Fall in Love Like a Comic 2

The latter half of last week had been a wee bit crappy (I wanted to shout “F–K!!!” a lot), but instead of regaling you with a rather personal story I will substitute a review of a rather crappy manga.  Hmm.  Actually, that may be harsh.  I think I will say that it disappointed me greatly and so I am kind of bitter towards it.  :)

As I was sorting my new manga on Tuesday night and adding it all to my list, I came across Fall in Love Like a Comic and King of the Lamp.  Both got chucked into my trade-in box without the honour of being added to my holdings list, even if only temporarily.

(I have only read these once, and it was when they first came out.  I’m not rereading them – I’d rather use the time to read something new – so forgive any errors in my vague plot recap.)

Fall in Love Like a Comic  – here I fell victim to my two volume rule.  The first wasn’t bad.  Teenage girl is secretly a manga artist, decides she has to fall in love to add depth to her work (or her editor suggests it) and picks an appropriately hot guy.  The hot guy has also been in training to be the perfect guy, so he’s kind of boring.  But!   I liked the first volume enough to give the second a chance.  It was one of those titles that I’m not thrilled with but think will probably get better.  (S.A. for example.  Volume three is much better than the first because aside from any interesting plot or character developments they at least stopped recapping the S.A. members at the start of every chapter!) 

Where was I?

Oh, volume 2.   The reason this is getting tossed on my next trade in trip to the comic store.  The story itself started out shallow, but fine.  Girl continues to write manga, boy kisses her to make her blush… One of her stories was getting turned into a television drama, and the boyfriend got cast as the lead (because he’s perfect, don’t forget).  There is some angst when the girl finally clues in to the fact that he is going to be kissing someone else during the filming.  The last bit of the story is what I got so disgusted about.  When I describe why I hated the volume so much to people I tend to use the phrase, “bad cheese injected with super sweet syrup.”  Basically the girl gets stuffed into a poofy wedding dress, plunked in a church and in a grand gesture in front of all of their friends, the perfect boyfriend has a ceremony where he vows to marry her someday. 

Oh, please!

I know it doesn’t sound so bad, but good grief it was over the top.  Cheesy overdramatic gestures like that tend to make me roll my eyes anyway, but this one made me slam the book shut and regret my lost money and my two volume rule.  After that there was a short story about a perfect 5 year old kindergarten boy (their son) and just when I had made a vow to stop reading the book entirely (it was about half way through) it switched into drawing tips from the manga artist.  I have no idea if that was what filled the rest of the volume and I don’t particularly care.  I’m never going back to check. 

I think I was also annoyed by the fact that the reason he loved her was because she was very passionate about something.  Really?  That was it?  What if he had wandered by the track and saw some random girl trying really really hard to break a high jump record or something?  Would she have been good enough? 

I guess I’ll say that if you don’t mind shallow characters who never gain any depth, you like cheesy wedding dress scenes in your manga, or you like drawing manga and want some pointers, I would say go ahead and get this.  Otherwise, steer clear.

(I’ll try to do King of the Lamp soon.)

** I wrote the above review last Friday.  On Saturday I had a mom and her little girl come through my cash with some manga.  Pokemon, some other kid title and this volume.  I had a huge internal debate in my head while doing the transaction.  Did the mom know that this was rated older teen?  Did she care?  The little girl looked about 9 but I decided if I did point it out I was probably just being a jerk.  Telling her it was really bad wasn’t even an option, since nine year olds probably would like this book.  (And I do realize that not everyone shares my opinion on what is and isn’t good.)  :)

The little girl and I had this weird little staring match going on the whole time, too.  I know I was debating whether or not I had the right to attempt to ruin her manga purchasing fun, but I have no idea why she was staring at me…. 

So, yeah.  I don’t know if parents would appreciate a random cashier pointing out the age appropriateness of a title.  Would they get offended, thinking I thought they weren’t paying proper attention to what their kids read?  Would they be happy to know that there are ratings on the book if they didn’t already?  I know I pretty much always read “older” books growing up, and my parents didn’t care much about what I was reading.  (In a good way, though.  My dad started borrowing my books when I was in my teens, so it’s not like he didn’t know what was on my shelves.)

I think I tend to side with the kids.  Forgive me parents, if that’s wrong.