From the back cover:
Kyoko lands a regular role on a TV show… as a giant chicken. Not content to settle for poultry recognition, Kyoko tries out for a big commercial. At the audition she runs into her Love Me-rival Moko, who’s having rival woes of her own. With a jealous rich girl out to bring them down, can Kyoko and Moko overcome their differences and act as a team to trounce the competition?

Review:
… Poultry recognition? I think that joke might be so bad it’s good.

This volume centered on an audition for a commercial and though I didn’t like the jealous rich girl at all—I’m kind of tired of seeing imperious rich girls randomly show up in manga (there was one recently in Ouran)—it turned out to be really cool.

The best bits were the last few chapters where, after performing one audition segment by reacting to Moko’s lead, Kyoko had to conceive of a routine herself and be the one to steer the scene, something she’d never done before. She ended up thinking of something clever (of course) that not only fulfilled the requirements of the routine but also seemed to expose a trust the girls had in each other’s abilities.

I really liked seeing these two begin to become friends. In any other series, these characters would probably be cast as the villains, but here they’re sympathetic. I was also happy at the result of the audition—I love that Kyoko’s path to stardom is slow, because it really allows one to rejoice when a good break finally happens.

From the back cover:
A new student starts out as Risa’s rival for love, but ends up proving how important it is to be honest with yourself!

Review:
Okay, it’s official—I love Love*Com. Of all the series I’ve started recently, this is the one I’ve been most eager to continue.

I adore the two lead characters, especially when they’re being honest and/or sweet with one another. We don’t really get events from Ôtani’s perspective, so I tend to like Risa a bit more, but he has his moments. I like that Risa wasn’t swayed by Haruka’s love confession, thus saving us a long and annoying trip down a relationship road we all know will ultimately lead nowhere.

I also like the realism in the series—there aren’t any perfect bishounen here falling for clumsy girls. There’s only a girl with a mad crush on a guy friend who sees no reason to suspect that he could ever return her feelings. I think most adolescent girls have experienced that at one time or another!

The art also continues to be both cute and strange simultaneously. I still love the facial expressions, but have now noticed a new body part that’s occasionally too big—earlobes! Some of these characters have great big fat earlobes! And then, sometimes on the next panel, they don’t anymore. Or sometimes the left one will be fine and the right one will be elephantine. It’s kind of distracting.

Wacky earlobes aside, this manga is great. Go read it!

From the back cover:
Kyoko helps the LME president’s granddaughter heal from a childhood tragedy, and in return she should have earned a free ride through the LME training school. But the other students throw a fit, and now she still has to pay. In order to support the high cost of the program, Kyoko gets a job as a seat filler on a TV show. But when one of the characters gets sick, Kyoko has to fill in—in a chicken suit! To make matters worse, Sho is the guest star! Will Kyoko destroy her only chance of revenge?

Review:
This was a truly excellent volume. The resolution to the cliffhanger from the previous volume was good, but the best part was definitely the variety show and its aftermath. I’m generally not one for silly gags, but putting Kyoko in a chicken suit for her first chance at confrontation with Sho was genius. In that guise, she was able to switch some questions from the audience and generally contrive to humiliate Sho, culminating in a fabulously absurd badminton match.

Kyoko was frustrated both by her lack of success in getting revenge on Sho and also by getting fired for going berserk in his presence and losing sight of the job she was supposed to be doing. This was further support for her realization in the last volume that she truly does want to do a good job, so I enjoyed seeing this thought continue to grow within her. She also realized just how far she has to climb to truly be able to challenge him.

There were also some really good scenes between Kyoko and Ren. In one, it was hinted that they’ve actually met before when Kyoko was quite young. Later, she saw an unexpected side of him and actually made some headway toward figuring him out. Too bad the bonding moment happened while she was still in the chicken suit, which she wore from page 92 on.

This volume felt like a near-perfect balance of comedy and character development to me. I find I’m really looking forward to Kyoko’s climb up the celebrity ladder. I just hope she doesn’t mellow so much on the journey that the big confrontation with Sho never actually happens.

From the back cover:
Kyoko is determined to win her way into show business, even if it means wearing embarrassing bright pink overalls and putting up with spoiled stars. But her first big assignment proves more difficult than she imagined when she finds herself in front of the camera with an injured leg. Will she be able to ace her first attempt at acting despite the pain, or will she make an utter fool of herself in front of her sort-of nemesis, Ren Tsuruga?

Review:
In the first few chapters of this volume, the contest with the petulant diva continued and Kyoko performed admirably despite her injury. Her seriousness inspired a similar quality in Ren, and Kyoko was thrown by how easily he was able to manipulate her responses by subtle nuances in his own acting. This spurred a very important revelation for her: she genuinely wants to be good at acting.

The last couple of chapters dealt with her next assignment—befriending Maria, the trouble-making granddaughter of the agency president. I really expected Maria to be an incredibly annoying and attention-demanding character, but to my surprise, these were my favorite chapters of the volume! Her angsty backstory wasn’t really original, but I liked how it affected her view of grown-ups. She ended up adoring Kyoko because the latter talked to her honestly and didn’t try to disguise any of her feelings. The cliffhanger ending at the end of the volume was actually pretty suspenseful.

My complaints were few. The art still looked a little weird sometimes, particularly where the male characters’ hair was concerned. There was also a repeated gag wherein a character was apparently paralyzed by Kyoko’s vengeful spirits. This might’ve been an A volume otherwise.

From the back cover:
Risa’s getting really confused about her feelings for Ôtani—she doesn’t know if she wants to help him get back together with his ex-girlfriend or keep him all to herself!

Review:
I didn’t like this volume quite as much as the first, but it’s still really good. This volume hits several major holidays: Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day. At this rate, I wonder how we won’t be through with the characters’ high school years in just a few volumes. I hope this won’t be one of those stories where the author just keeps the characters in the same year even though the seasons are changing around them.

The Christmas story is my favorite of the volume. Nakao, one of the group of friends, has acquired tickets to see some obscure band on Christmas day, and only Risa and Ôtani are particularly keen to go, so they make arrangements to do so. Then Ôtani’s ex shows up and desires to impart a special message to him at a Christmas party. Risa encourages him to go, but then feels all lonely when her all friends have other plans and she’s left to attend the concert alone. Of course, Ôtani shows up at the last moment to keep his original promise. It’s a great moment between them.

A new character appears in the last two chapters: Haruka, a childhood friend of Risa’s who has a hero-worshipping thing going for her. He belittles Ôtani every chance he gets, and I thought it was pretty out-of-character for Risa not to curtail that sooner than she did. There’s some good stuff between Risa and Ôtani near the end of the volume, but I still like these chapters least.