Conflict Lover by Takamiya Satoru

Happy New Year! The holidays have finally ended and I have time to read manga again, and thank goodness, because I was feeling a bit of the withdrawals.


Conflict Lover (though my scans also say “Lovers in Conflict”) by Takamiya Satoru

Art and story (c) Takamiya Satoru

Genre: Shojo (the smutty* type)
Length: One Volume - 3 Chapters and an unrelated One-shot



           The art is a little rough, the one-shot is obviously older so it has an even more amateur look to it, but its not unpleasant. Body types are thin and lanky and the faces are fairly plain, hair styles are the main way of telling people apart and those are crisp and varied. The eyes did have excellent expression, if not definition, and facial expressions were also good. Clothes were plain but it was hard to judge because the clothes were mostly plain clothes in the first place, when decoration was needed it was given just not noticeably. Making the manga over all plain, but it has a style to it instead of just looking like something I've seen before.

           Sagiri is completely overwhelmed with what has become of her life overnight. Her sister was set up on a political marriage, see, but her sister hated it and ran away with another man instead and suddenly Sagiri has to stand in her sister's place with no way of saying no. So Sagiri, still in high school, has to share a strange home and bed with a man she doesn't know. All they do is fight, and Sagiri isn't good at any kind of household chores, can the two find a middle ground in their sudden marriage or will it end in divorce?

           Ah, the old 'hesitant woman marrying a domineering business man' plot. Classic odd-couple genre in manga, even if it is over done. Conflict Lover wasn't too cliched though, as far as the story went, but it was a classic set up with the hesitant girl part, where the man does whatever and the woman gets flustered. Not my favorite set up, and I should know I've read a lot of them because they are everywhere, but this coupling was more cute than what often turns creepy. The humor was good, too, but I wished there had been a bit of background for the two of them to round out both of their characters instead of the one-shot that was at the end. Talk about creepy, the one-shot did hit the creepy mark and then some, though if you don't mind incest then I guess its okay but that's not my thing at all. Boy, this sounds like a long list of complaints, but it wasn't a chore to read I enjoyed the jokes and the plot but it wasn't particularly involved or wholly original.



3/5 I read it but I probably won't remember it if I came across it again.




*Smut and 'ecchi' manga are the general terms for sexy manga that usually have sex and kissing but with out being too explicit. Nudity is either completely lacking definition or oddly missing, its like a sub-genre in manga so you know what you are getting into. And there are different degrees of it depending on whether it is shonen or shojo, I'm going to stick to the term ecchi from now on.