Slightly Biased Manga

Much to my surprise, I found this volume in Borders the other day when I went in to get a magazine.  I was debating over whether I wanted to spend my lunch money on it that day since I heard that the ending was very disappointing.  It is a really great story though, I’ve absolutely loved every volume of it so far, and when I flipped it over to read the summary on the back, I found a ringing endorsement from… myself, which will win me over 100% of the time because I’ve got a huge ego.

Anyway, I would be lying if I said that I was happy with the way things worked out.  I would also be lying if I said that the series ending wasn’t very satisfying.  Right away, the volume starts out with a really lovely conversation with Heewon.  I… can’t decide if I actually really like or really hate Heewon, but she’s a great character all the same, and you have to admire her for following Joonha around all that time.  She was my last choice for Joonha all the way through, though.  Things don’t wrap up with her 100% how I expected, and I also kind of liked that.

The conversation between Joonha and Jinhoo that followed, along with any other parts with Joonha and Jinhoo, made this volume worth every penny.  Jinhoo is my hands-down favorite, and all the reminiscing the pair do with one another scores even more points.  It’s also all very well done.  I still hate Jinhoo’s girlfriend though, and I’m very disappointed with the somewhat lame device that went into play at the end of the last volume.

There’s a lot of Taehyun in this volume.  I like Taehyun well enough, but it’s a shame he came in last place for Joonha for the entire length of the series.  Even though I liked Jinhoo better, Taehyun didn’t deserve all the grief he got.  He’s also a very good character, and I probably would have favored him had he appeared in any other series.

I was kind of disappointed with the way things ended, but after reading the author notes in the back of the volume, I respected the ending a lot more.  She mentions that the ending is exactly what she had pictured from the beginning of the series, and even though readers wound up liking a different pairing better, she had to stick to her guns in the end because she liked it best that way.  She also mentions that the character that won wound up in dead last place in popularity polls, she only ever received one or two comments from readers that actually liked them, and even her assistants hated that character’s face whenever it showed up.  I frown upon endings that pander to the readers (or at least I do when it’s obvious, the pandering is probably a big reason why a lot of series are left open-ended or romantic matches are never resolved at the end of things), so reading that the author stuck with what she had in mind made me feel very good about the ending.

So is Click good all the way through?  YES!  Yes, yes, yes.  It’s one of the best gender identity series I’ve read, and it actually treats the subject a lot more seriously than normal (”normal” being the students who fake their gender to get into a school of the opposite gender, or generally any comedy series, or Cheeky Angel).  Add to that a really great set of characters with a well-defined romantic triangle, and you get this, which is just fantastic.  I wouldn’t call it a classic of girl comics, and I certainly would recommend the likes of Peach Girl or Paradise Kiss over this, but it’s not too far below those ones, you can be sure.  If you like shoujo, it’s an excellent read, and does what it set out to do in only 8 volumes.