Tag: shoujo

Usotoki Rhetoric Volume 1 (Advanced Review): Liar, Liar, Heard you Lie Sir

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Aaaaah… shoujo. The manga term for romantic relationships, giant sparkling eyes, and hearts being set a-flutter. Every time I read a shoujo manga, I didn’t exactly like it, including some of the household classics. Well, maybe that’ll change, thanks to Ritsu Miyako’s Usotoki Rhetoric. I was offered an advanced copy of One Peace Books’ first published volume (you know, the small team built on The Rising of the Shield Hero and a dream?), and I took it. You’ll know why once I tell you its novel premise.

In Usotoki Rhetoric, Urabe Kanako exiles herself from her rural village, because everyone hates her due to her psychic power to hear lies. In the big city, she runs into a financially unstable detective named Iwai Soma. Naturally, he has her help him solve cases so he can make fat stacks. Presumably, they’ll fall in love.

Oops, I forgot to mention the setting: Japan during the Showa Era, i.e. the 1920s. If you’re a real weeb, then Usotoki Rhetoric will feel quite interesting. People have the old-school hair and the kimonos. It also makes sense for Kananko to be discriminated against, since people would’ve been more superstitious at the time. 

Unfortunately, nothing is perfect, especially if you’re not a shoujo fan. On the bright side, the art is more tolerable than other shoujos, where characters have gems surgically implanted into their eye sockets and chins that can impale someone. However, it’s still shoujo art, trading intricacy for intimacy. The humor feels identical to literally all other shoujo manga I have ever read. There are plenty of the “person says something stupid and begets an overeaction from someone else” trope, but being a shoujo, the energy and spontaneity is toned down a lot from what I’m used to in shounen. Also, the constant running joke of Soma being poor just feels kind of unremarkable.

Furthermore, as a caveat of reviewing just the first volume, the duo already seems—as the kids say it—dummy busted. Kananko’s power is limited only to people who lie on purpose, and when dealing with criminals themselves, it’s not really that vexing. So far, they run into the perp immediately, and it’s only a matter of acting accordingly. Meanwhile, Soma is—you know—a detective. He latches onto small details and is actually more competent than his pockets would lead you to believe. As it stands, Kananko just seems to be an insurance policy.

So far, Usotoki Rhetoric is set up to be an episodic mystery series. They solve a case, and since malt shops weren’t invented yet, they just move onto the next one. They vary wildly in urgency, from attempted arson on a child to petty theft. I was hoping for a murder case, but that does not occur in this volume.

As far as characters are concerned, there are only three mainstays: Kanako, Soma, and Soma’s friend, Hanasaki (I think that was his name?). Well, if you know your shoujo, then you might as well have met them. Kanako is that weak and awkward girl who has to get used to not being hated for being unique. She starts to get more confident in this volume alone. Soma is handsome and aloof. He’s kind of a troll, and his willingness to swindle people in between cases—such as by using Kanako so he can read minds as a street performer—is supposed to juxtapose his hunkyness with some flaws. Of course, if you’re familiar with a lot of shounen and seinen, he’s still a saint by comparison to some OTHER people. 

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 7.5/10

This volume of Usokoti Rhetoric lays the groundwork for what could be a decent mystery series, but that could easily fall apart if the cases don’t get complex enough. The portrayal of Showa Era Japan feels quite minimal to the point of seeming entirely irrelevant. The main characters’ relationship isn’t cringy, but I’m not exactly attached to them either. I’m sure shoujo aficionados would love Usotoki Rhetoric, but I am simply not that kind of person.

Villainess Reloaded Didn’t Blow ME Away, That’s for Sure!

by macksamson, posted in Light Novels, Other

Perhaps my least favorite subgenre of light novels—even more than the notorious isekai—is probably whatever you call “the main protagonist is suddenly inside a visual novel for no reason”. Events tend to happen exactly like in the game, so the main character ends up being more overpowered than any isekai protag simply by knowing the future and avoiding all the problems that they already knew about. More importantly, their appeal lies in a very neurotypical fascination with realistic human relationships, as well as for you to be easily invested in whether or not two fictional characters do it. I hated pretty much every single one of these I’ve ever tried to read… but one title by the author of Her Majesty’s Swarm, which I’m assuming got axed or J Novel-Club lost the licensing or something, caught my eye: Villainess Reloaded! Blowing Away Bad Ends with Modern Weapons.

In Villainess Reloaded!, a college student whose name is never mentioned is reborn in an otome name as its main antagonist: Astrid Sophia von Oldernberg. Despite having been forced to play it by a friend, she nonetheless got every ending, and knows that Astrid is fated to die. As such, she plans to use her military knowledge to create this game world’s equivalent to modern weapons.

The appeal of this is seeing a loli unloading an AK-47 on people with no remorse. Coming from the author of Her Majesty’s Swarm, this is no real surprise. Even at age four in the game, she wastes no time learning magic and producing her own guns. At age four. Here’s the thing, though; since guns weren’t invented yet, there are no gun laws in this game world! So, technically, what she’s doing is entirely legal. 

The immediate problems, however, rear their ugly heads right off the bat. For starters, she asks her father for permission on early magic lessons, and the way she convinces him isn’t by giving him a kiss on both cheeks, but by listing several sociopolitical reasons why it’s for his benefit, all while using words that a four-year-old couldn’t possibly know. Of course, this is a fantasy world with no regard for realism, so I could let that slide.

However, it doesn’t end there. When Astrid gets her magic tutor, he just nonchalantly teaches her subjects magic that only the most advanced wizards are supposed to learn. This includes blood magic, which is the equivalent of dark arts and something a child—in the context of this world—shouldn’t be allowed to learn. Being an LN protagonist, Astrid does all this pretty much perfectly. And the cherry on top is that everyone is just casually okay with it! Even when someone does show concern, it’s very swiftly swept aside.

This volume consists of the usual slice-of-life stuff that happens in pretty much every LN of this kind that I have read. It’s no different from those LNs except with the occasional use of guns. I guess this is supposed to be a slow burn, since the flash-forward prologue implies that Astrid gets three fairy familiars before wrecking stuff, and at this point she only has one.

The characters are pretty much the typical, grounded shoujo tropes you’d see in your garden variety visual novel. Astrid, despite being a sociopath, isn’t that fun to enjoy, even with her crazy monologuing. The others are, well, I don’t like them.

~~~~~

Verdict: 5/10

Villainess Reloaded! did not at all get me to like this subgenre of light novel any better than before. It was boring and unremarkable, and the gun gimmick seemed like a marketing hook more than anything. I guess if you like romance and visual novels, then you’ll like this as well.

And with that, I kind of have some lousy news for my blog moving forward. For whatever reason, I’ve been very close to being in the red when it comes to my money. In fact, I can barely afford to buy the light novel volumes of the series I actually care about. So, for the time being, I will not cover any light novel debuts no matter what. This will last until I finish a good enough number of the ones I’ve been currently working on. Hopefully that’ll be sooner rather than later, since light novels are kind of what I started this blog on!

Unnamed Memory is as Shoujo as it Gets (Volume 1 Review)

by macksamson, posted in Other

I feel like the light novel game hasn’t been strong lately, at least from the English-publication perspective. To be honest, WATARU!!! is the only new series that got me excited. And while I don’t mind having less titles to worry about, I still enjoy having new ones to look forward to. There are two new titles left on my list this month that seem promising, and today’s post covers the first: Unnamed Memory, published in English by Yen Press.

In Unnamed Memory, a Prince named Oscar Farsas has been cursed to where his boys can no longer swim without drowning. Since he’s an only child, he has to alleviate the curse or his family line ends. To do this, he visits Tinasha, the Witch of Azure. She says that she can’t undo the curse, but a woman with a uterus immune to the curse (apparently?) can birth his kid just fine. Oscar immediately proposes to Tinasha, and is rejected. But since he climbed her tower, she has to do something, and that something is to live with him while pretending to be an apprentice.

Does this light novel seem shoujo to you? Well, it is. This is one of those where the strapping young man sweeps the tsundere girl off her feet. However, this one takes its sweet ol’ time. That sounds all well and good, but there’s still a lot of the dumb shoujo clichés that make me want to rip my hair out.

This volume is all over the place, as it tries to set up multiple things at once with no rhyme or reason. For example, the second chapter is a literal murder case, and there are these very blatantly suspicious people at the scene of the crime (who, of course, knew that the crime was going to be committed before it even happened). The case itself is resolved very lackadaisically, as if it was just a Saturday morning visit to the park.

Because of this, I have no idea where the priority lies with the story. The murder case isn’t all that’s resolved super fast. They build up to this big ancient demon from a war that suspiciously happened at the same time that the Farsas family got cursed, and they just do away with it like it’s no big deal. It almost reminds me of Sailor Moon, which is actually a bad thing because I wholeheartedly dislike that series. 

Surprise, surprise, guess who didn’t like the characters whatsoever? Me! Oscar felt like a weird combination of genuinely caring for Tinasha while also being sexist? Based on the premise, you’d think she’d be the dominant member of the relationship, but nope, he still has to think he needs to swoop in and save her ass (but it doesn’t matter because their both overpowered protagonists). And to top it all off, he proposes to her on a daily basis and it’s ridiculously annoying. 

Tinasha is, so far, a cookie-cutter tsundere. Her identity gets revealed super early, which I can at least appreciate, but the fact that she’s accepted by everyone quite easily makes the whole thing seem pointless. The other characters are as “kinda just there” as any peanut gallery, and a lot of them are introduced quite suddenly.

~~~~~

Verdict: 6.75/10

Unnamed Memory is a decent shoujo series I guess, but as someone who really doesn’t like shoujo, I can’t say I enjoyed even a lick of it. I’m not likely to commit to this series, but maybe you’ll like it if you’re a romance junkie.

I’m In Love with a Villainess Killed My Love for Yuri (Volume 1 Review)

by macksamson, posted in Light Novels, Other

One genre I did not expect to consistently blow me away was yuri; a genre that mainly focuses on a romantic relationship between two women. I just kept getting bombarded by these super entertaining and engaging stories. Murcielago, Otherside Picnic, Sexiled, and ROLL OVER AND DIE! have been real pleasures. So when Seven Seas published their edition of I’m in Love With the Villainess, and it became a #1 bestseller on Amazon and BookWalker, I was excited. However, like with virtually all media I’ve consumed other than One Piece…

I CANNOT LIKE ANYTHING POPULAR.

In I’m in Love With the Villainess, a girl named Rae is transported into the setting of her favorite otome game, Revolution, with literally no explanation. She can date anyone she wants, but chooses the main antagonist, Claire Francois. Since Claire is a conceited noble girl, “tsundere” doesn’t even begin to describe her relationship with Rae.

From the first chapter, all the way to the end, I was flabbergasted. First off, the writing was abysmal. They don’t even go out of the way to describe the setting, not even in enough detail for you to get a sense of 3D space. Heck, I couldn’t even find a description of what Rae looked like; you literally have to take the part where it says Clair is blonde, and deduce that Rae has black hair by looking at the cover art and using the process of elimination! And despite being yuri, I felt no sexual tension between them, even when they’re naked.

And boy, the relationship between those girls was just lacking in… everything! Most of their interactions consist of Rae showering Claire with compliments, who responds by shouting witty comebacks. I understand that this comedic style is common in Japanese media, but it was so frequent that it literally felt like 19/20 of their interactions. Not even D-Frag!, which makes fun of it, was that bad.

The other bad thing was that the entirety of I’m in Love With the Villainess is Rae being in love with the villainess! “Well, duh,” you say, “it’s yuri.” No, you don’t understand. The other yuri I’ve read up to this point have something more. Murcielago had over-the-top gore and visual spectacle, Sexiled was crazy committed to Feminism, and both Otherside Picnic and ROLL OVER AND DIE! had high-tension suspense and action. Rae does kind of resort to tricks, like making up ghost stories just so Claire can cling to her, but compared to the sociopaths I’ve seen, that amounts to mere childish pranks. The only real scheme I could gather from I’m in Love With the Villainess was that Rae tries to build a ship between Clair and some guy. I’m anticipating that she’s doing this just to break them up, then swoop in and take Claire for herself while her guard is down. Even if that does happen down the road, it still leaves much to be desired compared to the other examples. 

Do I even need to discuss the characters? They’re all as flat as boards. Rae’s doting on Claire comes off as childish and annoying instead of seductive and sexy, plus she has no other personality quirks to speak of. Claire is just a boring tsundere; Rae even says that she never goes over-the-top. There’s also these three princely brothers, and why are they even in this LN at all?! This is yuri for crying out loud!

~~~~~

Verdict: 5/10

I’m in Love With the Villainess is an empty husk of ideas, none of which are executed well. I am absolutely astounded that something like this has been so commercially successful compared to the other yuri series I mentioned. At this point, I have come to question the genre’s sense of quality. Was this series the exception, or the rule? In any case, just save yourself the pain and read any yuri series other than this one!

Weeb Reads Monthly – September 2020

by macksamson, posted in Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, Deathbound Duke's Daughter, Invincible Shovel, Light Novels, So I'm a Spider, So What?, Torture Princess

I definitely like this new monthly format for light novels. In fact, I’m going to keep at it for… er… ever. Since I’m doing this right out of the gate, there should be a lot more books to discuss in this post. So, bear with me as we tear through the month’s newest releases!

So I’m a Spider, So What? Volume 9

I discussed this series a long time ago, in a post where I compared it to Overlord and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Since then… it’s been the only one of the three I haven’t dropped completely. The series has kind of been in a slump for me lately; after the twist in volume 5, we finally know what’s going on, but after that it’s been a bit of a trudge to get to the good stuff. Looking at the table contents, one chapter towards the end stands out like a sore thumb. Maybe this is when it gets its act back together?

Sadly, the first half of the volume is not particularly exciting. They FINALLY reach the demon realm, and they just cozy up in Ariel’s house. In fact, the interludes seem to have more plot relevance than the main story, such as some side chapters featuring Mr. Ogre-boy from the last volume.

Other than that, Spider is kind of hit-or-miss as always. The volume’s climax is a battle against Ogre-boy, but it’s marred by exposition, and I—to be honest—never really understood what his point in the story is. Anyways, like I mentioned earlier, one chapter stands out, and there is definitely a revelation. Buuuuuut, when we get the whole story, it’s kind of stupid (our girl even reacts as such). And as things stand at the end of the volume, it seems like the next one is going to be back to our regularly scheduled mundanity. I will not be counting these eggs before they hatch!

Verdict: 7.5/10

The Invincible Shovel Volume 3

Alright, it’s time for some more Invincible Shovel! This is about the point where the series ends up becoming repetitive. But if there’s one thing that’s interesting, it’s Catria of all people. She has fought tooth and nail to not fall victim to Lithisia, who has basically evolved into a half-human, half-shovel entity. Her sword has literally become a shovel. But in this volume, Catria starts to do shovel techniques, while still trying to deny that she’s getting shoveled.

Another interesting thing to note is that Invincible Shovel seems to be setting itself up for the endgame. MyAnimeList still says it’s publishing, but it could be wrong. I have a theory as to what a future arc could be, but we’ll have to wait for that point to find out. Otherwise, it’s the same shoveltastic comedy it always is!

Verdict: 8/10

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter: Erika Aurelia and the Angel’s Crypt

I gave the previous Deathbound Duke’s Daughter volume a lackluster score, but I had some semblance of hope for the future of the series. It had a very whimsical world, even if the characters were just about as plastic as any slice-of-life fantasy.

In this volume, Erika goes to Ignitia where she meets the city’s charming prince, August. The really long first chapter is basically to introduce us to the city and the fact that there’s this titular Angel’s Crypt. Erika knows that she is to be murdered by this beast in said Crypt, which August thinks can grant his wish to be better at dragon riding.

Overall, I felt like this volume was slightly better than the previous one. Once it picked up, things got pretty fast-paced and adventurous. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s good enough. August is a typical “bastard child trope”, and felt so manufactured to me; he has absolutely zero hesitation in selling his soul to a demon in order to get his wish. Also, they try to hide who the villain is even though the color pages straight-up tell you who it is (but it’s still predictable regardless). 

Verdict: 7.55/10

Combatants Will Be Dispatched! Volume 4

I’ve been loving Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, but the biggest issue with it has been trying to write a substantial review of the newest volumes. Fortunately, with this new format, I can put in a short blurb and it’ll be fine! Let’s see what Six’s latest adventure has in store for us.

This volume serves one purpose, and that’s to properly introduce a new waifu: Lilith. If you recall, she’s one of Six’s superiors; the mad scientist of Kisaragi. Sadly, she’s my least favorite protagonist so far. There’s nothing wrong with her, but she just falls short of Best Girl Alice and Besterest Girl Grimm. A lot of her lines are just her having straight-man reactions to how ridiculous the fantasy world is and not much else.

Overall, this is sort of a slice-of-life volume (as slice-of-life as Combatants can get). It’s funny, and there’s some good character interactions, but nothing much actually happens. The climax makes you think that they’re finally going to make a move on the Demon Lord, but it ends up getting put off. Maybe they’ll follow up next volume?

Verdict: 8.35/10

Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen Volume 5

This has been one of my favorite isekai of all time. I won’t defend anyone who says it’s edgy, superficial, and trashy, but it has such chutzpah that I love it. The previous volume had the least amount of gore, yet it raised the bar for the story moving forward. Since I made sure this was the final volume we cover today, I saved the best for last! 

Volume five is even more of a departure from the over-the-top gore, and caffeine-fueled villains than volume four. Right away, Jeanne establishes a new goal: kill the Saint so that Diablos can never awaken. But since we have no idea where she is, the only choice is to ask the Saint’s BFF: the Butcher. Of course, it can’t be that easy; in fact, it takes most of the volume to reach the booger.

Just from reading the volume, I can easily assume that this is the point where people would really start hating on Torture Princess. I’m still loving this story, but the way things play out in this current arc really smells like milking the series (which is odd because I don’t think Torture Princess is that popular in Japan). It’s still relatively straightforward for now, but there’s no telling what it’s going to be like in the future. Furthermore, there’s a big scene at the end that will likely come off as contrived and/or predictable (which, let’s be honest, we critics only use those words when we’ve genuinely fallen for a plot twist and we want to write an excuse for it). But as far as this volume’s concerned, Torture Princess maintains its same sense of quality… for what it’s worth to you.

Verdict: 9.15/10

Conclusion

“There should be a lot more books to discuss in this post,” he says… yet he only discusses one more book than the last time. Well, that’s definitely going to change next month, especially if I can go to Disney this year (in which case I’d have to do a mega post for October and November). Anyway, good books this time around. Leave a comment for some feedback!

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter: Erika Aurelia and the Seafarer’s Ruins Review

by macksamson, posted in Deathbound Duke's Daughter, Light Novels

I have a confession to make: a couple of years ago, I read the first volume of My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom, and wholly disliked it. Maybe it improves, but all I saw was a typical, slow-paced, “grounded and realistic” slice-of-life fantasy that tried to hide that fact with an interesting premise. “Now what does that have to do with the topic at hand?” you ask. Well, you’ll see when I describe the premise of Deathbound Duke’s Daughter, published in English by J-Novel Club.

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter is a blatant clone of My Next Life as a Villainess. An unnamed character, who was apparently murdered at her workplace, is reincarnated as Erika Aurelia, the antagonist of her favorite otome game, Liber Monstrorum. Erika has a red shirt on, and is destined to die at the very beginning of the game. With her wits, the new Erika might be able to reverse her fate.

The immediate difference with Deathbound and Villainess is the world that the “games” are set in. In Villainess, Katarina is harassed by the student body, or accosted by bandits or something (I actually forgot because, to reiterate, I didn’t exactly like that series). On the flipside, Liber Monstrum proves to be the Dark Souls of visual novels; there’s vampyres, werewolves, and all kinds of Lovecraftian horrors that await. 

This gives Deathbound a much more adventurous vibe than Villainess, which automatically makes it a great light novel for me (even though “objectively” it’s bad because it doesn’t involve solving personal, human issues *sarcasm*). It wastes no time diving into the titular Seafarer’s Ruins, where Erika must save some kids from being King Midas’d to death, and more importantly, saving herself by having their hypothetical dead spirits not curse her.

However, the characters- like many-an isekai- leave much to be desired. Erika, despite supposedly being evil, is just about as un-evil and plain ordinary as Katarina from Villainess. The other major characters include Claus and Anne Hafan. The former is a typical overpowered self-insert protagonist (but he’s not the MAIN protagonist, which makes him subversive! *sarcasm*), and Anne is just a boring moe blob.

The art for this novel series is great, especially the cover art. It has a very whimsical look. However, the interior illustrations look kind of weird to me. It’s probably because it’s shoujo-looking, and I find that artstyle to be weird in general.

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Verdict: 7.5/10

Deathbound Duke’s Daughter is definitely a better version of My Next Life as a Villainess. However, it’s not perfect. If it doesn’t grow some personality soon, then I’ll end up dropping it just as hard as I did its clone. For now, I recommend it to fans of Villainess, as well as Ascendance of a Bookworm and Mushoku Tensei.

Children of the Whales (1-6) and Kaiju Girl Caramelise (1-3) First Impressions

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Manga

Shoujo is by far my least favorite manga genre. It’s basically the manga equivalent of cringey YA romance, which I have very much established as not liking. But one shoujo manga (at least according to MyAnimeList), Children of the Whales (published in English by Viz), actually looks legitimately good! Let’s see if it is…

In Children of the Whales, we follow a group of people who live on a boat, called the Mud Whale, adrift on an endless sea of sand (potential Xenoblade Chronicles 3 idea?). Our main protagonist, Chakuro, who has some serious OCD that makes him document everything in ridiculous detail, participates on a mission to investigate a second, derelict ship that is spotted in the sand. There, he finds a mysterious girl he names Lykos, the first human from outside of his own Mud Whale that has ever been witnessed, and naturally, she single-handedly turns Chakuro’s life on its head.

While it does get a bit exposition-y at the beginning, Children of the Whales wastes no time getting into that good ol’ intrigue. There’s a lot of weird stuff regarding the reason why the Mud Whale is even where it is, and of course, where Lykos came from and what her beef is. Overall, the manga has a very whimsical atmosphere, and regardless of how straightforward the plot is, it always feels like there’s secrets waiting to be revealed.

Unfortunately, it does fall into some typical modern fantasy traps, the worst of all being the Thymia system. Thymia is basically magic, and it cuts people’s life spans short (but since our characters are teens, it’s no problem for them). The only thing explained about it (not counting the blips of lore that come in between chapters) is that it’s powered by raw emotion. This means that the author can go hog wild and we just have to deal with it.

But hey, at least it has interesting worldbuilding to offset that. The in-between chapter blurbs show how much thought the author put into the Mud Whale’s design, and the thing itself does have a memorable look. It’s also really good at building curiosity and anticipation to what the rest of the world is like. 

It’s just too bad that the characters aren’t so great. Chakuro is your basic weak, generic boy who ends up existing just to absorb plot information. Among the people who actually have to do the legwork are Lykos and Ouni. Lykos is your typical “sad girl who needs wuv”, and Ouni is just the super-powerful angsty teen. There are a lot of other characters, but they’re just as unmemorable. This is definitely a story-driven manga, that’s for sure.

Normally, I find shoujo manga to be visually appalling. However, Children of the Whales actually looks beautiful. It definitely embraces some shoujo tropes, such as sparkly eyes, but the author didn’t gouge out the characters’ actual eyes and put diamonds in the sockets. There is also, thankfully, a lack of the knife-chins that most shoujo characters have. The background art is the most appealing aspect of the manga, along with some great abstract imagery. The Thymia also gives characters magical tattoos, and if there’s anything I find sexy, it’s magical tattoos!

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Current Verdict: 7.5/10

Children of the Whales is starting out pretty well, but it looks like it’s going to be one of those slow burns. Fortunately, it does seem to ramp up by around volume 5, so I am curious as to how much better it could get. It’s extremely sparse on romance, so I don’t know why it’s supposedly considered a shoujo manga. As such, I can’t exactly recommend it to shoujo fans. But if you want an ambient, whimsical story, Children of the Whales has got you covered.

Romance is a tough genre to do well (at least for cold-hearted introverts like me). I’ve seen a lot with great potential fall flat on their faces. Let’s see if Kaiju Girl Caramelise, published in English by Yen Press, bites off more than it can chew.

In Kaiju Girl Caramelise, an emotionally unstable girl named Kuroe Akaishi ends up meeting the hot guy in her school, Arata Minami, and hits it off with him. The problem with Kuroe is that she has a rare disease where she grows monster parts whenever her mental state is under duress. And when her emotions rise to a fever pitch, she straight-up turns into Godzilla.

While her inevitable love for Arata seems to come out of nowhere, the manga starts with a flashback of her as a kid getting rejected by an unknown male character. I immediately assumed that this was in fact a young Arata, which explains her initial fervor for him at the beginning. But regardless… her love for him really does appear abruptly. All he does is go out of his way to talk to her and she suddenly has sparkly eyes.

Sadly, the kaiju aspect doesn’t really change the romance aspect at all. To me, it seems very blatantly symbolic of girls when they’re going through their period, since their bodies change due to circumstances outside of their control. The fact that it occurs whenever Arata comes to mind is further symbolism of this. I suppose if you care about stuff like that, then this manga would be fascinating to no end for you.

Anyways, as far as characters are concerned, they’re kind of meh. Arata is a typical Gary Sue, and Kuroe is a typical “imperfect girl who’s special for some reason”. The only saviors of this manga are Kuroe’s hot mom’s dog, Jumbo King, and this girl named Manatsu. The latter is super rich and has a crazy kaiju obsession that I find genuinely enjoyable. 

As for the art, it’s typical shoujo fare. Sparkly eyes, check. Long chins, check. Simple textures, check. It’s not the most nauseating thing to look at compared to, say, Anonymous Noise, but it’s still not my style.

~~~~~

Current Verdict: 7/10

Kaiju Girl Caramelise is starting off as a… tolerable romance. It’s not pretentious like a number of YA romances I’ve read, so it’s got an advantage there. I’d recommend it if you want to see the underdog get the sexy significant other in the end.