Maddies Manga

Love is an incredibly powerful force. At least, that’s what first year high school student Mimi believes. After falling in love with a boy at the library, she is shocked to discover that they attend the same high school! Will she be able to catch his attention?

Author

This series is written by Haruyoshi Hodaka. X, Instagram.

Genre & Tropes

High school romance, love triangle, drama.

Info about this series (ongoing)

This series currently has one volume published digitally.

TL;DR rating

Honestly, I’m not too sure how I feel about this one. The first 3/4 of it felt a bit too young and comedy focused for my tastes, but the slight twist at the end caught my interest. I think I’ll be reading on using coins for now.

What’s this series about? (Spoilers for chapter 1)

Mimi is a girl who really, really wants to fall in love. She falls in love rather quickly, as while she’s lamenting over her failed confession, she falls in love again at the sight of a handsome boy at the library. She’s able to temporarily suck her feelings in and focus on her studies, but it doesn’t last long. Sadly for her, after exam season finishes the boy doesn’t return to the library, and she has no idea where to find him.

As luck, or fate, would have it, he just so happens to enter the same high school as her. This boy, Souma, is the personification of an angel. He’s bright and bubbly, and is always surrounded by a crowd of admirers. While Mimi is eager to strike up a conversation with him, she doesn’t want him to catch on to the fact that she has feelings for her. So, with a direct approach being too…direct, she opts for a different option: asking for the help of one of his friends. When she learns that her classmate, Arate, is close friends with Souma from middle school, she is quick to ask for his help. She’s unfortunately a little too quick to ask him, and gets promptly shut down.

Now out of options, Mimi needs to figure out a way to casually slip into Souma’s circle. Will she be able to convince Arate to introduce her? Or will she find another way in?

My thoughts on this volume (Spoilers!)

I’ve unfortunately grown a bit tired of characters that fall head over heels for boys for seemingly no reason. Souma, or “the angel” as he’s lovingly nicknamed, is a complete mystery to both the reader and Mimi. If I’m not mistaken, he’s only spoken to her twice so far—once to wake her up at the library, and once to ask if she was okay at school. Both times he didn’t say more than a few words, so I really don’t understand how she was able to fall for him so hard so quickly.

Going off of sheer obsession, as I refuse to believe that she somehow has genuine feelings for this boy, she abruptly demands one of the boys in her class introduce her to him once she learns that they’re friends. While I’m sure that she’s meant to look cute and a little quirky here, honestly it was a little cringey. Of course he was going to say no—he doesn’t know her. The first time she spoke to him she said “Hi I’m Mimi, and I love your friend. Can you please introduce me to him?”. There’s no way an actual friend would introduce her to him, right!? She sounded like an absolute stalker here! There’s no way you can say you have feelings for someone, and then in the same breath ask to be introduced to them…

So, when the friend, Arate, says no, I was a bit shocked to see her overreact to the degree that she did. We’re then spun into the “he’s a demon!” part of the story, where one boy is described as an angel, and the other a demon. Honestly, the only “demonic” thing Arate does is protect is friend… Sure he made a bit of a face while he was turning her down, but honestly I think he should have been quite a bit more harsh. She’ll never learn that she’s being a bit creepy unless she receives a wakeup call, right?

Nevertheless Mimi and Arate do end up finding some common ground and become friendly. This leads to all of Arate’s edges being smoothed out almost instantly. I was genuinely disappointed by this, as I would have liked to see him stay grumpy. After all, him having the school-wide nickname of “demon” should have some sort of warrant right? If he’s actually as sweet as he seems by the end of the chapter, I’ll just end up feeling bad for him.

It was around here that I was slowly beginning to lose interest in the story…and then Souma appeared, making the most demonic face out of anyone in the story. His strange energy quickly had me questioning my doubts, and I grew curious about where the story would go! I found myself thinking Is Souma the actual demon? Is he somehow manipulating the scenes to make the somewhat scary-looking but actually very kind Arate the victim of school rumours?. There is so much I don’t know about him, and I’m actually interesting in finding out! The cliffhanger also really saved the volume for me, but I think I’ll only stay happy with it if it brings in some big drama.

I felt so justified in my judgement of Mimi when Souma was eventually revealed to be potentially a little bit crazy. So, so justified. She doesn’t know him at all! How can she run around claiming to be in love with him, oh my goodness she stresses me out…

You can check out this series for yourself below! (JP)