B.O.D.Y. 6
June 22, 2009
A Drifting Life was actually the first review I wrote this evening, and I felt like I would follow it with B.O.D.Y. instead of Swan, just as kind of a palate cleanser. What exactly I’m rinsing my palate with is up for debate, but at least I wasn’t furious at the characters when I finished this volume of B.O.D.Y.
Actually, this volume was a step up, but it’s more a step up from kind of awful to mediocre shoujo. My tolerance for mediocre shoujo is high, and I’m easy to please when it comes to boyfriends and drama, but my brain just violently rejects this series. This may just be because I’m getting too old to really enjoy the lower men on the shoujo post, which is a real shame.
In this volume, Asuka finally finds out the truth about Ko, the awful boy who was using Asuka to get some sort of twisted revenge on Ryoko and Ryu. Despite the fact that Asuka finds out in no uncertain terms that her wonderful boyfriend is a host, doesn’t actually like her/was just using her, and is actually the terrible person that Ryoko has been telling her about all this time, she still loves him. She still loves him even after he breaks up with her, outright rejects her, and then tells her two separate times that he never wants to see her again. Now, there are absolutely no redeeming qualities in Ko, and no reason that the reader would want Ko to stick around or Asuka to be with him. To see this horrible, shallow person pined after so sincerely is infuriating, in a way, but more acceptable that the shenanigans in some of the past volumes of this series.
Unfortunately, Ko has a change of heart after being relentlessly pursued by Asuka, and he may be sticking around. The 180 on his part is unnatural and badly executed… but again, it fits in a shoujo series like this one.
There wasn’t a lot of Ryu and Ryoko in this volume. I hope this wasn’t the reason I enjoyed this volume more/wasn’t overcome by rage when I finished it. I’m not sure why, but part of me takes a perverse and masochistic pleasure in reading this series, and Ryoko is probably a big part of that. I hope she’s back next volume.
June 24, 2009 at 7:35 am
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