By Mayu Shinjo. Released in Japan as “Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero!” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shoujo Comic (“Sho-Comi”). Released in North America by Viz.

This is a turning point for Ai Ore! in many ways. It’s the last volume published before the move from Shogakukan to Kadokawa Shoten, which is why it reads very much like it’s ending. It marks a point where the series stops trying to be a satire or parody of these sorts of mangas and simply becomes another example of them, albeit a funny one. And it also has Akira develop to the point where, though I still have a few reservations, I can now admit without irony that I am enjoying this title.

For one thing, this volume doesn’t even pretend to be about Mizuki anymore. Akira is the star here, and most of what we see are his attempts to deal at being in love with Mizuki. He wants to win her affection and love, his hormones are raging at him to seduce her as soon as possible, and he’s getting bad advice all round from many of his friends – some of which, in fact, we’ve seen him use before in earlier chapters. Akira is trying to find a balance between ‘women like a strong, sexy guy who can take command’ and ‘I know what’s best for her because I am an asshole’, and it’s not as hard a line to cross as he would like.

This makes him stand out from other typical Shogakukan male heroes, even more than the cutesy pretty girl looks he’s stuck with. An excellent example is a chapter where a rival shows up – Tsubasa, another pretty boy who looks like a girl that Mizuki met and accidentally enthralled a couple of years earlier. He challenges Akira to a competition, with Mizuki being the winner. Akira, of course, accepts, and is very curt to Mizuki – “just sit back and wait for me to come claim you”, he notes, and you want to smack him all over again. The contest itself, though, which shows him basically letting his lecherous classmates practically rape him just so that he can get their vote – shows that power is not really what drives him at all. And a good thing too, as he’s so bad at using it.

The end of that chapter has Ran, the slightly more sensible of Akira’s two playboy friends, asking him “Have you given any thought to how Mizuki feels about this?” Well, no, he hadn’t. It’s only partly his fault – Mizuki is still the weak link in this story, though she’s not as bad as she has been. We don’t worry as much about her doubting her femininity or trying to act girly… but we also empathize with Akira, as her waffling really is driving the reader crazy now as well. Mizuki here, I believe, finally at least understands what love is, and that she’s madly in love with Akira. I just wish the couple had better communication. But then I say that about most manga couples.

In the last chapter, everything comes together. Mizuki says that she loves Akira, Akira realizes that this wasn’t something that he could have forced, no matter how he tried, and the two have now been intimate. As I said, it READS like an ending – readers of Shoujo Comic would be satisfied with the way it wrapped up here. Of course, if they also purchased Kadokawa Shoten’s Asuka, they would see the series continue – and so will we, with Vol. 4. Which will also see it return to standard 200-page format, I believe. In any case, finally recommended with few reservations.

Also, great title drop right at the end there, for folks who wondered what Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero meant.

By Mayu Shinjo. Released in Japan as “Ai wo Utau Yori Ore ni Oborero!” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Shoujo Comic (“Sho-Comi”). Released in North America by Viz.

Another volume of the meant to be fun but mostly incredibly frustrating Ai Ore, where you keep waiting for the heroine to embrace her inner prince and tell Akira where to stick it. But that’s not what’s going to happen here, and instead we’re going to get more and more of Mizuki getting in touch with her inner feminine emotions and learning what love really is. Which, honestly, is mostly fine. As long as Akira’s not being a horrible jerk.

No, really, it’s true. There’s a sequence of about 100 pages or so midway through this volume where Mayu Shinjo stops focusing on how possessive and stifling Akira wants his love to be, and how he will destroy everything about Mizuki’s life in order to make her his. Instead, we get actual fun plots featuring our heroes interacting with the other characters. Mizuki has to pretend to be a yakuza girlfriend. Akira gets sick and Mizuki has to take care of him. Mizuki goes to Akira’s culture festival, and finds him dressed as a catboy. This is really fun stuff. Mayu Shinjo has been writing manga for years, and has none of the newbie’s issues with pacing or padding. And since Akira isn’t being a brat, his relationship with Mizuki is actually enjoyable.

Then there’s the rest of the manga. As I noted in my review of Volume 1, he’d be a perfect horrible shoujo male lead if he weren’t so immature about it. We see here that he comes from a very overprotective family, and was no doubt spoiled rotten. This helps to explain a lot of his behaviors, but doesn’t necessarily make them any better to watch. To be fair, he is a little better here, especially when he finds he has competition in the form of Mizuki’s old childhood friend Shinnosuke, who has returned from university and is (needless to say) smoking hot. And also manly, something which sets Akira’s teeth on edge.

As for those wondering how seriously Shinjo is taking this manga, I would like to point to the helicopter, the boxing match, the shopping trip, the entirety of the yakuza omiai and culture festivals… there’s a lot in here that’s just a hoot, provided you remember to turn off your brain a bit. The humor here is a bit more subtle than Butterflies, Flowers, so it’s not as easy for me to throw off the casual sexism the way it is for that title. But I have to admit it, even if I do want to strangle Akira half the time, Ai Ore! remains a complete page-turner. It’s pretty much exactly what you want from a potboiler – the inability to put it down. Let’s hope the next volume continues that trend, and I’ll try to stop complaining about things that I would rather the author be writing about.