Koibana!: Koiseyo Hanabi

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

I must admit, that at the beginning of this story, I thought the behaviour of the female protagonist is quite annoying.
But gradually, I like her and the story more and more.

At first, I thought it would be a typical shojo drama, where a girl who hates guys will fall in love with a handsome guy, then go out and from time to time, some problems will arise. - but after I've read 59 chapters, I think, it isn't like that at all.
But this is somehow a very realistic shojo manga - but aside from her phobia of guys.
It shows you that it ... isn't that easy to make someone fall for you and also the problems between friends, lovers, ex-lovers ect.
I like this story a lot, because the plot is not only about the main girl, but also the lifes of her friends are partly shown. You can see many different characters and how they behave and what they actually are thinking.

The main girl isn't perfect - She makes many mistakes, but this makes the story more realist. There are many situations, where (I think) most of the people would have done the same. I could really put myself in her shoes.
I also like the main guy, who can often guess what the girl thinks and say it straight forward.

All in all, I think this story is really great. Only the beginning is rather cliquey.

- by the way, this was my first review, so I hope I was helpful and that I didn't write too many unnecessary things! :D

Positive impressions from the mangaka’s other works and a good amount of volumes, expectations of a fun, light read were created only to be crushed by the immaturity of it. It was not so the clichés that tired (a romance fan is always ready for them!), rather the effort of pretending to have deep drama and escaping the “mold” was its downfall.

The premise is pretty simple; you have a girl that her most interesting and annoying thing about her is her hatred of boys, who is at a school filled with boys (surprise!). One of the most basic recipes for romance! And it works… at ... least for a while. Ignoring her random fits of hatred that produce headaches to the reader, she meets a guy and slowly develops romantic feelings and the story starts moving along. However, it does not go at a stable pace or cohesive as the relationship between them just randomly changes, much like her decisions. The story tries to be serious along the light atmosphere and show how difficult a love like this can be, but the 2 main characters are actually unlikable for a big portion of this, it does not showcase every side of the story and tries to explain problems and thought processes in a very shallow manner. And then, the story gets repetitive stale with her random hatred only being the focus in a semi-serious/comedic way.

Thankfully, 3 other girls have a part in this story, each with her own romance problems. Some are more realistic than others and there is a lot of eye rolling as the manga tries to force more drama out of ridiculous situations, because characters in this work cannot act as normal human beings some of the time. Nonetheless, at least some of the progression of each girl (including the main character) holds some interest and does not feel as a chore to read. Also, it is sad that the manga does not try to promote some positive messages – other than the usual “Don’t give up!” and “Friendship is great!” – and sticks to stereotypes, negative even.

The characters are hugely cookie cutter made and it says a lot that hating boys is the most interesting (if not the only one) trait of a main character. For the most part, most characters act their age and they make silly mistakes or overthink things, etc., but it does not always work that way and the development is either forced or minimal. Some supposedly turning points or important progression of the story are based on drama-based decisions rather than natural choices, which makes this feel very immature and the characters very unrealistic (What person does not try to kidnap another person’s sibling just because the individual they like fancies that other person?). Not mentioning some hugely exaggerated characters that were there just to move the plot in an instant and can conveniently fill many roles to make this even more dramatic. There were many opportunities to handle this better and have drama at the same time, but... Of course, no one can really expect authentic behaviors in such works, but the change sometimes is very random and even extreme to just overlook.

Art-wise, it is very pleasing, although a bit generic! Distinct characters, good anatomy, giving attention to details and having a few different haircuts! There is no real complaint in this department, just that compared to the very often dialogue absence, there are lot of panels with no text (or the same cliché quotes one can imagine) and spreads with just the characters staring or something similar, etc., making this so fast to go through and easily ignore parts of the art.

All in all, did I enjoy it? I did the first time I read it years back through detailed summaries. But for my 2nd read now? The problems were so glaring, I could not ignore them and had to address them here. It is truly easy to read though; lots of textless pages, basic quotes and dialogues and predictable events made this very easy, but it was just not satisfying when you could not really cheer for the main characters and then just stop caring about them because nothing changes, they just seem stuck in time with the same comedy routine and sometimes you cannot stop thinking the main guy is a douche. A 10 volume manga and it still feels incomplete on many levels.

I don't even know where to begin..

It is a trainwreck of a story where the female lead claims to dislike guys because she thinks they are disgusting and rude, unlike girls. Her dislike of guys is too overdone and the source of this phobia is literally because of a guy growing armpit hair.

Okay so it's a shoujo manga, things are supposed to be overdone. I agree, the only problem is that she falls in love with a guy who rightfully disagrees with her dislike of boys and teases her about it. She fell so easily for him it was as if she didn't dislike boys ... at all. There was little to no inner conflict, and it turned out to be that this guy already had a girlfriend ( whose personality is bland). It felt like the girlfriend was only there to fill the 'jealous' girlfriend archetype that you see in so many shoujo manga's.

I had to drop the manga. The lead characters are bland and stereotypical, same goes for the art.

Definitely not recommended.