By Nana Haruta. Released in Japan as “Saboten no Himitsu” by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Ribon. Released in North America by Viz.

Ah, another new shoujo manga from Viz. Let’s see, what have we here? It takes place in high school… girl has fallen for a guy who’s very popular… can’t make her feelings understood. Hrm, I wonder if we’ll see an old girlf—yup, there she is. Ah, and will they bring in the smirky guy with a thing for the heroi—yeah, like clockwork.

To a degree, the North American manga market is beginning to suffer from what has affected Japan for some time – publishers do not want originality. Originality, for the most part, does not sell. Publishers want variations on a theme. Cute girl, cute guy, miscommunication, a few rivals, tie it up in a bow and sell it to Ribon, or Nakayoshi, or Ciao. It’s gonna run 3-4 volumes, then you take a short vacation and start again with a different couple. If it becomes a really big hit, you may be able to get an anime out of it. And as you get older, you can either retire or move up to drawing for You, Be Love, and Petit Comic – where you can either write the high school plot with more smut, or make your heroes office workers.

There is nothing, therefore, intrinsically wrong with Cactus’s Secret. The girl, Miku, is spunky, likeable, yet stubborn. The hero, Kyohei, is in the ‘clueless’ vein rather than the ‘jerk’ vein, so you can actually see what she might see in him. The confession is not dragged on for volumes and volumes, but happens towards the end of Volume 1 – and I really enjoyed the honesty of Kyohei’s response.

There’s even some implied backstory, and for once it’s backstory that the heroine knows some of but we don’t. Kyohei was a ‘bad boy’ in junior high, which is when Miku first fell for him, but we don’t really get much explanation here for what brought that on, or what changed him. Of course, this doesn’t help her out, as it turns out that she may have knew about him, but didn’t ‘know’ about him – discovering your love is not who you thought he was being another standard shoujo plot.

There’s nothing really bad here. The art is cute and uncomplicated, there are a refreshing lack of jerks (though that may change with the intro of rival guy at the end of this volume), and the plot is well-handled and, for once, well-timed. But there is absolutely nothing original here at all. You can pick up 10 other Viz or Tokyopop or CMX manga and get something very similar to this. If you don’t mind manga not blowing you away, but just being pretty good, then this is a good example.