Watashi Ni xx Shinisai

Watashi Ni xx Shinisai

Author : Ema Toyama

Love is said to be a beautiful, complicated thing. What happens if you don’t know how it feels? How do you know what you are feeling, or what anyone else is feeling?

Premise: 2/5
This is a standard shoujo manga, nothing more crazy than a love quadrangle within its pages.

There is a girl who has never experienced love before but needs to understand it. She goes about this by getting a surrogate boyfriend and acting out things people in love would do.

I get that this is a ridiculous premise but then this is a Shoujo manga, hell it is a manga, there is no rule stating that it has to make sense.

Ridiculous premise aside there is something new to it, not the fake boyfriend thing but rather the boyfriend to understand love thing. It sets up lots of interesting situations in the manga which I don’t think the mangaka took full advantage of, but then again it is shoujo ….. so anything more would be boundary pushing.

Plot and story overall 4/5

Yukina Himuro is a junior high student who is also a cell phone novelist. She is good at what she does because she observes people and understands them. However she is unable to get along with them because of her icy gaze and demeanour, giving her the reputation of an ‘absolute zero snow woman’. Eventually it comes to her attention that her readers want more of love in her stories, which she finds impossible because she has never experienced it herself.

So she comes up with the obvious solution - use a boy as a surrogate boyfriend to experience what love is.

The major male lead is Kitami Shigure, a playboy who keeps up the façade of good guy before others. When Himuro finds out about this she blackmails him into being her surrogate boyfriend and doing ‘love missions’ with her.

The other characters are Shimotsuki Akira (Yukina’s cousin who is in love with her), Mizuno Mami (Kitami Shigure’s friend who is in love with him) and Kitami Hisame (Shigure’s stepbrother who likes Mami). See how complicated this is?

I am a fan of romantic mangas with grand gestures and flowing prose seeming like poetry but for the most part shoujo mangas tend to have more plastic pink candy version of it all complete with shinny bubbles and ribbons in the panels.

Thankfully Watashi ni xx Shinasai! Has very little of that. I really enjoyed the lines Yukina starts thinking of when doing the love missions, Even when reading the translations I can feel their depth, I think the translators deserve some credit there.

Especially enjoyable was the bit where Yukina dominates her bullies by simply looking at them attacking their insecurities. The part where she cannot decide if she loves Akira or Shigure is more than just a little irritating because it seems like she is jerking the two of them around and I have issues with that.

Other than that this is a good manga. The addition of Kitami Hisame is a good look on the more negative kind of love. And Yukina going toe to toe with him instead of submitting to his will is pretty impressive. The manga ends with everyone reaching a semi happy ending.

Characters 3/5

Each of the characters are important to the story. They are all gradually developed although the ones who show the greatest growth are the leads. Yukina is a pretty straightforward character if a little dense emotionally. Inspite of her amazing ability to pen down emotions she takes her own sweet time to be completely aware of them.

Shigure is by far the more interesting character with a façade and a more bad boy persona within. The reason for this is explored really well especially when dealing with the dynamic between him and his brother.

The rest of the crew provide amusement for the most part, Mami being cutely energetic and Hisame pulling of the villains role quite well. Akira on the other hand seems like an add on, at no point in the story do I feel for him.

Art & Design 2.5/5
The art seems hastily done, with no actual improvement over time. There are no chibi versions which show up at random - sorry.
 Truth be told the art didn’t really stand out in the manga.

Overall verdict:
It is a shoujo manga. Towards the end however it becomes interesting. Not saying that shoujo mangas are a waste of time but they have hopelessly similar plot lines.But this one is worth the read. If you can hold on for a a bit.

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