A love born from an exper­i­men­tal act, as threats and exploita­tion from one side meets back­stab­bing from the other…

As the lat­est series authored by Tooyama Ema, the man­gaka of Hyakuen! and Koko no iru yo! (also known as that Kimi no Todoke alike, which isn’t really true), Watashi ni xx Shi­na­sai sure made huge strides of improve­ment in break­ing out from the stereo­typ­i­cal Shoujo shell. I’d def­i­nitely say this is her best work yet.

Though, I have to admit, this manga has one smut-covered title that really gives off the wrong impres­sion. Yet it’s also sur­pris­ingly accu­rate in an dif­fer­ent way. The premise may not exactly be orig­i­nal, but it’s uncom­mon enough to war­rant a refresh­ing read, and the pre­sen­ta­tion is just won­der­ful. Thanks goes to Nagare­boshi Manga for scan­lat­ing it.

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Premise & Characters

Yuk­ina Himuro is a socially inept girl who inten­tion­ally dis­tanced her­self from oth­ers. Born with a pair of glar­ing sharp eyes and abnor­mally cold skin, she is nick­named the ‘absolute zero snow-woman’ and avoided by peers and edu­ca­tors alike. Uti­liz­ing this gap to her advan­tage, Yuk­ina focuses on devel­op­ing her obser­vant nature, view­ing the world like a stage play in order to seek inspi­ra­tions for her work as a cell phone nov­el­ist under the pen-name ‘Yupina’. Despite the top rank­ing pop­u­lar­ity of her works, Yuk­ina real­izes she has one major draw­back: while she can write about friend­ship and dreams by feel­ing them from those she watch, she can’t com­pre­hend love through mere observation.

Shig­ure Kitami is your oblig­a­tory prince: per­fect in appear­ance, kind to every­one, and loved by the entire school (includ­ing the teach­ers). He has been con­fessed to by every girl in the class, all of whom he turned down. But because his atti­tude to every­one is always the same nice and help­ful image, Yuk­ina finds him to be the most bor­ing guy in all of her school. Well, other than the fact that he scrib­bles down notes at strange times.

Then one day Yuk­ina coin­ci­den­tally finds his stu­dent hand­book, the key to his behav­ior. Inside are his notes on how to get on the good side of every per­son in school, as well as a check mark besides every girl who con­fessed to him. Win­ning ado­ra­tion from oth­ers had become a game for Shig­ure, and with the proof in her hands, Yuk­ina black­mails him to per­form a task: give her a fake love expe­ri­ence. Shig­ure is forced to com­ply, but he plans to fight back: by uncov­er­ing that one weak­ness in her hard­ened sur­face demeanor and hurt­ing her as badly as he can through it.

Hence their game begins. As it goes on, Yuk­ina find the bor­ders between her per­sonae blur­ring, with her own being grad­u­ally fad­ing into that of her novel’s main character…

To help prop up a love tri­an­gle, Akira Shi­mot­suki steps in as Yukina’s cousin, child­hood friend, and clos­est con­fi­dant. Although quiet by nature, Akira doesn’t hes­i­tate to stand up against Shig­ure and his allies, as its quite obvi­ous he’s been in love with her for a long time. (he hasn’t received enough screen­time for me gauge much else)

Ema-sensei’s art­work is some­thing I really enjoy. Not only does her style pro­duce cute char­ac­ters despite a degree of refined sharp­ness, but she con­sis­tently details her char­ac­ters with care in every frame.

More ram­blings: Shig­ure might be an ass, but he isn’t with­out a con­science. I think his per­son­al­ity is just evil enough to keep this game inter­est­ing and on the road, with­out being too soft and end­ing it early, or being too stub­born and drag­ging it on Kai­chou–paced. The plot has been enter­tain­ing thus far, and the par­al­lel between Yuk­ina and her writ­ing is a nice touch that reminds me of a cer­tain movie. I’m just sad I haven’t got a ship­ping to sup­port yet, because as inter­est­ing as the Shig­ure x Yuk­ina devel­op­ment has been, that last blow he landed (ch5) was excep­tion­ally low, and requires cer­tain… redeem­ing first.

Pos­si­bly Related Posts

• Arakure and the Yakuza Shoujo
• Sav­ing the World through Slice of Life: Momo
• Seiz­ing Shoujo Com­edy once again: Obaka-chan

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 21:03 and is filed under Manga. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.