By Shigeyoshi Takagi. Released in Japan as “Hana ni Arashi” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine LaLa DX. Released in North America by Viz.

I was rather surprised when I saw that Viz had licensed this. Even though Hakusensha spreads their licensing love among three companies, you tend to associate certain kinds of shoujo with certain companies. Viz gets the big hits, Tokyopop gets the slightly less big hits, and CMX gets the not-hits and smaller series with high cute potential. So seeing this 2-volume cutesy series from Viz is surprising.

I’ll admit, it does not particularly stand out. The hero is handsome and rich, ignoring the heroine’s pleas to leave her alone and swearing that she will be his. Generally in shoujo you do this in two ways; either have the hero be a gigantic jerk and trust the audience will want to see the heroine bite her lip and have her feelings waver whenever he deigns to be nice to her; or have him be incredibly stupid, and do the whole thing as a comedy.

Flower in a Storm goes the latter route. As well as having a bit of an idiot hero, the heroine is clearly capable of taking care of herself… but doesn’t want to. Riko just wants to be normal, and like most characters who just want to be normal, just can’t seem to get the hang of it. The book describes her as having superpowers, which I think is a bit of a misnomer… the action just seems to show her as having tons of strength and endurance. She’s really not much different, ability-wise, than Hikari from Special A.

The art is very Hakusensha, with lots of handsome smirking men and stressed-out sweatdropping women. I did like the minor character of Riko’s classmate, who shaves his head. He doesn’t really do much except snark at the heroine (who tends to call herself a normal high-school student after doing things like leaping into the class over her teacher’s head), but it’s at least different from the standard pretty boys. I also liked Ran’s description of how he fell in love with Riko, which dovetails nicely with him not wanting her to be normal, just herself. This is, essentially, the plot of the manga, and I’m sure Volume 2 will find her coming to a greater understanding of herself.

As with most Hakusensha early volumes, we get a short story at the end, this one from the main LaLa magazine, which came out right before the author started on Flower in a Storm. It’s also much more serious than its companion. It deals with a grumpy guy and his vague attraction to a girl who seems to have several things wrong with her, notably her tendency for kissing everyone. This has given her a reputation, and her slightly ditzy persona doesn’t help. The resolution is quite adult, and surprised me (I suspect the series would be rated Teen except this story put it in OT).

This manga likely falls into the category of ‘since it’s a short series, I’ll get the final volume’. It’s light as air, with little to no substance, and if it were ongoing at 6 or more volumes, I’m not sure I’d keep getting it. But at 2, it’s good enough that I’ll get the end.