Well this is the first volume of Tokyo Boys and Girls to be published without a bonus story, so does that mean that the plot alone is going to be enough to support it through this volume?
Haruta and Mimori are tentatively exploring their feelings for each other after Mimori’s startlingly blunt confession. But Kazukita is beginning to become more and more obvious in his feelings for Mimori, and that doesn’t sit well with Nana. After they all go to an amusement park together, things come to a bit of a head. Mimori and Haruta plan to slip away, but with Ran refusing to be the third wheel to Nana and Kazukita’s sudden chumminess, by the time Mimori manages to drag herself away, she’s left standing on her own in the rain. With typical presumed female weakness, standing in bad weather for an hour reduces Mimori to a fever requiring hospitalisation and intravenous fluids, but with Haruta absent, when Kazukita turns up and takes her there instead, it’s a prime situation for misunderstandings.
Speaking of misunderstandings, this volume is jam packed with them. Not only is Mimori misunderstanding Haruta, but Haruta is getting the wrong idea about Mimori and Kazukita (somewhat understandably) and Nana is really going off the deep-end in terms of taking things the wrong way, and it all ends being just one giant series of people seeing things from the wrong point of view. I suppose this is quite an accurate portrayal of life, but highly frustrating to read. In this sense, Tokyo Boys and Girls works really well, as it makes me care enough to want the characters to sort things out. At the same time, however, the constant misunderstandings and complications arising from what seem like the simplest actions become either a truly magnificent commentary on the intricacies of human relations or a desperate attempt to cause character friction and angst to beef up the storyline, and I’m leaning towards the latter in my definition.
Another plot difficulty is rather obviously rammed into the storyline with a sudden announcement that Mimori’s father is being transferred to Kyushu. Using the old transferring-away-because-of-work plot thread isn’t necessarily a complete story killer when it’s done well, but it seems far too much like it is only done here to try and make things even more difficult for Haruta and Mimori: after all, it’s only volume 3, and they can’t live happily ever after yet!
In total, this volume of Tokyo Boys and Girls felt more than a little contrived. With Nana going up the wall and giving Mimori the silent treatment, the preying girls of the rest of the class step in with flashing eyes and unsheathed claws in yet another bid to complicate things further. Haruta and Mimori get some good moments, though they are few and far between in this volume, and Kazukita is constantly inserting himself like a giant malignant presence in between them. But before we can get annoyed with him too much, he gets into trouble which only Mimori can help him extricate himself from (according to Ran anyway) and we learn about the more tortured side of his personality. After all, even villains in shojo can’t be all bad it seems. But it seems that Mimori’s airhead mother thinks that Kazukita is the best possible boyfriend for her daughter, and she’s not afraid to say it, even to Haruta’s face.
It is almost as though Miki Aihara is making up for the somewhat drifting pace of the last two volumes by cramming as many hurt feelings and possible difficulties into a single volume. Not only are friendships up in the air, but family issues are crowding the scene as well as past histories, high fevers and bullying. It wouldn’t have hurt to have allowed Haruta and Mimori a little more time to establish a relationship before having it ripped into like this, and frankly, I could have done with Mimori being a little more pro-active at times, and listening a little more. That said, she is by far the more forward one in the relationship, with Haruta turning out to be quite endearingly shy.
Annoyingly, there is one section at the end, and you’ll probably spot this if you read it, where an event that is probably quite big in terms of the storyline is relegated to little more than a sidebar, and passes by so quickly it is barely noticed. It seems a shame that it got lost within the rest of the contrivances, and maybe we’ll actually find out more next time, but as a whole, this incident of losing a story in a panel sums up this volume quite well.
I am enjoying this series, for all of my occasionally scathing comments throughout this review, but I find myself reading it with a bit of a sense of disappointment. It’s very readable, but with artwork that isn’t stunning and a plot line that annoys me as much as it intrigues me, I’m glad that this will all be over in two volumes. If they turn out to be as packed full as this volume though, it could easily have been stretched out into more.
Signed
Tarn
Ai Says
"I’m giving it a 3 because it is a good story. It just could have been so much better. "
