Miku Yamada has a problem: the boy she likes, Kyohei Fujioka, is oblivious to her feelings. When she attempts to give him chocolates for Valentine’s Day, he cheerfully offers to help her practice confessing her love for someone else. He seems to be more affected by memories of a childhood friend than by her, but occasionally makes comments that cause her to believe she has a chance. How can she make him realize she likes him?

The back cover would have us believe that Miku is an unfortunate victim of Fujioka’s obstinate obtuseness, but readers will soon realize that this is not actually the case. Miku can’t seem to decide whether she truly wants Fujioka to know how she feels, which leads to vehement denials of her feelings and episodes where she treats him quite shabbily. How could Fujioka, who is admittedly rather dim, be expected to correctly interpret these actions?

As one might surmise, it’s very difficult to like Miku, even though her melodramatic behavior is not outside the realm of possibility for a lovelorn teen. Statements like, “I’m going to become an amazing girl so Fujioka will fall for me!” rankle, too, since I tend to prefer heroines with something on their minds other than boys. The end product is a very shallow story, more suitable for young teens than veteran shojo readers, though it does improve near the end of the volume when Miku’s message is finally clear enough for Fujioka to understand. Fujioka’s response is not only perfectly in character, but also age-appropriate, promising more interesting circumstances to come as the characters progress into their second year of high school.

Cactus’s Secret was serialized in Ribon magazine, and boy, does it show. All characters possess the distinctive eyes common to works from that publication, and screen tone is abundant. There’s even an author’s note where Haruta writes about being chastised for using insufficient tone! As a result, the artwork, while reasonably attractive, is essentially indistinguishable from anything else in Ribon. That said, I do think Fujioka’s character design is pretty cute.

On the subject of author’s notes, the flaws of Cactus’s Secret might be excused with Haruta’s revelation that the deadline for chapter four occurred on the same day as her high school graduation. On its own merits, this manga might not be anything special, but when one considers that it was created by a high school student, it starts to look downright impressive.

Cactus’s Secret was originally serialized in Ribon and is complete in four volumes. Only one volume has been released in English so far.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

After the main Love*Com story finished, mangaka Aya Nakahara published a few additional bonus stories, which are collected in the series’ seventeenth and final volume. Three stories depict Ôtani and Risa during their junior high years and one revisits the gang four months after graduation. One of the major flaws of Love*Com in its later volumes was that, in a transparent effort to milk the series for all it was worth, the focus drifted too much from the leads to the uninspiring supporting cast. Here, at least, each story features one or both of the protagonists in the starring role(s).

Despite its hokey setup—practically every semi-significant character from the series coincidentally converges on the same beach on the same day—the post-graduation story is not only the best of the four, but also provides the best Risa/Ôtani scene in quite some time. It deals with Risa’s feelings of being left behind by her undergraduate friends, who are off having new experiences with people she doesn’t know while she contends with the challenges of fashion stylist school, which is not going as well as she had hoped. Somehow, this series works best when Risa is miserable, and when Ôtani steps up to the plate to cheer her up and listen to her troubles, it provides a better and more personal farewell for the series than the full-cast send-off volume sixteen offered.

It’s been a long time since I paused to admire and reread a particularly sweet moment between these two characters, and I can’t help feeling grateful that I was able to experience it one more time before the end. Maybe, just a little, Love*Com has redeemed itself.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.

I used to like Love*Com very much, but as I read these two volumes the main thought going through my mind was, “Just end, already!”

End it eventually does, as volume sixteen sees the conclusion of the main story line (the seventeenth and final volume is comprised of short stories) , but before that can happen we must endure more chapters focusing on the supporting cast. First up is the transgendered Seiko, whose dreams of confessing to the boy she likes are stymied by the untimely deepening of her voice. Next, the whole gang takes a conveniently free trip to an unspecified tropical island to witness the wedding of a popular teacher, culminating in a rather immature freakout from Risa at the thought of sharing a room/bed with Ôtani.

As volume sixteen begins, the gang is planning for graduation, but instead of spending the final chapters on the main cast, some new random third-year girl is introduced for the purpose of providing a girlfriend for Kohori, Risa’s coworker who had a thing for her at one point. These chapters—in which the girl (Abe) attempts to break up Risa and Ôtani so that Risa can date Kohori and make him happy—are pretty pointless and predictable, though they do at least inspire Ôtani to dismiss the chances of them breaking up any time soon.

The final chapter of the main story, chapter 62, is nothing fantastic, but still manages to be satisfying. True to form, Risa and Ôtani are late to their graduation ceremony, and as punishment must deliver a speech that devolves into one final comedy routine. A DVD of classmate memories yields further testimonies of love from the protagonists, and everything ends on a sunny note.

I wish the volume had ended there as well, but instead there’s a bonus story about the singer/actor whose first big role was playing Ôtani in the Love*Com movie. It’s all about his struggles to achieve stardom and to get people to listen as he and his buddy play acoustic guitars out in public. It’s exceedingly boring, and memories of Negishi in Detroit Metal City performing the same sorts of gigs—with lyrics as sappy—kept intruding.

Love*Com has fallen a lot in my estimation since its early volumes, but I don’t regret persevering to the end. It should have ended sooner, definitely, and all the filler gets on my nerves, but I can’t really quibble with its warm and fuzzy finale.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Kyoko takes a break from acting jobs in this volume to focus on throwing a fabulous non-birthday birthday party for the boss’s granddaughter, Maria, who refuses to celebrate the occasion since it’s also the date of her mother’s death, for which she feels responsible. What follows is possibly the most shojotastic volume of manga ever, filled with warm expressions, bright smiles, avalanches of flowers, swarms of shimmering butterflies, an emotional reunion between Maria and her absentee father, and a surprise celebration for Kyoko’s 17th birthday.

While I don’t like Maria enough to find the easing of her family troubles particularly moving, it’s still nice to see Kyoko at her best, giving her all for the benefit of someone else and wishing hard for their happiness. We also get a really sweet, if unfortunately curtailed, moment between Ren and Kyoko when he gives her a rose for her birthday and she goes all sparkly over it, which I suppose could be counted as progress.

In the end, this is a rather non-essential volume in Kyoko’s journey toward stardom, but it’s worth it to see how she unknowingly wins hearts just by being herself.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.