Seishun Shonbori Club
Heart Break Club

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This is surely a very subjective opinion, but while Seishun Honbori Club has a lot of things to like about it, it never quite managed to emotionally resonate with me. On the surface it seems like a comedy, with the very idea of a "Heart Break Club," and some cartoonishly stereotypical characters like the entire anime club, the beautiful TAKESHI Okinoshima, and Momo, seemingly cursed with all her crushes immediately getting girlfriends; they're just not her. But to me it felt more like going through the motions rather than ever really being funny. There's also some interpersonal drama, but it never, or took an exceedingly ... long time before I ever found it interesting. The characters feel unique, especially for shoujo, but I never felt particularly attached to them. I think perhaps the problem is that for quite a while, the manga doesn't give the characters much of a motivation. They just hang out at their club, and some random event happens. Yet it doesn't have the feel of a true slice of life either. The events are too far on this side of out of the ordinary, I suppose. By around chapter 20 or 25 it finally feels like it's acquiring more of an on-going plot, which I think is a turn for the better, but boy is that a lot of chapters to get through before that point. Many entire series are shorter than that.

I personally found this disappointing because it has so much going for it that it seems like I should have liked it more. It's one of the rarer shoujo manga where both guys and girls interact as friends in a daily basis, yet it does not have that feel of a reverse harem. Yes, there is a love triangle, but there is a significant number of males in the cast that have utterly no interest in the protagonist whatsoever, and unless it takes a sudden turn, this includes some guys she really is just friends with, with no hints of romance at all. So already, it's a refreshing change of pace from many shoujo manga. The other point in its favor is that Okinoshima, the male protagonist, is a cross dresser, and of course the male otaku want to fetishize him by making him cosplay as their favorite female characters, but at the same time, unlike so, so many manga involving cross dressing, no one (at least so far) ever seems to think it's "gross," or pressures him to change. Similarly, absolutely no one comments on it being atypical that there are multiple guys in the crafting club, nor on the fact that the beautiful Tomo-chan gets together with a short, overweight otaku. (A perfectly happy ending for a genuinely not traditionally attractive person, and it wasn't played for laughs? When does that ever happen?) Lastly, I rather like the art, which is very crisp and clean.