From the back cover:
Hapless Haruna needs help finding a boyfriend! After failing to win the eye of any guy in high school, Haruna enlists the help of cute upperclassman Yoh to coach her on how to make herself more appealing to the male species. Yoh agrees, with one catch: Haruna had better not fall for him!

Haruna begins to develop feelings for Fumiya, Yoh’s friend. Yoh talks her through her first-date jitters, but is Fumiya the right guy for Haruna? Especially when they walk in on Fumiya and Yoh’s sister Asami… kissing?!

Review:
I think I might actually like this more than Love*Com! It has the same sort of “I think I love my friend but I don’t know how he feels about me” stuff going on, but without the sniping, yelling, and namecalling that sometimes bothers me in the other series.

In this volume, Haruna goes on a Yoh-assisted date with Fumi, and things seem to be going well, but Fumi is perhaps too easy-going of a guy and is handily manipulated by Yoh’s sister into becoming her boyfriend instead. I like how Asami’s devious ways are not manifest from the start, and that she only gradually reveals herself for what she is.

Haruna’s discovery of what has happened prompts a very, very sweet scene between her and Yoh. Her handling of the situation—not falling to pieces the way he thought girls always did—seems to impress him, and soon he’s telling her she has her good points, and that maybe it’s okay if she’s really athletic and sporty after all. I’m glad he reversed his opinion on this, since it was the one major thing that bugged me in the first volume.

If it isn’t clear by now, I really like this series and will be continuing to follow it.

From the back cover:
Back in junior high, Haruna Nagashima was only interested in two things: softball and manga. Now that she’s starting high school, Haruna’s focus has changed—she wants to snag a boyfriend and have the romance of her dreams!

After blindly following the advice of fashion magazines and the like, Haruna fails to win the eye of any guy. Convinced that a coach is needed (just like when she trained for softball), she recruits cute upperclassman Yoh Komiyama to instruct her on how to make herself more appealing. Yoh agrees, with one catch: Haruna had better not fall for him!

Review:
At its core, High School Debut is a cute story with likable characters. Oh sure, Haruna is a girl who’s hopelessly clueless about something and has a blunt but kind boy nearby to steer her in the right direction and rescue her at key moments, which is not the most original concept ever, but the focus is on the right things, like being one’s self and learning what qualities are really most important in a prospective boyfriend.

It’s fun and refreshing and I like it a lot. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the shopping trip chapter; it felt like an episode of What Not to Wear, which I admit to watching on occasion. The one thing that bugs me is that Yoh instructs Haruna to stop working out. Apparently only weak and spindly women are attractive? At least Yoh’s buddy, Fumi, doesn’t think so. He seems to like her the way she is, and by the end of the volume, Haruna thinks she might be in love with him.

One of the things I must praise is the art. Kawahara employs some standard shoujo tricks to be sure, like relying on sparkly tone for the background of many panels, but maintains a distinctive style. Though the use of tone is generous, it doesn’t result in a cluttered page. She does innovative things with layouts. But most importantly, each of the main characters is facially unique. This is not one of those series where all the boys look the same except for interchangeable hair. I particularly like the look of Haruna’s best friend, Mami; she looks like she might be more at home in a josei manga.

I note that this was serialized in Margaret like two of my other favorites, Boys Over Flowers and Love*Com. If I were a Japanese person, I think I know to which magazine I’d be subscribing!

From the back cover:
Vie Ghoul is the new band burning up the charts by stealing Sho’s moves, and Kyoko’s hopping mad on his behalf. Kyoko’s confrontation with Sho about his lack of action doesn’t go as well as she hoped—Sho gets violent, and the frontman for Vie Ghoul gets a good look at Kyoko’s demons. And both men seem a little more interested in Kyoko than Ren would like…

Review:
This volume was a bit of a slow starter, since I really don’t care very much about the director of Dark Moon and his father complex. Sho’s appearance injected some much-needed energy and also brought about the return of Kyoko’s grudge demons and scary facial expressions, which we haven’t seen for a little while.

Throughout the volume, Ren’s manager Yashiro was unapologetically meddling in Ren and Kyoko’s affairs, which was great. Without him pestering Ren, we’d probably never know what Ren was thinking, so he’s very useful in that regard. My favorite scene in the volume was when he and Ren were eating at an outdoor patio and a couple of random guys nearby were discussing Kyoko. After one admitted to fancying her, Yashiro grinned evilly, and the following exchange ensued:

Y: That boy likes her.
R: That’s nice.

I seldom laugh aloud as I read, but that bit cracked me up.

Of course, Ren’s just playing it cool, as his totally sweet phone call to Kyoko to make sure she was ready for a location shoot proved. I loved seeing him unnerved by the possibility that Sho could steal Kyoko away. I’d never considered Sho a serious romantic rival until this volume, and I certainly don’t think he deserves Kyoko, but his attentions are probably the one thing that’d make Ren lose control over his emotions, so I’m all for it.

Risa and Ôtani are finally going out, but she’s uncertain about how she’s supposed to act around him now. She’s got this preconceived notion of what a girlfriend should be, and internally beats herself up each time she fails to live up to that ideal. It helps some when Ôtani sets aside his natural reticence and introduces her to people as his girlfriend, but he still hasn’t articulated exactly why he loves her, and she’s having a hard time imagining what he could see in her.

Later, Ôtani’s neighbor, Mimi, finds out he’s got a new girlfriend and is furious. The beautiful and tall middle schooler has harbored a crush on him for years, but abandoned hope because she thought he only liked tiny girls. A lot of Mimi angst follows, and while it’s creditable that Risa sympathizes with her plight, the way this new character suddenly dominates the story is rather irksome.

Eventually, though, I realized that her purpose is to solidify the main couple’s relationship. We see that she really poses no threat to them at all, that Ôtani’s feelings never waver, and that he and Risa really are made for each other, rough edges and all. Having fulfilled this destiny, may she now go quietly away.

While this particular volume didn’t focus on the leads quite as much as I would’ve liked, it still excels at depicting the insecurities and awkwardness of this period in a relationship. That’s no surprise, since Love*Com has nailed many other aspects of first love. I’m sure it will continue to do so in the volumes to come.

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

From the back cover:
Risa is sick of having her emotions yanked back and forth by her feelings for Ôtani, so she decides once and for all to just be friends. But when she tells Ôtani that she’s getting over him, he freaks out and tells her not to! Has the comedy duo turned into a couple?

Review:
It’s a special book that can make me grin like a great big doofus at least twice and get all teary-eyed by the final scene. That’s just how good this series is, and in particular this volume, where things finally, finally go where everyone has been wanting them to go.

It’s a slow build up throughout the volume, with some fantastic scenes along the way. Each chapter brings the two leads closer and closer together, and though I thought the terrific moment between them at her birthday party (see above re: doofus) was the apex of awesomeness, the final chapter surpasses it. Nakahara is excellent at body language in these scenes; I particularly love how Ôtani shyly ducks his head and turns away after giving Risa a little kiss.

Also, I’ve never been a fan of the insults these two have hurled at each other in the past, so I was happy that in this volume, I could really see them trying not to do that anymore. It helped that Ôtani actually said something encouraging to Risa, so she had that to rely on when his subsequent actions might’ve previously sent her into a tizzy.

I love that, now that they’re finally a couple, it doesn’t feel like the series ought to be over. It feels like “where will it go from here?”