into getting into the genre, especially for folks that enjoy colorful characters and plenty of drama without being too emotionally taxing.

“Unknowingly, I ended up running away from you because of my wavering feelings.”

Trigger Warning: Nudity, Blood

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The Wendigo

The WendigoTitle: The Wendigo
Author: Algernon Blackwood
Publisher: Public Domain
First Published: January 1, 1910
Pages: 50
Genres: Classics, Horror, Paranormal
Format: Ebook
Source: Free, Public Domain
Rating: ★★★½

Synopsis:

The Wendigo is an influential horror novella by Algernon Blackwood, which was first published in a collected fiction book called The Lost Valley and Other Stories, in 1910. The story follows a doctor, his nephew, and their party on a moose hunting trip into the deepest wilderness of northern Canada. Things take a turn as the party split up and one begins to follow non-human tracks...

My Review:

Wendigos are some of the most terrifying specters of Algonquin folklore, a malevolent spirit that is often associated with winter, starvation, cannibalism, and death. The Wendigo reads like a campfire ghost story told around hunting circles about the unexplainable phenomena that can only be experienced in the farthest reaches from civilization.

The story follows a moose-hunting party on their trek into the woods near the end of the fall season. The untamed wilderness leaves the hunters struck with awe at the beauty and terrible loneliness of the Candian wilderness. The writing is a master craft of atmosphere, as the adventure displays the majesty of nature and the ever-powerful call that it has on the hearts and minds of men. The terrifying silence of the natural world feels oppressive, feeling like a monster that swallows up the hunting camp.

The one glaring issue that holds this classic down is the casual racism that is used to describe character traits. While understandable for the time period in which it was written, it is archaic and simply unpleasant to read. A blemish on an otherwise superbly written story, a terrible shame really.

Even so, this book stands as a classic that brought a part of First Nations folklore into the literary canon and influenced other horror writers and filmmakers in the decades after it was written. The Wendigo is a testament that the unseen horror can be just as effective without the excessive blood and gore of more contemporary fiction. A true delight for the senses as the tightly written prose evokes both fear and wonder in readers for generations.

“Men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their death.”

Trigger Warning: Racism, Violence

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Hare-Kon.

My Thoughts

Harems are a dime a dozen in the world of anime and manga, portrayed as the ultimate male fantasy and often played for laughs, it’s a trope that is riddled with issues while not portraying polygamy with any real accuracy beyond gratuitous sex. For some, polygamy is an alternative lifestyle that can be fulfilling and painful for others.

Polygamy has been a vehicle for numerous abuses all over the world, and it is generally misunderstood by many that see it as free reign to cheat on partners. The truth is, there are committed polygamous relationships, but rules are set by those within the relationship in the same way that they are set by those in monogamous relationships.

“The Hare Kon will continue to push you to your limits and bring you agony. And as long as you continue to love me, I will continue to destroy you and will protect you forever. This is the form of my love to you.”

This series is pretty large, spanning nineteen volumes, the reader follows the ups and downs of a hare-kon family. In response to Japan’s declining birth rate and low marriages, a pioneering town decides to make polygamous marriages legal. With this, the readers are introduced to a marriage between a man and three completely different women, each one representing some favored romance tropes. Despite this, Hare-Kon faces the question of polygamous relationships head-on, showing the absolute worst sides of this kind of family set-up along with the joys and kinship that is possible with a large family.

To say that this series is frustrating is an understatement, there are many issues with the way that the story is presented spearheaded by a husband that is unabashedly detestable at times. Ryuunoske could be charming and funny, but he is also extremely selfish and manipulative. Koharu “falling in love” was also extremely weak, she goes overnight from hating that she feels forced into a sham marriage to suddenly deciding that her unhappiness must mean that she’s jealous and in love.

Understandably, reactions to this series have varied wildly with many people swinging from hating characters to loving them. Honestly, what made me keep coming back was the gorgeous artwork and a genuine interest in seeing if the series actually goes anywhere. It starts off extremely weak, but the middle volumes become stronger and even enjoyable with some genuinely heartfelt moments. Despite the issues, many of the characters are engaging whether they are likable or not, and the author did a marvelous job in stirring up conversation about harems in the medium that glorifies them the most, an achievement in and of itself.

Warnings: sex, gaslighting

three-half-stars