summary: koharu has arrived in tokyo, fresh and pure from the countryside, for her summer break to visit… but finds herself getting roped into being a live-in maid at famous actor/writer narusawa issei-san’s place. good and obedient, she’s eager to please with her work and her bizarre cuisine.. neither of which are much too appreciated by the perverted issei-san or his cold, strict son, ao-kun, who also seems to like doing strange and unexpected things to her.
commentary: you could probably trade this out for the naive freshman and the cool sempai at school and it would still be the same. the cuisine she prepares are amusing enough, though, that even ao-kun tells her not to eat them or her career as the main character in a manga will be sure to end. XD;; it’s cute enough for a shoujo manga, although i wish that “her virginity”, “my virginity”, “your virginity” wouldn’t be thrown around in conversation so often. XD;; btw, “sensei” in this case refers to an author.
summary: it’s hard to call mei an average high school student, even if she pretty much seems like one, because average high school students aren’t normally surrounded by guys wherever she goes. at school, guys seek her out to learn from her how to make girls fall for them since she must be an expert at it… since, at home… well, her home IS the host club, “perfect”, full of good looking men who make a living out of getting women to fall for them. her boyfriend is the plain-looking vice president of the student council, shindou-kun, who, when he leaves school and takes his glasses off, is actually one of the top hosts at “perfect”.
commentary: the stage is pretty much set, and the couple is already given. each of the chapters pretty much has the pattern of mei trying to get shindou-kun to get intimate with her, somebody coming along to make one of their lives miserable or just to get in the way of their relationship, and then shindou-kun proving to us why he’s one of the top hosts. one of the things i don’t quite get is whether shindou-kun is an active host or not. we know he worked there at some time, but it seems like he’s only working there now when circumstances call for him to. this series doesn’t have too much depth to it, but it’s pretty interesting to dive into a story that starts with them already in this part of their relationship. we got to skip over the part where there could be doubt as to whether he’s just playing host/worker with her or if he was really into her… although that would have been interesting to see… along with how shindou-kun started out (since he can do everything!! omg, he’s super perfect!!) and how her family manages the club.
summary: hoshigaoka high school is undergoing reconstruction so all of its students will be temporarily attending sasara gakuen. on the way there on her first day, wakana encounters a really cool guy… building up her expectations for love and a good school… except, when she gets there, the school is full of delinquents! what’s more, the guy she met is the head of all the delinquents, being the son of a yakuza member and currently unbeatable. in order to build better relations between the two schools and to get the chance to talk with keishou (aforementioned cool guy), wakana volunteers to bridge the gap. unfortunately, that first step to love has one big block: keishou doesn’t like good girls.
one shot – gokudou ren’ai jingi
the first short one-shot at the end of the short series, the story is about ootori chitose of the ootori group. wishing for love and a non-yakuza relationship, chitose is excited to start in a new school in tokyo, far away from people who would know her identity. being the daughter of the yakuza head, however, a bodyguard was also sent to watch over her… suiren toki, the son of her father’s next in command.
one shot – sakasemasu!! koi no hana
renka falls for shuusei, a random guy who showed her some kindness in the streets while she was helping out an old lady. however, it turns out that shuusei is a member of a bike gang… that is rival to the one she and her brother belong to.
commentary: sometimes i wonder what yakuza members would think of being portrayed like this. do any of them read shoujo manga? how do daughters of yakuza heads actually turn out? the stories are, of course, greatly romanticized… and almost too cute. the characters are just a little flat – the girls are all about love and the guys are perfect gentleman – but you’re mostly reading for the giggles over their stories anyway. btw, the volume cover is actually from the first one shot.
summary: on the first day of the second term, takayanagi jirou arrives to be substitute math teacher for naruse kokoro’s class. at 25, he looks quite young, almost like a kid himself.. enough so that kokoro mistook him for a young delinquent smoking on school grounds. he acts childish and sometimes conspiratorial with some of the kids in school. he wears suits that are too large for him and socks that have holes in them. what kind of a teacher is that, really? kokoro gets to know him pretty well and he even offers to help set her up with her crush, fuwa megumi… who unfortunately disapproves of and dislikes jirou-chan. with the support of jirou-chan and her best friends (miya, mayu, and azusa), kokoro puts forth a positive outlook and tries her best… but how will it all turn out?
commentary: a pretty cute start.. and even after 4 chapters in the first volume, it feels like it’s still all laying out the base for the entire story. to avoid some vol 1 spoilers, i’m gonna skip on my logic and just get straight to saying that i have a feeling that fuwa-kun does have and will continue to develop some feelings for kokoro. kokoro might end up having feelings for jirou-chan. who she ends up with is all up in the air for now. nitta-kun seems to be a catalyst for trouble, but i think there’s a possibility that he and fuwa-kun might become quite close. jirou-chan’s family situation will come up more often, and i think that quite a bit of angst will come from that angle. i also feel that miya, mayu, and azusa will all have their chance to shine in the spotlight before this series is over. who knows? will the story even really start in vol 2? who knows? but it’s all well and good. i’m looking forward to seeing the direction this series might take. 
summary: it’s kobayashi shinobu’s first day in her new school, and she’s already trouble. she skips class, and even after she’s brought in, she skips again; she never even makes it to the classroom. she’s the type that has built a barrier between herself and the world, so that her school transfer is not known even to her boyfriend. her mother is pretty much never around. she really doesn’t have that many friends. shinobu is lonely, spending most days all by herself for as long as she could remember, and it seems that this has made her closed off from most social interactions… even if they’re the ones to make the first move. kazuma, in her class, takes an interest in her and tries to get closer to her, but it’s not him that she opens up to… instead, she opens herself up to taichi, her english and homeroom teacher… who is quite young, doesn’t follow the usual working conventions in school, and is actually moonlighting as a host.
commentary: forget “sad”; we’re talking “emo” here… which is what i believe the mangaka is pretty known for. on top of being emo, shinobu comes across as quite obsessive… with a quiet desperation. taichi is a pretty cool guy, who, at times seems pretty involved, and, at others, pretty nonchalant. kazuma seems to be a very likeable regular guy, who gets shafted by this whole deal. it’s pretty odd, since shinobu’s and taichi’s actions aren’t always consistent… although the rest of the cast are. there are times when shinobu pretty much ignores everybody and separates herself. there are a few times when she’s laughing along with them as if she hadn’t tried to avoid most people for days on end, which sometimes ends up with her saying something quite bold (which are probably my favorite times for her.. since i don’t see very many other heroines talking this way). on the flip side, there are times when he’s one of the kids. there are times when he’s very aloof, sometimes in a fairly cold way. there are times when he seems to lose control. i suppose it could be attributed to their personal barriers. it’s interesting enough to keep going, and the emo-ness isn’t really enough to make me run away and cower in a corner. taichi’s character is definitely interesting… and, hey, i rather like the way taichi is drawn.
summary: the kids in the basketball club have a bet… that torii can get tatakawa-sensei to fall for him. they gather all of her data and try to plant their strategies, but it seems that there were a few holes left out in their research. there are no predictable patterns with her previous relationships… and making her be their club adviser doesn’t mean that she’ll be watching the kids look cool as they sweat off some skills. she has lived basketball during her days as a student, and she’s got a thing or two to show them… if she’s not feeling lazy, that is. if there’s anything a club means, it’s overtime.. which means time away from having fun. torii, and the rest of the basketball club, are in for it with such a stubborn and unusual teacher.
commentary: the story is pretty straightforward. torii is a playful kid who thinks he can win a bet easily… tatakawa is a fun-loving person who prefers the unexpected… and both are quite stubborn. there are no surprises in the story, but it’s interesting watching torii get quite serious and tatakawa get even more playful, as she goads him into continuing the bet. she thinks he’s so predictable that she can win this one easily.
summary: the book tells four stories about four of the school’s “princes” and the girls who like them in the months and days leading up to the school festival. there is the sparkling prince, that beautiful but overly vain prince who knows more about his face than how to take care of himself; there is the eyeglass prince, that strict and studious guy who just doesn’t know what fun is; there is the honey prince, that cute, cozy, pudding-loving freshman. and, finally, there is the festival prince, the event-loving student council president filled to the brim with all sorts of crazy ideas.
commentary: nakahara aya fans won’t be disappointed; her quirky humor is very much still stamped all over this volume. the stories are light-hearted; the characters are cute and have their own silly situations/predicaments. each of the main characters still do fall into one of the stereotypes (each of them having a different personality from each other) and any character development is limited to one chapter each, but she knows how to manipulate them to random silliness and warm-hearted fluff. but, seriously, how can you resist a story with a cracked up opening dialog? “i’m sorry, but there’s already someone that i like.” “who?” “myself.”
summary: shishio was quite the troublemaker – and failing class (already set back by one grade) – when emily became his home tutor. somehow, she turns him around, and the two of them end up sleeping together. caught in bed together by his mother, his parents ask emily to marry him… the story begins a month after their wedding. emily is having a hard enough time keeping her marriage to a student secret, so it’s a good thing that, at the very least, he’s going to a different school than the one she’s teaching at.. or, so she thought, until she finds out that not only did he transfer to his school, he is now also in her class. he’s around her at home and during every break at school, which makes the risk of discovery that much higher. to add to this stress, emily wonders if there is any real love in their marriage.
commentary: smutty enough that emily thinks she’s going to die if she tries to keep up with the energy of a teenaged boy! considering their previous situation, i’m surprised that shishio’s parents would come up with the proposal… or that emily would accept. this story deals more with them getting to know each other and growing feelings after we’ve already got that guarantee that they end up together… so now the issue is with staying together and not being found out. emily is full of insecurities and keeps questioning shishio’s feelings for her; for his part, shishio seems like he’d be happy if they were glued together and really seems to like trying to break the “no sex during school nights” rule. i don’t think the two of them are being careful enough with their secret.. but, oh, well. that’s where the excitement lies, i suppose. despite his.. energy… he still manages to be really quite sweet… and some parts of the manga just turns into a fluff fest.
summary: 24-year-old manabe akiharu is an artist well-known for his dreamy and innocent works. 16-year-old ichou seika is a high school student living in the same apartment complex, whose white skin has totally captured his attention. one day, akihiru’s childhood friend and manager, koushi, suggests that he ask seika to be his model. seika accepts, readily enough, but akiharu can’t paint anything without knowing it well first; he has to touch his subject to feel its composition and warmth…
commentary: this story is quite beyond what i would normally see under the hana to yume label… and it makes me wonder how it even made it to hana to yume.. until, i read the author’s liner notes… in which even she was surprised that the publisher had asked her to write to the theme of “fetish”… and, she definitely succeeded in writing just what the publisher wanted. the story is quite interesting for me, just because it still falls under shoujo, but is still quite different.
akiharu is almost childlike, and has been kept that way by all the people who have surrounded him.. knowing that keeping him innocent keeps his art innocently dreamy. he knows nothing about high school students, having been sheltered by his mother and made to leave school (his mother pretty much made it sound like you learn/experience all kinds of bad things in high school). being around seika, though, his feelings start to change.. and he starts to feel like he’s going to dirty her; innocence is pretty much out the door. i was rather surprised to see how easily seika accepted to be a model, and how easily she accepted being touched… but this is a story, and i suppose the story can’t progress if she didn’t agree… so let’s just suspend all kinds of belief around that for now. just from the opening of the story, it’s easy to see that they’re already acquainted with each other – which isn’t far-fetched, considering they live in the same complex. it’s even easy for me to believe that she may have been interested in him already before the story even began. per morie-sensei’s notes, it seems that her parents are ok with this since they themselves had been a student-teacher couple… so perhaps the attraction really isn’t that odd for seika as well.
the story is told fairly simply, from akiharu’s pov, as he stays mostly within the complex, if not just within his own room, with seika and koushi coming and going. most things are left to the reader’s imagination as the scene goes off the borders, and we are left with thoughts… mostly akiharu’s fears and apprehensions. he really is extremely sensitive and he’s very scared about dirtying her or damaging her… because, to him, her white skin represents perfection. i could go on some more about this story, but it would probably all be spoilers. this volume is labeled as “1″, so i’m hoping to see more.
2010.04.16
added synopses for otona pink, ikenai teacher iketeru DARLING, saikou no KISS wo ageru, suki ni naru made matte, futsuu no ren’ai, sweet black, koi nante dekikkonai, koi no himitsu kichi, kyou mo minna genki desu, sugar☆family