Rensou Mode and Danshi-ing Girl! by Haruki Okada

No, really, getting to read and write a review on the computer compared to my cell phone is like night and day. Setting aside the time is probably the same, but I look forward to it instead of forcing myself to do it. Of course no one looks at these things to read about my personal life, so, on with the manga reviews!



Rensou Mode by Haruki Okada

No cover page, sorry.

Genre: Shojo
Length: One Chapter – 45 Pages


          Very smooth and professional looking, and the gag art was amazingly hilarious. The

Just look at those perfectly round boobs and pointy hands

clothes are well fitting and the eyes are clear and easy to interpret. Its always hard to really “review” the art on a one-shot manga, especially when there isn't anything I can nitpick or laud as original. The regular art is this way, I've read (and reviewed) lots of shojo manga in the same type of style, but the gag art has terrible to a science. Every little thing is exactly the right kind of bad, the faces the sparkly eyes, the side views that are off, every detail is funny and makes this manga instantly a 5/5. That's kind of unprofessional, I guess so I'll finish this after all.
          Nicknamed “the Prude” and having the appearance of a typical class rep, one girl holds a secret of actually being super romantic and a lover of smutty shojo stories. She daydreams of having her first kiss with the prince of her choosing, going so far as to elaborately plan every step leading up to it. So when she has an accidental kiss with a delinquent boy from her class, she conscripts him into helping her fulfill her fantasies.
          This manga tries to kill you by page nine (the page just to right there of this text), and to make matters worse, keeps giving you full page spreads of the main character's hand drawn romance fantasy manga. The cliches are there, the rosy backgrounds, the locked in a closet together, and the seeing the girl topless. All of them drawn in, pardon my French, shitty amateur art. Of course, they are parodies and the real life scenarios go much differently. To hilarious results, mostly. I got to the end much too quickly, and I'd love to see how this couple actually continues, how her obsessive behaviors change now that she has what she wants. It'd be amazing, I know it.



5/5 Laughing too hard to think of a one liner. Just read it.




I liked that one-shot, so I went ahead and found a longer work by the same mangaka instead of a random one in my file, and it's review follows…



Danshi-ing Girl! by Haruki Okada

Genre: Shojo
Length: One Volume – 4 Chapters and one extra


          The art is basically the same as Rensou Mode, except that it's a little more unrealistically drawn. Meaning, the bodies are a little leaner, and, what struck me the most, the faces come to an extreme point at the chin. Rensou Mode also has the pointy faces, but its just more so on Danshi-ing Girl, of course, most shojo do it but once you make note of it, your brain can't help but see it. Anyway, the clothes are well done, with enough detail to be interesting, and the eyes have a lot of life in them. It is fairly typical for it's time

period (around late 2000's to now) so it doesn't really stand out in the art department but it doesn't fail in any way, either.
           Karin hates men with a passion, ever since she was bullied as a child, and can't stand to be near or even look at a male. After an accident, though, Karin wakes to a foreign bed and a boy standing over her calling her by the wrong name. She panics, only to find that instead of simply being in the wrong place, she's actually in the wrong body?!
          This is clearly a one-shot that unexpectedly got the chance to be a full volume, making the second chapter rather abruptly tacked on, but I don't hold that against it (I think Faster Than A Kiss was, too, and it had a long, successful run, after all). The initial idea of their souls switching is fun, but it does wear a little thin by the end of it, simply because it happens just for comedy and drama but not to further the relationship. Which is a long way of saying that it doesn't have enough romance and nothing is really resolved because the author went for the gag. Now, I'm not saying this manga is bad, far from it, its an entertaining read. It makes you laugh at the antics of the poor, reserved girl having to suddenly be surrounded by guys, and that part doesn't really get old. I just wanted a bit more than just a laugh. Also, the shinigami character is great, and his laid back approach to helping them really makes the body switching practically guilt free. I recommend this manga, along with Rensou Mode, for the humor alone. Come Christmas, I have another from this author, too, and I hope its a good read as well.


4/5 Funny and cute, with just a little too little resolution.

Uh... what about it?