Maddies Manga

Akira is a super-cool, calm and collected “takane no hana”… at least, that’s how she seems to the boy that has feelings for her. In reality, she is shy to the point that she can’t even talk to him without the help of a pre-written script. While they both secretly have feelings for the other, their awkwardness is proving to be quite a hurdle.

Scroll to the bottom for a link to sample and buy volume one!

Author

This series was written by Shinta Harekawa. X, Instagram.

Genre & Tropes

Rom-com, high school romance.

Info about this series (ongoing)

This series is ongoing with six volumes in Japanese, and one in English.

TL;DR rating

While I am typically not a fan of shounen romances, Akira is just so awkwardly relatable that I couldn’t help but enjoy her story. The art is beautiful, and her awkwardness makes you want to root for her happiness. I’ll be reading on!

Official synopsis

A fiend who slays his own kind. A magical girl who refuses the script. A tale of light and shadow intertwined.

Tanpopo Ohanami’s quiet days are interrupted by a life-changing offer to become a magical girl! But she has one big, bad, serrated-toothed secret: Her best friend, Shade, is a fiend in a world where fiends are villains to humankind.

Shade is none too pleased with the idea of Tanpopo joining the ranks, but there’s more than their friendship at stake when Tanpopo’s grandpa falls victim to fiendhood!

My thoughts on this volume (Mild spoilers!)

I will admit that I am rather harsh when it comes to Shounen romance series. I just can’t help it—it’s like the majority of them scream at me that I’m not their desired audience when I try to read them. Every once in a while, I come across a shounen romance that I actually get along with very well, and Akira Failing in Love is one of them. Perhaps it’s because it was written by an author who cited her love for Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 when talking about why she decided to work as a mangaka. As a die-hard fan of Inuyasha, any fan of Rumiko Takahashi has my respect.

While I was ever-aware that this series is tailored more towards a male audience while reading, I actually didn’t mind it all that much. It certainly did have a few characteristics found in shounen romances that I typically don’t love, for example: an overly beautiful FL with an average-looking ML, lingering shots of the FL in what would be somewhat questionable positions, etc. Despite all of these attributes though, I couldn’t help but enjoy the series. The art is so beautiful that even when some depictions of Akira are done in a more “male-gaze” manor, I couldn’t help but think wow that’s amazingly drawn when I came across them. The humor was also very well-timed, making for a fun read!

Akira herself is the main character of the story, and is very humanized—something I absolutely require in a shounen romance. Or any romance, for that matter. If anything, I want to know more about the female lead than the male lead so I don’t end up feeling like she’s being objectified. Akira is a very shy girl who has dealt with social anxiety since childhood. After making friends in high school she was able to develop a few methods to try and power though her anxiety, but she still has difficulties. Thanks to all of this backstory explaining her personality and motivations, I was able to really root for her! It also allowed the comedy to really shine, as we understand what she was intending to do when she ends up doing something incredibly outlandish.

The comedy in this series stems from Akira’s social anxiety. As I was also a rather anxious high school student, I found her character to be quite relatable at times. As she has feelings for the male lead, he really spikes her anxiety levels up, rending her all but speechless. Her friends help her develop a multi-year plan to help her eventually grow closer to him, including daily scripts for her to attempt to talk to him. It seems like without the scripts, her anxiety really takes over leaving her unable to do anything at all. This entire scenario has a good mix of realism and over the top comedy, without being too far fetched. When Akira does her best to follow the script her friends helped her create, sometimes her lack of experience takes over leading her to do things only seen in a horror movie.

While I’m still not a fan of the male lead, if Akira has her eyes set on him, I can’t help but hope they end up together. After all, he still has very strong feelings for her by the end of the volume despite her having done a number of very strange things—by accident, of course. I’m hoping that I’ll grow to enjoy his character as the series goes on, as right now he feels rather Mary-Sue to me. It’s almost as if all of the character building stats were used up on Akira, leaving no leftovers for him.

I can count the number of shounen romances that I am currently genuinely enjoying on one hand, and I’m happy to say that Akira Failing in Love makes the list. I hope to be able to add more, as I’m always looking for different types of romance stories to read.

Check out a free sample below!

You can check out volume one of this series for yourself below!