Pastel 12

Okay.  This volume was marginally better than the last one, but only because Mako and her enormous breasts weren’t in every panel.  This time, the story decided to be all about Mugi confessing his feelings, then not confessing them, then having his friends make fun of him for it and come up with plans so that he could, things not working out, then everything going back to square one.  To be fair, this involves a relatively nice story about Mugi and Yuu getting put on an island by themselves for 24 hours.  The two of them together is nice because the couple in Pastel isn’t as skeevie as the rest of the story would have you believe.  They actually have a nice relationship, and the subtleties in story, like when Yuu is and isn’t scared by things on the island, what she feels compelled to do when Mugi is angsting over the best time to tell her his feelings… it really is nice.  I would love to read about Mugi and Yuu all the time it if their story wasn’t surrounded by the worst fanservice, pandering, and most over-used plot devices in manga.  Ugh.

The latter half of the book brings back Kiku, a pretty girl who has guys all over her but only wants to hook up with Mugi.  She hangs around, and of course Yuu misunderstands and is mad at Mugi through the entire last half of the book.  The misunderstandings are so stupid too, and I hate when the story does this because there is absolutely no good reason for Yuu to get jealous whenever another girl gets within 10 feet of Mugi.  Not even jealous, just… mad at Mugi.  She treats him so poorly.  At least Kiku tries to confront her about it, but it of course doesn’t go anywhere.  She does apologize to Mugi at the end of the volume, at least.

One thing that sort of keeps things working in this series is the fact that the reader doesn’t actually know how Yuu feels about Mugi.  There is never even the barest hint, except her anger at Mugi when other girls are around.  And even this can’t really be read as jealousy.  I have to say though, I’m just getting tired of it.  One more volume of Pastel, and I’m off this series for good.  It’s one of the only series I’ve ever dropped, but it’s just too mind-numbingly stupid.  I’m sorry.