Maddies Manga

After being saved from the sea, Yamasugi gained an appreciation for two things: those brave enough to risk their lives for others, and big muscles.

You can sample this series below

What’s this manga about? (Chapter 1 spoilers)

When she was very young, Yamasugi found herself stranded at sea. Luckily a rescue team came to find her quickly, and the man that rescued her was so charming that rather than trauma, the situation struck her with inspiration. She quickly decided that she, too, wanted to be as cool as these rescuers. So, she set her eyes on this new career path. At the start of this series, we meet Yamasugi as she is in a specialty marine high school.

As a lot of her classes include swimming, she and her classmates naturally spend a lot of time in their bathing suits. Yamasugi is in heaven most of the time, as she is almost always surrounded by pounds and pounds of muscles. Not all of the owners of the muscles are all that kind though—Umitora, the only boy in class who opts to wear a wetsuit, is quick to be rude when he sees Yamasugi ogling others. She chooses to focus on the outline of his abs rather than let his words hurt her, so she doesn’t usually take any damage from his words.

After class one day, Yamasugi sneaks into a storage room when she notices a little bird is stuck in a fan. Just as she’s about to free it, she hears the door handle jiggle. As she isn’t technically allowed to be in the storage room at this time, she decides to hide in a little closet. She waits and waits, and eventually isn’t even sure if someone actually came into the room. Rather than spend an eternity waiting, it’s better to leave quickly, and apologize should someone else actually be in the room—right?

Unfortunately, someone else is indeed in the room, and that someone is the ever-cold Umitora. She left the closet as he was getting changed, and sees his upper body for the first time “his abs are the most perfect and most defined out of anyone in class” she thinks, literally drooling. As she’s ogling him, his personality takes a complete 180 as he begins begging her to please not look at him. He gets very shy when he’s not wear clothes, and so he continues begging her to please stop ogling him like that.

Yamasugi, completely unaware of how to react to the situation, promptly runs away.

My thoughts

I’m going to preface this by saying this chapter was not my cup of tea. I prefer my male leads to be more cold and stoic, or even fun and sarcastic. I tend to dislike male leads that blush while being mistakenly overpowered by the female lead. That’s just a personal preference, nothing against this series.

While I really disliked Yamasugi at first—her whole character seemed to only have “likes muscles” as a personality—thankfully she was somewhat fleshed out come the end of the chapter. As she had such strong potential, what with aspiring to be a member of a super-cool rescue team, I soon found myself disappointed with all the literal drooling she did. Come the end of the chapter, we thankfully see her snap out of this and remind herself of why she came to this school in the first place. If she wants to one day be a member of a super-cool team, she needs to put in the effort to be a super-cool person now!

I love a strong, capable female lead, so I was incredibly happy to watch as she came to her senses in order to save Umitora from a bad situation. Even when her love for muscles took her out at the end, I didn’t find it distasteful at all. In fact, I found it gave her character balance. So long as she stops being unproductive and putting an unrealistic amount of interest in other peoples bodies, I think I will continue enjoying her character. I hope the author will choose to frame it similar to The Male Lead’s Little Lion Daughter. As while Leonia does also have an unusual appreciation for muscles, it isn’t her only personality trait. She’s allowed to sometimes give in and ogle the muscular people around her, but again, she still has other traits to balance it out.

As for Umitora… We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. Now that his secret has been released to Yamasugi, he’s incredibly shy and docile around her. So much so that to show his appreciation for her, he takes his shirt off, and blushes as he gives her a hug so that she can feel his muscles. If I enjoyed male characters that showed weakness like this I would have loved this scene so much… But I just found it to be too much of a 180 from his introduction too soon.