Midnight Secretary by Tomu Oomi

Midnight Secretary by Tomu Oomi




Genre: Josei (18 and up)
Length: 7 Volumes - 37 Chapters

Art and story (c) Tomu Oomi

            I recently read a bad review of Midnight Secretary, and since Tomu Oomi is one of my favorite mangaka, I decided to re-read it and see if I had the right to be as outraged as I was. I warn you, this will probably be a long one because I'm putting my own review in at the same time. Away we go...

            The last sentence of the bad review called the art 'generic' and I feel the maddest about that
line because I've always thought Tomu Oomi has a very unique look to her men, especially their faces and their hair. The men are just in my strike zone, manly with big shoulders, a body style that seems to have gone to the yaoi side and hasn't come back, I go *squee* for these types. The faces, men and women, are clean and strong and it’s easy to tell different characters apart from one another. The eyes being wide and expressive, the women have that thick lash look. The hair looks gorgeous, man or woman, and the mangaka is also very skilled in making older men attractive, too. The clothes can sometimes look "bunchy" with wrinkles but it’s hardly distracting, in fact, the clothes are interesting to look at, even though Midnight Secretary is mostly suits. The backgrounds are well done, too, the first volume especially, but every once in a while I hit a section that was all white background and speech bubbles to the point where I was keeping an eye on it but I’ve only begun to look at that lately, most of the time I don’t even notice it. Besides blank backgrounds are not unexpected in a manga, especially one that goes in a weekly or monthly magazine. I don't see generic anywhere in the art. I will fully admit when I heard Midnight Secretary was licensed, I got excited not because I want to buy it (though I do) but because a previous work of Tomu Oomi's might get published, too. Even though it is not my favorite, Midnight Secretary is so good I find that bad review still stuck in my craw…
           Kaya Satozuki just got re-assigned in her company to the director of the Touma Corporation, Kyouhei Touma, because he is a hard working business man and she is a hard working secretary. Still, despite Kyouhei's skill he is also an awful womanizer who has women coming and going from his office all day and night. After noticing the women all come away from his "meetings" pale and hardly able to walk, Kaya, worried he will bring shame to the company if something illegal is happening, investigates his office. Unluckily, he brings a girl in while she is hiding, and Kaya finds its not drugs he is feeding the women, the reverse is true, he's actually the one doing the feeding! Her new boss, and the son of the head of the company, is in actuality, a vampire!! Kyouhei catches her, and now she must work even harder as his secretary because she knows his secret, meaning she has to set up his meals and help avoid unwanted situations, or her mother, who also works for a subsidiary of the company, might just be put through disgrace. How can Kaya work for such a demonic boss?

            I thought, perhaps, the other reviewer only read the first volume and I kept that in mind when I started reading so I'll try and address the faults the other reviewer saw first. There was complaint of the story being like a romance book, but I hardly see how it wouldn't be considering it’s a romance story, though it can be predictable at times it doesn't seem clichéd, and that is hard to do with a vampire story now a days. I do read vampire books like gangbusters and if a book seems too much like something I've seen or have liked better I'll abandon it, and I did not abandon this. It’s hard to make a vampire love story fresh, true, but comparing it to Twilight was not an honest way of doing it, Mr. Reviewer, and so I have to strike down that complaint. There was concern of the rating being 'conservative' as well, but that is another problem with only reading the first volume, there is no nudity because, unlike some heroines in josei manga, Kaya does not fall immediately in bed with Kyouhei. I personally like that aspect. Still the eighteen plus rating is exactly what this manga needs, and saying it is too strong at just the first volume is a little pre-emptive since having different ratings for books in the same series would cause complete havoc, especially if a youngster picked up the first one because it was a lower rating. Midnight Secretary not only has sex scenes but they pop up frequently though, in fact, I think Midnight Secretary is one of the more moderate of Tomu Oomi's works. I can't see this manga having any lower of a rating. I'm going to dismiss that point as well. Let's see, and the last thing I had a problem with was his ridicule of Kaya being unattractive until
her glasses come off and how unbelievable that was, but that doesn't seem to be the way I read it. Kaya has a baby face, and thinks a secretary that looks like a child won't be taken seriously, so she puts up her hair and wears glasses to make herself look more severe and thus more adult. Maybe I'm just over defending a mangaka I really like but that isn't the same as glasses equals ugly and hair down is pretty, but rather, Kaya has a complex about her young looking face and wants to be taken seriously despite it. No one calls her 'ugly' but 'plain' and the way she is drawn I can see that. Or maybe I sympathize because I've been asked if my parents were home even though I'm a full grown adult. So, I do not believe that point, either. The story in itself does have some slow parts where you just wish they'd be a couple and be done with it, but it isn't drawn out to the point of excess that's just the fun of a romance story. Kaya's secretary side, and how she sticks to it can also be frustrating but it’s never enough not to enjoy her boss breaking it and teasing her. About the only real problem I have with this manga is, as I previously said, the once in a while sections where no backgrounds are there at all, especially if the characters, too, are wearing white toned clothes, but it only ever lasts a few pages and it only distracts the eye when you are looking for it. In any case, I still feel like my outrage is justified. Perhaps the other reviewer (I'm purely judging by the man's name that graced the end of the article that it is in fact a he) just doesn't much like this type of romance manga, because he also gave Happy Marriage a similarly dismissing review and though Happy Marriage isn't supernatural, the two are rather similar, except Midnight Secretary is much much better. "Cute but bland" my foot, the characters are complex and their struggles are not superficial, and the story is done so well you don't care how many vampire romances you've read, you only want more pouty Kyouhei.

            Well, to make a long story short, I do not agree with said review, not even on the small points. Though, thanks to the fact that he insulted this manga, I decided to start this blog because it was misrepresenting an author I like so well. So thanks dude, I guess, but steering people away from Tomu Oomi is a disservice to women everywhere who like supernatural romance stories. For in that genre, Tomu Oomi is heads above the rest, and trust me when I say it because I've read just about any supernatural story I can get my hands on.

5/5 Read this, love it, and then move on to all the rest of Tomu Oomi's works. You won't regret it, though, maybe it only applies to us ladies.

Color by me... poor picked on Kaya...