Dec 17, 2013
Love Maniac is an anthology of 4 shoujo romances, oneshots that veer away from typical love at first sight tropes and each story explores a different type of "Prince" who falls in love with the Protagonist over the duration of the richly woven plot.
The first story is seriously fun, with a witty heroine, the plot being realistic and very relatable, and high-larious dialogues in some panels, or maybe it's just the scanlators doing a bang up job. The heroine's selfish antics really do amuse over and over. And their expressions.... don't even get me started! How can you create that cornucopia of feelings on a
...
black and white face! Great art. Must read.
The second story is interesting, it's a bit more trying that your normal fluff coz the guy's a tsundere without the dere part. And the girl's a glutton for punishment. It's not healthy, their relationship, at least to an outsider; but it's something that makes you wake up and take notice that in reality, you may keep hoping for a Prince to resurface from the person you place on a pedestal, but it may never completely happen for you. It's a skippable read, nothing too horrid about it, but the doki doki is just so so, and it's more shoujo or slice of life than romance through and through.
Third story is cute in itself, but I like how it thumbed its nose at shoujo manga stereotypes even further, which associate looks with personality types. Here a prince type character has a past that far rivals his current circumstance and a sweet megane shoujo who isn't too diffident to speak her mind and is moderately popular, outgoing and a genuinely nice person throughout. Aahh a breath of fresh air it was too! Their story was littered with reactions that surprised me and endeared the characters further in my mind along with generating sympathy for the progress of their relationship. Must read.
Fourth story is again a bit on the tame side, it shows possibly the opposite of the love-at-first-sight phenomenon. It's more mature and realistic perhaps, but nothing seriously engrossing. I only finished reading it coz I couldn't leave an unfinished story in the middle. Art in this one is OK, 4/10 maybe. Skippable.
PS Smut is mostly non existent in most of the stories, the mangaka just tapped on a bit in the last pages when she remembered "Oh this is supposed to be shelved in the smut category right?" First story has a bit of cute PG13 stuff, and the second an intimate scene or two, but nothing more.
Overall B: Read the first and third story and leave feeling refreshed to take on the world, hopefully leaving a couple of prejudices you previously held about girly bishounen or megane shoujos behind!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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