Another slew of mini-reviews for certain shoujo manga which I have completed 🙂
Sprout
The set-up here is rather similar to Strobe Edge; in a sense where a girl falls in love with a guy who already has a girlfriend, though this girl already has a boyfriend at the start. When the main girl’s parents decided to turn their house into a boarding house and invite tenants in, she is initially unhappy with the suggestion, but her sentiments change as she realises how fun her housemates (including the guy she fell for) are. My personal favourite moments are those fun times all of them spend together at their house. As for the romance, it was really quite an arduous, almost painful journey to read about a girl who leaves her boyfriend for a guy who is already attached – I personally didn’t see anything too redeeming about the main male lead, though this could be said to be something that’s ‘different’ from the ordinary shoujo manga plot.
Mr rating: 7/10, worth a try but it can be rather painful.
Nakanmon!
This story starts pretty interestingly as a series of occurrences lead five students to be late on their first day of school. This group is a pretty odd one: we have a crybaby female lead who just moved to Tokyo (who has understandable reasons for being the way she is), a tsundere-ish guy with a nice heart, a player, an aloof girl and .. another aloof guy. Despite the drama potential with such an ensemble of characters, do not be fooled as there is actually an almost non-existent love triangle. The characters grow and change with what they can over 16 chapters, especially the main female lead and the main male lead (which I will decline to say which one is). The romance ends up being quite cute and it’s a rather short and refreshing 16 chapters.
My rating: 7/10
Ouji to Hero
The story is had a cliched setting with a love triangle between a poor but pretty, nice female lead and two popular, good looking guys, one being the ‘prince’ and the other being a ‘hero’ (due to his name actually). Having said that though, the drama was good because of the love triangle taking central stage and I did enjoy the ride, as there were many plot twists in the middle as well. However the ending was terribly disappointing as the actions were not justified by what the characters were actually feeling – there was a rather poor explanation given for all their behaviour (especially the male leads). I had expected a more logical explanation for everything.
My rating: I still gave it a 7/10, because despite the things that didn’t make sense, I couldn’t deny that I was pretty addicted and I did enjoy the drama. However, stay away if a satisfactory, sensible ending is a must for you.
Boku wa Kiss de Uso wo Tsuku
This started out as a mystery: who was the person who had kissed Meiko in the library? There are 4Â possible candidates i.e. male leads involved in this, and I did have a fun time trying to guess who was it and who Meiko would eventually end up with. Fortunately for me this time, she did end up with the guy I preferred, but as with all short manga there wasn’t too much exploration or development of the male characters to turn me into a fan.
My rating: 7/10
Though all the four manga here have garnered the same rating from me, the only one I would seriously recommend is Nakanmon! because I felt that it has the most realistic character development and it really did have satisfactory romance. Having said that, I don’t think the rest of the manga this time around is a waste of time to try 🙂
Have you tried any of these? What did you think about it? If you haven’t, which ones are you motivated to try? Comments are welcome! 🙂
*All images belong to their respective owners and do not belong to me.*
the limitless imagination 