Wallflower 20
Posted: August 11, 2009 Filed under: Wallflower Leave a comment »Tomoko Hayakawa – Del Rey – 2009 – 23+ volumes
I reviewed this volume (as well as volume 19) for this week’s Manga Minis column at Manga Recon, so check out the review over there.
To be fair, volume 20 was a huge improvement over volume 19. I thought it might not be, since the volume opened with a single page that featured a joke about the heroine’s cooking, a random person appearing for no reason with stick figures diving out of her way, and no detail drawn in whatsoever, but it got better from there. The stories were at least far more amusing, and they didn’t all take place at the mansion, which made them better than the last volume by default.
But… when you’re 20 volumes into a series where the premise is that the main character likes creepy things, if the only jokes you make about the heroine are still all about how she likes creepy things… perhaps it’s time to develop the character more.
Speaking of character development… the shoujo moments in this volume were more frequent, but always completely underwhelming. They weren’t even a letdown the same way that My Heavenly Hockey Club lets you down, because at least the boy really likes Hana, and sometimes you wonder if Hana doesn’t like the boy, too. In The Wallflower, the boy only ever does anything romantic because he wants Sunako to cook for him. Any romance implied from his actions is a complete mistake. And Sunako has no interest in the boy, either, which is a real shame.
Bah.
