Wallflower 19

Tomoko Hayakawa – Del Rey – 2009 – 23+ volumes

I’ve got two volumes of this series, which I’m writing up for the Manga Recon, but since I like to have entries for each volume, I’m going to write a review for this volume here, then link the review at Manga Recon for volume 20.

I knew there was a good reason I was avoiding this series.  It’s quite popular, but it’s really more of a humorous, episodic series than it is the shoujo romance-type thing I prefer.  It’s a lot like My Heavenly Hockey Club, I guess, except Hockey Club is way funnier and has better art.

I know I’m not missing out on anything.  I know the premise of the series, that four hot guys have to transform the horror-movie-loving, reclusive, shy Sunako into the “perfect girl,” or at least a girl who is somewhat presentable.  According to her aunt, she also wants Sunako to find true love as well.  The series seems to have paired Sunako off with Kyohei, one of the four guys.  Sort of.

The chapters are one-shots, and while it seems like Sunako learns something in each one, it also seems like the episodes aren’t compounding the knowledge.  And the jokes are things like… I don’t know, the boy who hates cleaning suddenly becoming a neat freak.  I thought the jokes were kind of lame, but I’ll give it a pass since it’s very possible that it would be much funnier if I knew just how much of a slob that boy is. Whatever.  In my head, I was comparing this to chapters of My Heavenly Hockey Club where Hana and company wake up with bears in their beds or are menaced by a persistent, swindling elderly couple.  Hockey Club also doesn’t have really distinct characters, but the chapters are unique enough and funny enough that I forgive it that.

The one thing that is absolutely inexcusable is the art.  I normally don’t comment on art, but I have to make an exception here.  For the most part, the entire manga is drawn in a super-deformed sort of comic style.  Characters are drawn “realistically” (ie like they would appear in any other shoujo manga) on close-ups of their face.  Sunako is almost never drawn “realistically.”  She’s drawn properly in maybe two or three panels per chapter.  Most of the time she doesn’t even have a face drawn in.  No detail goes into the art whatsoever, and even the close-ups of the face, or the “realistic” drawings of Sunako or anyone else barely have clothing suggested on their bodies.  From what I can tell, the four boys may as well be the same person, and three usually act as a mob as each chapter spotlights a single boy.  Except only two of the boys had stories in this volume, and honestly… they may as well have been one boy, because they weren’t all that different personality-wise (one is the “ladies’ man” and one is the “manly” boy) and they also look nearly identical.

Just… no.  No.  You fail, Wallflower.  I try to find the good in everything I read, and like I said, it’s possible that I would enjoy the character-based humor more if I’d been reading from the beginning… but I don’t think so.  The jokes are weak, and it seems like the plot, characters, and humor have not progressed since the first volume, where the basic premise was laid out.  There was a chapter here where it seemed like Sunako was hooking up with one of the boys, but that idea is quickly abandoned and never spoken of again.  I’m sure it’s come up more than once by now.  Maybe… maybe I’ll like it if I read another volume.