Before reading this manga this you need a bit of a trigger warning as there are a lot of things like abuse, manipulation and rape that are jokingly glossed over in it. You could say that it's an older series and that it's a product of it's time, but I do not find these things ok no matter where or when they're written.
Story:
The story is that of a 20 y/o girl who get's a blood transfusion and afterwards inherits the memories and psychic powers of the woman who donated blood to her. This is important because the brother of this woman's husband was passionately in love with her and becomes insanely possessive of the MC who now has the memories of the dead wife playing in her dreams.
To start off this isn't an uninteresting story, and the subject-matter of someone trying to come to terms with the loss of a loved one, especially when a part of that loved one is alive within someone else, could be a strong one.The problem is how the series handles that subject-matter. Without spoiling anything I can say that the topic of loss is a lot of the time glanced over and mostly serves as foder for the characters having the same fight in ever other chapter with little to no development.
It's also a bit problematic because the love interest is really forceful towards the MC when he finds out that she has a part of the woman he love inside of her. There is even a rape scene in the first chapter where the MC tells the love interest to stop and he doesn't, this is played for laughs. I can not stress enough how there needs to be a trigger warning in this, the author clearly didn't know how serious of a topic this is when writing this.
Characters:
The main character Maiko is a very stereotypical MC for the early- mid 2000's. She wants love and goes along with everything any man really tells her. She gets angry and screams a lot but gives in with some convincing at every turn.
The love interest is called Yukiya and is one of the creepiest love interests that I've ever had to read about. Upon finding out that Maiko has his dead brother's dead wive's memories he pretty much guilt tripps her into living with him and starts treating her like a possession. Maiko tells him off for this, but as I said before, it just takes a bit of simple sweet talking for her to become compliant.
Their dynamic never really develops, she yells at him and he's possessive and creepy for 2/3 of the manga. Once she, in a pretty disturbing turn of events, realises that she loves him she does a 180 and thinks he can do no wrong all of a sudden.
It doesn't help that the manga sits short on only 14 chapters. The pacing is laser fast and there simply isn't any time to develop any of the characters beyond their basic characteristics. There is a love rival thrown in later in the series who serves as nothing but a plot device to move the MC's relationship along.
Art:
The style is pretty standard mid-2000's shoujo but unfortunately that's all you can really say about it. A lot of the characters look different from page to page as well as bodies looking disproportionate at times. There are also a lot of "goofy expressions" through out this that are thrown in during dramatic and serious moments, this made it hard for me to ever get into anything that was happening since it didn't seem like the characters themselves were taking anything seriously.
The facial expressions also played a huge part in how I saw the characters. The MC tend to make this really angry, razor sharp teeth face a lot of the time which led me to find her annoying as she's angry a lot. The love interest is drown with this really cutesy and kinda "uwu" ish expression in a lot of moments when the MC is mad which makes him incredibly disturbing as it doesn't seem like he's listening to her at all, which for the first book is 100% true anyways.
I see what this series was going for, and it really tried, but I just don't think that this is a good or healthy way of showing off a relationship. There is a scene in the first couple of pages where someone brushes domestic abuse to the side like it's a woman's preference to be beaten and it's just an awful message to send.
I'm not saying that you should expect shoujo manga to offer a realistic look on relationships, or that you should seek them out for advice, but there is harmless shoujo and then there is this.(It's really written way more like a shoujo than a josei, just remove the sex scenes and there would be no difference)
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone except for how to not write a love story. The love interest is a possessive rapist who is in love with his brother's wife, and the main character is a pushover who falls for anyone who shows her kindness.
I will not be revisiting this and I hope that I might have saved someone an hour by writing this review.
Have a good one and wash your hands everyone!
