Ranked #4602

Doting Love Strip (Manga)

I loved this short volumed manga. It was fun, cute, and an overall sweet story.

As a summary here is the idea. Guy and girl are best friends in elementary and moving on to Junior High/High School together. Unfortunately, even though girl is a nerd in appearance, she's far from being a nerd mentally. What does that mean? She's not smart by any stretch of the imagination. The guy however is a rebel, troublemaker who only applied to the smart school with girl because he liked girl. He got in and is considered a genius. So he's the uber hottie who's very smart. Now it's three years later and girl has another chance to apply to uber smart school that uber smart boy got into which she had failed. He wants her to go to the school with him and willing tutors in all things that is not ONLY school related.

Obviously this story is not very original; it's an atypical teen romantic comedy. However, the characters are well defined and well written that it's just an original story. The story will have you giggling a bit. It has a high level of smut (so fore-warning). But the characters are really fun, I can't say it enough.

A bit of character discussion. The lead girl as mentioned is not smart, but she is given the stereotypical nerdy look. She's sweet. She's a bit naive, but what's great about this story versus some of Shinjo Mayu's other work is that the girl has had some experience in other relationships. So it was entertaining to see the guy deal with that factor and have some anxiety and insecurity about it. The male lead was far from domineering but he was horny as hell and he did throw in a bit of emotional blackmail to get some, but she was totally willing to have some fun too. The entire story seemed realistic and it was a good read.

I personally like these nerdy girl/hot guy stories so it was a plus. The art work is always great and definitely something to read. As a note this story has a bit of similarity to Itazura na Kiss, but if you're American or not the most fitting is the movie She's All That. If you're American or not and have seen this film, you'll see a bit of similarity but the manga is not that deep. But you have the nerdy looking girl who's so NOT nerdy and you have the uber hot/smart guy (in the manga he's running for President but not President unlike the film). So there are similarities there. Great reading.

**Oh, if you haven't seen She's All That...I loved it and I'm a film snob. I think you should get your hands on it.
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i liked this story even if its only one volume...i really wanted to see what happens afterwards but yeah..........the story is about a childhood love...and a nice one at that....... its funny that shes dumb and he likes her very much even though she looks like a bookworm character........has smut content but a good read since it has a nice development in the story of how she need to get into his highschool..... there a lot of lovin in this manga as well.....also its funny how much dominance he has over her and the love they have for eacother