Cubism Love

Cubism Love Art by Temari Matsumoto and Story by Yuri Shibamura

Genre: Shojo
Length: 4 Volumes – 29 Chapters


            The art of this manga is visually appealing enough to catch the attention, in fact the name and art together is what drew me towards it, but at times it felt like something was lacking. I think it was the eyes, they just felt a flat most of the time. Lots of handsome guys, but the eyes make them seem like they are suspicious characters or disinterested in everything. There is no connection in them. The rest of the art is really well done. The hair has good texture and shape. The clothes have detail and fit the body shapes well, and the body movements are natual as well. In fact, since the first volume is basically just shots of the doctor sitting, there's plenty of movement and gestures and the like to keep things interesting. The backgrounds are pretty lacking, though. There's also not a lot of movement when action is happening, so the art is also a bit static during those times. It looks really nice but I think the artist could have pushed it a little more to make it have a longer term appeal to it.
           Noriko wakes in a hospital, with a doctor leaning over her. He explains that she was in an accident, and things begin to come back but something is strange, her voice sounds unlike her own, she can't move as normal and her vision seems skewed. That's when the doctor puts a mirror up and tells her, “You are now just a brain.” and the reflection she sees of herself
is just a black box.
           I really wanted to enjoy this manga, but things just kept rubbing me the wrong way. It didn't help that while I was reading the whole time I was thinking to myself, “Is this based off a book? It feels like its based off of a light novel or something...” It could be a dating sim as well, just due to the fact that there is lots of types of personalities all with handsome faces. As far as I can tell, Cubism Love isn't based off of anything, but it suffers a bit from symptoms I associate with that type of manga. Simply put, it feels like things are missing, and it begins rushing faster than comprehension. Its very wordy in the best of times, still, I'm not sure if it was my translation or what, but half of the time it made no sense. The speech bubbles were not always marked to who was speaking, so sometimes I had no idea who was actually talking. In Japanese there may have been some sort of marker, like speech patterns or gender specific pronouns, but it was a struggle at times to match the words to the person when they didn't make sense in the first place. Especially when something instantly happens or the plot jumps to something happening and you are left grasping at details left behind. Just gaps that have no explanation; I love books and writing so when holes like that happen, it really gets under my skin. Then there are the characters' personalities themselves. There's hardly any type of turmoil over Noriko's condition at all, even from herself, besides that she thinks she can't be loved as a box. The love interest, which you can probably guess is the doctor and so I don't count as a major spoiler, is a cool guy and everything but he, too, doesn't ruminate on any of the many interesting things that have happened in his past so when they are thrown at you its sort of just bounces right back off. It drove me crazy to read this, despite its very interesting premise. There's some convoluted plot with people wanting to steal the hospital's amazing new medical advances, including Noriko, as well as all the doctors being related and I don't even want to figure out how to explain it because its all just thrown into the mix so that the main points of the plot are lost to nonsense. If it had been a simpler tale of just a brain in a box and it's doctor, I think it would have been much easier to like. As it is the only thing that worked for me was the premise (which is a lot like the Steve Martin comedy The Man With Two Brains, superficially) which is highly disappointing.



1/5 Good premise but too much extra plot to make any sense.