Wild Ones 6

Kiyo Fujiwara – Viz – 2009 – 10 volumes

I haven’t read this series before, but like I said, it’s a little easier jumping into shoujo series than shounen.  This one wasn’t an exception, as all the situations and character dynamics were pretty clear even at the beginning of the book.  The premise is that Sachie now lives with her yakuza family and has to keep it a secret from her friends at school.  The main romantic interest is her “caretaker,” a bodyguard named Rakuto that follows her everywhere.  The romantic rival is a boy named Azuma, who needs to find the courage to confess his feelings for Sachie.

The character types were pretty fun.  Sachie is a very strong girl, and tends to be the pillar of support when everyone else around her goes weak-willed.  Azuma is something of a smooth talker and pretty boy, but a nice guy through and through.  Unusually, Rakuto, the main romantic interest is very quiet and doesn’t like to be directly involved with things.  That might just be because most of the focus this time around was on Azuma, though.

There doesn’t seem to be an overarching plot, and this volume had three different one-shot stories.  The first was about one of Sachie’s childhood friends coming back and setting himself on outing Sachie’s yakuza connections to ruin her life, the same way she outed his years ago and ruined his.  This was the Rakuto-centric parts, since Rakuto is the one who is trying to defend her honor.  Sachie does not approve, and defends her honor herself, with some support from Rakuto.  The second story is about a former member of the yakuza gang in need of help, since loan sharks are about to close down his restaurant.  Sachie rallies everyone around her to get the money he needs and help him turn his place into a presentable and delicious restaurant.  This was an Azuma story, since Azuma is the one urging Sachie through all this and decides that he will admit his feelings to her when the debt is all paid off.  Rakuto does not approve, but does little to stop the situation.  Mostly he just blushes and keeps to himself.

The third story was also an Azuma story, but dealt more with a past love than with his relationship with Sachie.  I actually liked this story the best, since the character development for Azuma came from a very unexpected and unusually cheery place.

But overall, I was not very much taken in by the series.  I liked pretty much everything about it, but there wasn’t anything outstanding or terribly addictive in this volume.  The stories themselves were okay, but not really… well, worth reading.  Their one-shot nature worked against them, too.  Since they didn’t appear to be contributing to a central plot, they seemed kind of pointless in addition to being bland.  It was also surprisingly romance-lite, something that never earns shoujo series a place in my good books.  For having two boys after her, Sachie seems to express no preference and nothing terribly interesting happens between them.  Maybe I’ve just gotten a particularly unromantic volume.  I’ve got one more volume here, so I’m willing to give it another try.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.