synopsis: after the death of her father, momoko has been asked to continue to her father’s work – writing erotic stories under his pen name. with her father’s debts to pay off, her mom in the hospital, and a little brother to support, she takes on the job… although this means that she’s always tired and she doesn’t have the free time that other high school students can afford: no time for hanging out, no time for dating. the only people who know her secret are her family and her editor… that is, until ranmaru, the hottest super model (and playboy) who happens to also attend her high school, discovers it, as well. in order to keep her secret, ranmaru has demanded that she become his slave….

commentary: pretty farfetched, but not uncommon… it’s really strange that they are asking a high school girl to write erotic stories, not to mention, this being a job to take her father’s place. it doesn’t even matter if they think she’s got the talent to write well, because that’s just rather odd. talk about one of the most awkward jobs to pass down to your children. but, oh, well. it’s also a little odd to me that he’s sleeping around, and providing her with ‘material,’ although there is a strong suggestion that they’ll get together; it seems like one is encouraged to overlook such transgressions, in the message that it’s a much happier thing to love than to be loved. (i only agree up to a certain point… my name is not hosea.) in any case… setting all that aside, the story is pretty funny… at times, cute and fluffy… at times, so not. about once for every chapter in the first volume, we get a snippet of her latest story… which i find rather hilarious. her imagination and dialogue.. seriously… “my king cobra is about to burst”? wtf? haha. this series is just too amusing…

summary: it is a well-known and strictly enforced fact that the company mizuura mai has just started working for forbids office relationships… so why is it that katou tomoya (also known as “ace”), one of the top elites of the company, has decided to ask her to date him? besides, she’d only started 3 weeks before and she barely knew him. she doesn’t know where this suddenly came from! knowing full well what it’s like to be let go by a company, she doesn’t want to risk it and decides to turn him down after a seemingly appropriate length of consideration time. before she even gets there, he names her his personal secretary, to the irritation of some other OLs who have been there longer and have, therefore, had crushes on him for longer. however, katou tells her that he had never felt this way before and so was willing to take a risk with her, requesting that she give a relationship with him a try anyway. mai soon finds herself acquiescing, and their secret relationship begins.

commentary: i feel like i’ve moved from the secret high school romances to the secret office romances, lol. first of all, let me just say that i love the clean cover.. with the “behind closed doors” peek because of the cover paneling. one of the things about this story that is different from the others i’ve read is that it’s not just days that pass by between chapters. a whole month or three goes by in the blink of an eye when katou goes on a business trip (mostly to russia) with the company president. i can’t help but feel that this is pretty much what it’s like as a working adult – time seems to pass more quickly. at the same time, it seems like their relationship is developing very quickly. in any case, this can’t continue on for too long if they get found out. i’m interested to see what happens when they get farther down the road. will they be suspended from their positions? will mai eventually quit working there so they can get married (if they decide to)? will katou-san transfer out (however unlikely i think that will be)?

summary: on the summer of her 19th year, tezuka ayane, works part-time as a tutor for 14-year-old narumiya kou… although it doesn’t seem like he needs one. his grades have fallen, but it’s more for lack of trying than ability. he manages to convince her to keep on coming anyway, even if her services aren’t needed. an easy job… but as time passes, she finds that she might have developed feelings for the temperamental middle-schooler, which does not necessarily go by unnoticed, as she is warned that if she acts upon it, it would be a crime and a shame to society. 6 years later, she still can’t forget that summer. she now teaches the choir in a high school, and has been proposed to by a fellow teacher. she has even tried auditioning for work as a pianist, as she had once wished to do when she was younger. life seems to be going along smoothly, until kou’s path crosses hers again – not only has he been playing the piano for venues she has auditioned at.. but he’s also one of the new teachers in training at her school.

commentary: not for the young, there are a lot of depictions of nudity… mostly in flashbacks and thoughtful narratives. the style of the story is interesting, as the mangaka only gives you little peeks of what happened in the past, giving you the motivations for the things that have happened in small doses. of course, this also means that some angst comes in to play. i tagged this as “student-teacher” because it starts as such, and the flashbacks in each chapter bring us back to being conscious about it. interestingly, he still seems to call her sensei even though he has asked her to call him “kou” again. i am dreading an increase in angst in the second volume, as i don’t think that her boyfriend/fiancee/whichever will give her up that easily.

summary: kugayama shuusei is the prince of the school – cool, aloof, and popular with girls. that doesn’t give him any excuse to put down girls when they’ve gathered up so much courage to confess to him, though! or so nishimori aoi expresses as much when she confronts him for the way he dumped her best friend, moe… even though moe herself isn’t really that mad, since she was turned down completely. when shuusei moves in next to aoi’s apartment, she is rather shocked. more shocking is when she finds herself cooking him a meal because the guy looked ready to pass out – it didn’t even look like he knew how to feed himself! living next to him, she sees a different side to him.. and learns that he finds all women a bother because they go confessing their love to someone they barely even know. one day, however, she messes up while cooking for him, and his apartment is pretty much ruined when the sprinkler system goes off and pretty much soaks everything through. to compensate, shuusei ends up living with aoi….?!

commentary: aoi is pretty gutsy and cute… and, as shuusei puts it, “prone to violence.” she’s a good friend who defends what must be defended and she doesn’t really hold back when she thinks she’s right. i don’t really quite get shuusei, though. i understand (and find funny) all the hijinx that can ensue with the whole guy-and-girl-find-themselves-living-together-alone thing, but his actions don’t necessarily match what he said in the beginning. even if he were to find her interesting, i didn’t really see a warming up period. XD i’m really liking this story, though.. and i can’t wait for the next volume. :3

summary: of the suzuki twins, kotori was always the more obedient and reliable one, while nobara was the daring and outgoing one. born with the same genes, their parents wonder how they could be so different from each other. due to perhaps too much daring on nobara’s part, she slips and almost drowns during a family outing… but it is her dad who saves her and dies. “it’s all your fault. i wish he hadn’t saved you.” at about 12 years old, nobara is shocked to hear this, but knowing her fault and not wanting to cause her mother any more pain, she opts to live with her grandmother while kotori stayed with their mother. four years pass, but nobara and kotori are still quite close. in an effort to see her mother whom she still loves, nobara and kotori switch places for a few hours once a week – kotori pretends to be nobara at work, while nobara pretends to be kotori and spends her time baking with her mom… until one day, kotori is murdered while in nobara’s guise. seeing the tragedy that she has caused yet again, nobara vows to continue the charade and become kotori forever. “goodbye, kotori. goodbye, me.” there is only one thing that keeps the charade from being perfect, though – the one person who can truly tell them apart – and that is nobara’s boyfriend.

commentary: twin replacement is probably not a new concept (take “smile”, for example.. or obana miho’s “partner”), but this story steps up on the tragedy that surrounds the matter. i really and truly feel sorry for nobara and her family. how much death, tragedy, and guilt can a girl take? without all this, their family relationship is heartwarming to watch… even with nobara being content to take her sister’s place a few hours a week just to see her mother. kotori seems to be a really nice girl, but we’re not really given to see if she has any of her own friends… which is most likely intentional, since the story is told primarily from nobara’s pov. maybe we’ll see more when nobara fully enter’s kotori’s world in vol 2. interestingly enough, despite all that has happened to their family, i don’t feel the total angst and despair that i had rather dreaded from reading the back of the book (the type i usually avoid, so picking this up was a risk – but the girls were illustrated so nicely in the back cover…). there is the loss, understanding, and sympathy… and i really want to continue on to vol 2, where i hope she finds hope again.

summary: tachibana mei has lived through 16 years of life without friends, much less a boyfriend. she gave up on the idea of making friends or even getting close to people at all when she was young, finding that you can’t rely on anybody, that people will turn their backs on you and betray you. because of this, she has always been quiet, keeping to herself. some people in school may even find her weird. when nakanishi, a guy in her class, tries to flip her skirt, she exacts due justice and retaliates… but it’s kurosawa yamato, his friend who happened to be with him, who receives it. one of the most popular guy in school, especially with girls, she finds it odd that he then takes an interest in her. he insists on getting her number, but she refuses, so he gives her his, instead… telling her that she can call him any time. when she actually needs someone, and unable to reach her family, she helplessly calls out to him… and, unexpectedly, he responds and reacts right away. unexpectedly, he also gives her.. her first kiss. little by little, he finds a place with her… and introduces her back into a world with friends.

commentary: i absolutely adore this story, and, right now, it’s one of my favorites. mei is one of those girls who keeps everything within herself, trying her best to just let all snide comments about her pass. this doesn’t mean that she’s weak, however. it’s mostly just useless to respond back to them; she knows very well how to stand up for herself, when necessary. yamato is compassionate and easy to be with, and it’s not hard to see why girls are attracted to him. though a lot of the story focuses on them, watching their relationship develop, we also learn more about the characters that hover close to yamato. so far, i find that i can’t hate any of the characters, even if they can say some potentially damaging things to mei. it’s rather sweet to watch how they trust each other.

summary: feeling betrayed and left behind by family, friends, and lover, shou climbed up the railing of a bridge, thinking to end it all. kyouko, a teacher in his school, happened to find him in the midst of doing this and pulls him back. although he resented this at first, her tears turned his thoughts around, and she became his reason for living. however, his former lover and her admirer aren’t going to let them be.

commentary: if you’ve ever watched the drama “majo no joken” (“the witch’s condition” aka “forbidden love”), this story would be very familiar to you. it is geared towards angst and tragedy, dealing with bad decisions, loss, betrayal, obsession… you sympathize with the characters, because it’s not really necessarily their fault that things fell apart the way they did. it almost seems like life has it in for them, and they’re carried away by wild waves about to crash in the rocks. with only one volume to the story, it’s easy enough to read, although the themes are more serious than other manga i usually read.

summary: kahara kako and yagami kousei are childhood friends, hailing from the countryside… when they enroll – and are accepted – to a bigger high school, kako overhears some girls commenting on how backwater kousei is… and, well.. kako’s just not going to take that sitting down. armed with old romantic manga “lawrence to bara” and a few fashion magazines (and, sometimes, employing her sewing skills), kako produces the new school prince out of a backwater country boy. everything seems to be according to plan… but there are times when kousei seems to be going beyond her reach, and she starts to feel rather strange. will kako continue to have both her childhood friend and the new school prince all in one person?

commentary: another one of the “episodic” stories. i didn’t know how to classify this one necessarily… since it really isn’t straight-up romance. it looks like kousei thinks of kako as more than a friend, but is willing to romance other girls, according to kako’s directives for him to gain even more popularity… and sometimes even embellish. kako obsesses over her old-style shoujo manga to even notice. and, even though kako is supposed to be the one producing kousei, it looks like kousei is some kind of a top-notch actor and is only letting kako feel like she’s taking the lead. one of the interesting things about this manga – besides the odd things kako seems to sew – is that it does not shy away from opportunities to refer to pop culture. there is, for example, a “jumon” magazine (IRL: junon) and a “horiokoshi high school” (IRL: horikoshi high school); both seem to supposedly function in the same way that the RL references do. the story is a fun, light read… not necessarily one that i’ll be seeking out a lot, but good for random pick-ups.