My Girlfriend’s a Geek Volume 2

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By Rize Shinba and Pentabu. Released in Japan as “Fujoshi Kanojo” by Enterbrain, serialized in the magazine Comic B’s Log. Released in North America by Yen Press.

This series continues to be very good at catering to its very specific audience. I’m not really one of them, but having been in fandom for so long I can definitely appreciate what it’s trying to say. The relationship between Taiga and Yuko may be tortuous to read, but it’s also very true to life. Taiga is constantly worrying about his relationship, wondering if he’s making it all up in his head, wondering if Yuko even likes him for himself, or finds him attractive in ways that don’t involve him being with other guys. But he never brings it up to her. Why? SHE MIGHT ANSWER. This is why I don’t really have any issues with the abuse heaped on Taiga in this series – he brings much of it on himself.

As for Yuko, she’s still a cipher, but is gaining some more good qualities. Good in the sense that they make her more interesting, not necessarily making her a better person. She gains a couple of fujoshi friends, and we see her irritation with a co-worker. The second in particular is amusing, as she dislikes the man intensely, but her reactions convince Taiga that he has a new rival for his love. The closest we get to any confirmation of her feelings for Taiga is in the first chapter, when, after noting she lied about her computer being broken so she could use Taiga’s better one, also admits with a blush that she wanted to see his apartment. Little steps.

There’s plenty of humor here, of course, mostly dealing with the fujoshi lifestyle. It’s still the main reason to read the book. There’s never really going to be any BL payoff, and no one is reading this for sexy romantic confessions between the leads, so instead you have the comedy. My favorites in this volume are detailing the proper way to play the galge she’s brought over, discussing how she plays fighting games to hear the guys scream as they’re punched, her face every time Taiga does something that makes her imagine him in BL situations, and the final gag about Comic B’s Log not being a BL magazine (which is true, but that’s like saying Wings is not a BL magazine).

Taiga can be very frustrating. He really hasn’t made much of an effort to get to know his girlfriend, mostly as he fears what will happen every time he asks her something, thinking it will be devoted to her hobbies. Most likely it will. But that doesn’t mean he has to treat her as some sort of blank slate. It’s especially annoying as we see that he is able to read her pretty well – one look at the cast of the galge and he can guess who her favorite characters are. If he wants to get any further in this relationship than ‘chew toy’, he should really be more proactive.

In nay case, I do recommend this to fans of character-based comedy, especially if you’re a yaoi fangirl, or know someone who is. Seeing Taiga suffer is just fun.

Skyblue Shore Volume 1

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By Nanpei Yamada. Released in Japan as “Sorairo Kaigan” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Hana to Yume (“Betsuhana”). Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Nanpei Yamada is a name well known to fans of Hakusensha’s shoujo. She had her first big break in 1990 with the Kumiko and Shingo series, a group of interconnected manga similar to Banri Hidaka’s Akiyoshi series. Then in 1997 she created Tea Prince, a light school fantasy that ended up running for 25 volumes. As often happens with artists who’ve been in Hana to Yume for some time, she then moved on to Betsuhana, where she’s currently creating works. I had expected the first North American License of her titles to be her current bodyswapping manga Orange Chocolate, but instead we get her 2007 6-volume series Skyblue Shore, a slice of life romance surrounding beachcombers.

Those looking for the standard shoujo cliches will find they’re all happily in place here. Spunky young heroine who makes friends easily. Hot older guy she falls instantly in love with. Sullen and withdrawn guy her own age who she’s clearly going to end up with in the end. And of course a tragic past full of secrets. But again, shoujo is not where you go for originality. The whole thing is written in a likeable way that draws the reader in and makes them want to know more.

The art style is sweet and flows without getting too complicated or busy, as many Hakusensha series to (I Hate You More Than Anyone, Gakuen Alice…). Yamada does tend to draw very wide mouths, which took me some getting used to, but that’s more of a stylistic thing than a complaint. Her depiction of a small town and its beachfront seems dead on.

As for the tragic past, we only get tastes of it here. There’s a nice fakeout with the introduction of a character who we think we saw in the flashback at the start. Indeed, for a moment I worried this story was going to get into much darker themes than I’d anticipated, but that is later revealed not to be the case. Not that there isn’t a fair share of drama here, as we not only get a big revelation at the end that changes the way we regard the rest of the volume, but we also see Tomo, our heroine, nearly drown.

Skyblue Shore is another one of the many shoujo manga I’d classify as ‘comfort manga’. Nothing in here is going to blow you away and change the way you think about manga. But on the other hand, there’s a likeable cast, intriguing plot, and at 6 volumes it’s not going to be the huge investment Tea Prince would have been. If you’re a fan of the sort of shoujo Hakusensha puts out, you’ll like this a lot.

Maid-sama! Volume 7

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By Hiro Fujiwara. Released in Japan as “Kaichō wa Maid-sama!” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

I’ll be honest, there was a lot of this volume that didn’t really work for me. It ends with a side-story featuring Aoi and the other minor male characters in the series, the premise of which seems to involve Aoi trying to drive them away by being mean and the others not noticing because this is what they call friendship (and it’s implied they’ve grown used to abuse from Misaki). I don’t especially mind Aoi, but the story just never gelled for me, and the lack of Misaki until the climax hurt it. The first chapter, in which Misaki dressed as a Visual Kei hottie in order to help her fellow maid get out of an embarrassing date, is also not great, mostly as it’s nothing we haven’t seen before. Misaki is determined, Usui watching over her and teasing her, etc.

However, this is made up for with the other chapters. In one of them, she has to take her childhood friend Hinata to the maid cafe… while not giving away that she works there. I had actually forgotten the reason she hides her profession is merely embarrassment and worry what people would think. I’m so used to manga where part-time jobs are forbidden by the school that I assumed it was for that reason. As a result, I was taken aback by Honoka, another one of the maids, just laying into Misaki for making light of the rest of them and treating her job as a shameful thing. (Honoka and Usui seem to have a common trait in inspiring Misaki, but while Usui enrages her, Honoka depresses her.) This Hinata now knows about her job as well, but at least she can stop trying to lie to him.

There’s a great flashback in this chapter where we see young Misaki yelling at young Hinata for not crying over the death of his parents. She tells him that you should never lie about your feelings. She recalls this in the chapter, and it helps inspire her to reveal her job to Hinata, but more importantly it sets up the next two chapters, which are essentially the payoff we’ve been waiting seven books for. Misaki and her friends (plus Usui) go to a school festival, which happens to be at the school of those J-Rock fakers we saw a volume or so ago. It turns out that Sakura is still dating the lead singer, and that he may actually be shaping up a bit. Due to the insane popularity of the band, Sakura and Shizuko get swept into the crowd, leaving Misaki and Usui to wander the festival… including having their fortune told. The fortune is clearly rigged, giving them bad luck in love so that they have to take their special love challenge as a result.

I’ve mentioned guys being hard to read in shoujo reviews before, particularly Naoko in Itazura Na Kiss. Usui is not very much like him, but also has a certain quality that makes it hard for the reader to really tell what he’s thinking, mostly as he’s so good at hiding it from Misaki. We *think* that Usui was briefly affected by the fortune telling, but since he so quickly converts it to his usual teasing we can’t be sure. And so he and Misaki end up doing the love test, which involves a series of dumb feats they have to do without letting go of each other’s hands. Needless to say, anything that is a competition is going to be a piece of cake for these two, and as a result they’re invited to the school dance at the end (normally restricted to students from the school only.)

And so Misaki, who has noticed Usui acting weird despite his best efforts, is feeling out of sorts. This is not helped by the singer from the band, who in defending his relationship with Sakura is aghast that Misaki and Usui still aren’t a couple. “So… what? Are you still making him wait for you?” is his blunt assessment, and it gets Misaki even more upset. Due to her family life and her sheer bullheadedness, the feelings she has for Usui are terrifying and alien to her, and doing the competition didn’t help. The whole thing comes to a head in an abandoned classroom, where Misaki asks Usui if he’s holding back for her, and he tries to get her to open up (something he usually avoids, except obliquely). He points out that, unlike EVERYONE else she deals with, including Hinata, she lies to him constantly about her feelings. No, she’s not blushing. No, she really hates him. Etc.

And so finally, she tells him the truth – she wanted to hold hands with him the entire day. But he makes her so confused that she has no idea what this means. And so (and really, we can’t blame his passions for being inflamed by this, as Misaki has never been more attractive and adorable in her blushy indecisiveness) he shows her how he feels. And tells her. While I felt the chapter went on too long (it had 20 extra pages that month, and the chapter gives a sense of being dragged out as much as possible), the emotional punch of the payoff works great. Of course, we don’t get a confession on her end (something Usui immediately points out), but by now Misaki saying she hates Usui has BECOME an expression of love – she even yells at him when he notes it, saying only she is allowed to say that to him.

So not perfect, and following it with the Aoi side story didn’t help, bujt still, I am very grateful to Maid-sama! for delivering on its romance in a way that, say, Otomen wasn’t really able to do. Looking forward to Volume 8 to see how Misaki deals with this.