By Karuho Shiina. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

I must admit, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps this series is a bit TOO shiny. After reading every volume, I feel as if I’ve just had a thorough scrub with soap and water. Everything around me is brighter and cleaner, in a Ivory Soap sort of way. Even the villains in this manga tend towards the misunderstood cutie type. There *is* conflict, but it’s the sort that involves simply being unable to speak your true feelings. I’m getting to the point where I really wish that perhaps a beloved sister would die, or perhaps someone could fall down a well.

Of course that’s rather petty of me, as this series is so sweet I can’t wish badness on anybody. And to be fair, we do get some real-world nastiness, as Yano breaks up with her college age boyfriend… who then belts her across the chops. (It’s meant to look like a slap, of course, but she has a bandage over her cheek the next day, and it’s still visible a couple days later when they’re over at Ryu’s place. He really socked her.) I liked this scene if only as it added a bit of depth to Yano, who’s generally the smartest and most mature of the group. It shows that it can be hard to follow your own advice, and reminds us that even though she’s the mature older one in terms of plot beats, she’s still a high school girl capable of making horrible decisions about men.

But enough of that, back to the heartwarming and adorable. Even the angsty moments are filled with this, as we see when Kurumi finally confesses her crush on Kazehaya. She knows how this is going to go, as do we. And Kazehaya, being the perfect guy, even lets her down in the perfect way, immediately noting he likes someone else, and then when she asks if her confession made him happy, notes that it did and thanks her. I think this is the turning point for our view of Kurumi, and though she doesn’t appear for the rest of the volume (which is more concerned with Chizuru and Ryu), I hope she shows up again, if only to see if she’s abandoned her fake ‘cute’ persona.

Then there’s chapter 18, which is just one giant ‘d’awwww!’ from start to finish. Sawako’s parents’ reaction to Yoshida and Yano, the pictures where Sawako isn’t a ‘ghost photo’, Pin’s ludicrous paranoia, and of course Kazehaya’s panicked embarrassment. Moments like these are important in the series, as not only do they make it funnier and more heartwarming,. but they also humanize Kazehaya a little bit, which is necessary for someone like him, who tends to fall into ‘far too perfect’ if the author is not very careful. Sawako has this issue too, but her painful earnestness at absolutely everything takes the curse off her.

(She’s like a Yotsuba for teen shoujo. “Look, my friends are coming over! Look, photos! Look, adorable flashbacks!” Like Yotsuba, though for different reasons, every experience Sawako has is the most wonderful thing ever.)

Lastly, we have the Chizuru’s crush plot, which will extend into the next volume. Here we get some much needed depth for Ryu, who has tended to be the sensible one but not much else. He’s comfortable with his unspoken love for Chizuru, and here we see why it’s unspoken, and how difficult it is for him to try to protect her without her knowing it and without his own feelings becoming clear. It’s an incredibly difficult task as Chizuru is not the brightest bulb in the lamp, and her combination of straightforward and unthinking leads the reader on a heady course for disaster… which will presumably have to wait for Volume 6, as we end this one with a cliffhanger.

I did greatly enjoy this volume, and I wonder if I’m just being picky when I note that it’s too sweet and wonderful for its own good. Hey, sometimes you want a good meal, and sometimes you want cake. And this cake is really well made, one of the best cakes currently coming out in the North American manga community. Go get yourselves some sugar, folks.

By Karuho Shiina. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

Everyone has that character. You know the one. It’s never the MAIN character, or at least it very rarely is. Usually one of the supporting cast. And they aren’t the only reason you read the manga, certainly. But oh, you love them to bits. You prowl through every volume that comes out, eyes skittering around the page, searching for them so that you can spot their moments. They’re your addiction.

For me, with Kimi ni Todoke, it’s Ayane Yano. I’m not sure why. She doesn’t hit any of my usual buttons, while all the other main girls do. Chizuru is the loud and clueless tomboy girl. Sawako is the earnest yet ostracized construction project. And everyone hates Kurumi, so naturally I must love her. But no, it’s Yano that makes me jump up and down.

Take this volume, which is mostly devoted to Kurumi’s ongoing war trying to get Sawako away from Kazehaya. Yano’s instincts immediately tell her what’s going on, and she does her best to help Sawako without manipulating things. She reminds Sawako to keep a clear head and not overthink things. She confronts Kurumi with a few caustic remarks and veiled threats, all delivered with a smile. And when she’s ready to break Kurumi, and Sawako tells her not to, she immediately realizes why, and knows that it’s not what Sawako would want. In a high school shoujo manga with a bunch of idiots, she (and Ryu) are there to be the smart ones.

And yet she’s also hysterical. Her ‘Libby’ persona gives her fuller lips than the others, most clearly seen in Super-Deformed mode, and it makes her expressions very funny. I love every time she gets irritated with Chizuru for missing the point. And of course, there’s the growing realization that, as much as this is to help Sawako, it’s also due to finding someone who’s not only prettier than Yano, but it’s a more natural beauty as well. Her victory pose screaming about how she’ll find out what facial lotion Kurumi uses is a triumph.

Mostly, though, I like Yano as she’s the one character here who *isn’t* the stereotype. Among the wallflowers, tomboys, and quiet guys, she’s someone who in any other manga would be, if not the villain, at least one of those selfish girls harassing the heroine. In Kimi ni Todoke, though, she’s one of the heroine’s best friends. Gotta love that.

Oh yes, speaking of that villain, I do indeed love Kurumi. Not for the usual “Sean always loves characters fans hate”, though I guess there’s a certain amount of that. But Kurumi is a very well fleshed-out villain. You never really doubt that she’s going to fail – this stars Sawako, after all – but she’s actually very clever in the ways that she tries to break Sawako. The rumors never got back to her as she was using the ‘cute nice girl’ persona she’s spent years crafting. When that didn’t work, she tried sweet-talking the socially crippled Sawako into thinking she might like Ryu (nice of Ryu to immediately kick that in the head – and with a secret confession he likes Chizuru, too!). Nothing, however, seems to work. And what’s worse, she finds her real personality coming out around Sawako without even thinking.

I never doubted for a moment that Kurumi would be ‘redeemed’, as she is at the end of this volume, mostly for the exact same reason Sawako did. She used her correct name, always. Someone ashamed of her own first name would notice another’s being misused, and just as Kurumi is unthinkingly nice around Sawako, she also can’t seem to be cruel to her in the way everyone *else* is – she can’t be unthinkingly cruel. She has to work at it.

The best scene in the book is the final one, with Sawako confronting a broken Kurumi after stopping her friends from ruining Kurumi’s life. She tries to point out that Kurumi actually confessed her feelings to someone, even if it was only Sawako, and that it must have felt good. This works, but when Sawako tries to point out that Kurumi is also incredibly cute, Kurumi loses it.

“I know I’m cute. That means nothing! If Kazehaya doesn’t like me, it doesn’t mean anything!”

This series is a potboiler, but it’s a potboiler whose default mode is fun, which I always prefer to the default-earnest potboilers. Even as this volume ends with two girls sobbing at their unresolved feelings, you know the next volume will bring good cheer. Or at least more SD-faces.

By Karuho Shiina. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

After the drama of Volume 2, we take a bit of a breather here, as these chapters serve to help cement Sawako’s new friendships and set up the Kurumi arc to come.

I had a discussion on Twitter the other day with Joy Kim regarding shoujo manga and female friendships. I was reminded of it by reading Portrait of M & N, which in Volume 1 featured our heroine as an outcast who is disliked by the other girls for attracting the attention of the hotties who are interested in her. This happens all the time in shoujo, an unfortunate consequence of the authors wanting to draw a lot of hot guys.

Thank God for titles like this, then. While this is still a romance manga, and I would argue that Sawako’s feelings for Kazehaya are the most important plot point, if you removed the romance entirely this manga would still exist. The manga is about Sawako coming out of her shell and learning to interact and be herself, which isn’t something that can be taught by just her man giving a winning smile on Page 35 of every chapter.

The first chapter is almost a microcosm of the manga itself. Sawako gets invited out by Yoshida and Yano for ramen, a carryover from Volume 2. (Her parent’s reaction to this is hysterical.) The ramen turns out to be at Ryu’s place, as his dad owns a ramen shop. Then Kazehaya gets invited over, and even Pin shows up, uninvited, to cause trouble. Throughout this we see Sawako marveling at the easy interaction everyone has with each other, and her gratitude that she’s now a part of it. It’s touching, and yet her intensity also makes it amusingly over the top.

(We also see that Sawako is not the only one in the manga who gets to be completely oblivious to love. Ryu gets the best line of the entire volume when Yoshida asks him what kind of girl he likes.

Ryu: (staring at her) … the kind that’s naive and oblivious, I guess.

Naturally, Yoshida’s response to this is complete bafflement.)

This is not to say that there is no romance in this volume. Sawako and Kazehaya are adorable, and you root for them and feel frustration at their poor communication skills. I liked it when he begins to teach her soccer, and she even noticeably improves under his tutelage (I was expecting her, as a non-tomboy, to be bad at sports in the cliched way.)

And of course we get Kurumi introduced properly here. She’s signposted as a major villain, and Yano (the sharpest of the entire group) sees through her right away. But Sawako has no ability to see through anything, and so is merely deliriously happy that she’s found another friend. Kurumi herself seems to be the ‘sweet on the outside, manipulative on the inside’ sort, and I expect the next volume will have her making Sawako’s life miserable. Especially because of the cliffhanger ending, where it becomes clear that Kurumi’s plans did not take Sawako’s honesty into account.

The mangaka for this series, Karuho Shiina, has been drawing for Shueisha for about 15 years, but she had only one other recurring series, Crazy For You, before starting this one. Clearly she has been honing her craft, as Kimi Ni Todoke is immensely popular in Japan, with an anime currently airing on television (it’s become quite rare for shoujo to get an anime). It’s well deserved. With likeable leads, a great supporting cast, and a heroine who’s becoming a stronger person every day, this is simply one of the best manga that Viz is releasing at the moment.