Akane-Chan Overdrive's plot follows Takashi Amamiya, who, after tripping on a bottle, finds himself outside of his body and being pushed into the body of the titular Akane-chan, he now finds himself living as this girl until the spirit of the girl comes back to her body. Hopefully soon, because Amamiya's original body is dying slowly.
It's a simple premise, not too original, I've seen the whole "people switch lives" plot a lot. But most of them end up following the cliched message that "everyone's lives are hard and you shouldn't judge them" and, while I'm not sure what the message is here, it definitely isn't that. We mostly explore how Amamiya reacts to now being a beautiful girl and tries to live with it.
Knowing that Kawashita had written this manga before her time in Shounen Jump, I was actually expecting this to be a fairly "by-the-books" shoujo manga, and despite me not being the most expert reader of Shoujo manga, I do think this is the most shounesque shoujo I've read so far and it would made sense to me that people would change Kawashita to the Shounen branch of Shueisha because of this manga.
I don't say this just because this manga is mostly male characters (even if one is in a girl's body), although it does only have two recurring female characters, and one of them appears for like 2 chapters and the other basically serves for Amamiya to hit on sometimes. No, it's more that this is the first time I remember seeing an ecchi shoujo. We are given various panels of the girl naked or wearing questionable clothing, and if you need panty-shots, let me assure you they have it, they have it on every single chapter.
Plus, on the first chapter we get this very uncomfortable joke about her dad trying to have a bath with his grown up daughter. The pervy dad joke happens a couple more times throughout the manga, but it's done in a more tame manner than I can accept, but this one sounds all the red alerts. Now, I don't think this joke should be in any manga, at least not as a joke. But I think that specially as a manga that is being read by young girls, you shouldn't write-off your dad trying to see you naked with clear sexual and creepy intent, this is not what you want to teach kids.
But you know what, this is just one page, and I think the rest of the chapter is alright. It's funny, it has some good enjoyable moments and it does have a good artstyle to back it off, that, sure isn't as polished as Kawashita's later output, but is still very good. Chapter two and three, of ten, just follow the story more, exploring Amamiya and Akane's life, and then chapter four is a completely unrelated one shot.
Now, one-shots at the end of a volume happens, either related or not to the main story, it's not unusual to have the author write something new or put a previous work to fill up space. Thing is... this one-shot... is in the MIDDLE of the volume. Chapter 5, the last chapter of volume 1, have us back at Akane-Chan. This shouldn't be a negative point, because it's just a weird structure, but what? Why? Why in the middle?! Just... why?
Well, whatever, I'm calm now, so lets jump to volume 2. At this point we are having a romance triangle between what is basically three guys, that are all clearly very heterosexual, but for some reason whenever they are in Akane's body (yes, they switch) they feel weaker to the opposite gender, or to be specific, to the beautiful guy who's desperately trying to get into Akane's pants. Having in mind that two of the three are completely aware that the girl is a dude, this has some slight BL tones in it, leading into the final chapters. Which, to be fair, is actually an interesting development. One that I would love to read. At the end of chapter 8, we have the three of them fall off some stairs and completely switch bodies with one another, having the oblivious guy being in Akane's body this time. Making it all full circle and having us from now on, three dudes fighting for a girl, who's one of them.
Chapter 9 is a short side story that reverses this situation and has a teen girl dying, switching to a male body and trying to gain back her boyfriend. It's a fun story, that I wouldn't mind, if this wasn't the second to last chapter, but whatever, lets see how this manga ends.
LAST CHAPTER IS AN UNRELATED ONE-SHOT.
Last chapter... What.
WHAT ABOUT THE ACTUAL MANGA?! EH! EH! KAWASHITA! I trusted you. I have told people to read your stuff. And you give me this? This is how you repay loyalty?
We ended on a fucking cliffhanger. They all switched bodies. The real Akane didn't even appeared, none returned to their original body.
We just stop the manga at a random chapter. And then fill the volume with two
TWO
TWO unrelated stories. Because why would one person write a conclusion?
Conclusions are pussies. You don't need conclusion. Read a manga, and when you're 74% near the end, burn it. BURN the manga, you don't need conclusions.
Just go read an unrelated one-shot. IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR AKANE-CHAN OVERDRIVE'S EDITORS IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.
Okay.
Okay... So... final thoughts.
I didn't hate this. It was fun, if I hated it, I would've not be mad about the (lack of) conclusion. There are funny, and interesting parts in this manga, perverted dad aside, enough that I don't want to give this a negative score. But I can't recommend this one to anyone because the story lacks more than just an ending. It lacks a middle. It's the start of a potentially good manga that never was. I would tell you to check Kawashita's older works instead.
