Honey Hunt 4

Miki Aihara – Viz – 2010 – 6+ volumes

In case I had forgotten how ridiculous this series is, the first page reminds me.  “I’m not going to be satisfied until you admit you like me more than Q-ta.”  “What’s he saying?  Does that mean… that Haruka likes me?!”

Maybe it does, Yura.  Maybe it does.

Yura continues to be her regular doormat self, letting her manager boss her around and the hot celebrity twins fight over her without much of a peep on how she feels.  While I disagree with her quietly taking all the stern instructions from her manager, I also find myself agreeing with his advice: Yura keeps thinking about the hot twins while she’s scoring big celebrity jobs that she shouldn’t be getting.  So not only is she getting these impossible jobs, she’s also thinking about which twin she likes better while she does it rather than about working.  Her manager wants her to focus on her work while she builds up her career, but the boys are stealing away her concentration.  Not to mention getting involved with either of them will create a lot of gossip.  The manager wants the boys to wait a year to pick her up, which seems fair.

Unfortunately, it’s also implied that her manager has feelings for Yura, which almost invalidates all his points.  Still, if an impossible celebrity career were dropped in my lap, yeah, I think I’d be able to screen out the boys until I was sure I could make it work.

There was also one other plot point that made me dislike Yura a little more towards the end of the book, where she ditches all her friends throwing a party for her to hang out with a boy.  As terrible as that is, I am always secretly amused when shoujo manga heroines break the “bros before hos” rule.  Usually it only happens in super-trashy series like this.  B.O.D.Y. jumps to mind as another one where it happens.

But even after all that, I still tore straight through this book in record time.  I am ridiculously addicted.  And somehow, I don’t hate Yura despite the fact she is probably the embodiment of every negative stereotype you can put in a shoujo manga heroine.  I don’t like her, really, but somehow I can’t really bring myself to hate her, either.  Maybe it’s because she’s just too pathetic.

Whatever it is, it works.  This series is completely insane and somehow an amazing read despite being no good for you at all.  Like eating spoon after spoon of Hershey’s syrup.  There are certainly better things you could be reading, but honestly… only a few things are really more satisfying than this.  I can guarantee you that this series won’t take more than 20 volumes to get the main couple together, like Skip Beat.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.