mini reviews (ougi yuzuha)

[piranha]

OUGI Yuzuha:
嵐が丘
Arashi ga oka (1 volume manga; licensed as Rising Storm)

summary (from DramaQueen):

Reona is a college student, working hard at the Kaizaki family's Tokyo castle. Ruling over this castle is the young master, Kaizaki-sama. Amidst chores and strict obedience, who would have thought that Kaizaki-sama's discipline of Reona would lead to a fairytale romance?!

the only thing i liked here is the atogaki (afterword). the stories are unbelievable, the humour doesn't reach me, and the odd mix between serious, melodramatic, and humourous moments just pushed me around so i never actually formed any kind of affinity for any of the characters.

the artwork is... very uneven. and that's not because the bodies are "too masculine" -- i prefer masculine over girly any day. i really like the front cover. i like the first page. a lot of the backgrounds are beautiful. but they look like they were drawn by somebody else; they don't fit with the character art. for me ougi's character design oscillates between beautiful and butt-ugly, and it tears me out of the story every time. which means the sex, while nicely graphic, also doesn't do much for me, and that makes the manga a total loss.

rating: 4 / 10.0



OUGI Yuzuha:
ダーリング
Darling (3 volume manga, ongoing)

summary:

Rio was living a perfectly normal high school life, when cool and suave transfer student Tomo-chan entered his school. Rio admires his style, and watches as Tomo easily grabs the attention of the female student body -- and of some teachers too. It's not until Tomo picks up Rio's dropped planner with a photo of his beloved idol, a male teacher, that they interact. Suspecting that Rio is gay, homophobic Tomo tells Rio he's going to "cure" him by designing a special "Homo Fixing Training Regimen"

i like it better when ougi draws men (rather than a man and an effeminate boy), and rio seems to get younger and smaller as the story goes on, but IMO this isn't even close to shota. rio still looks like a teenage boy; it's just that tomo looks older than a teenage boy, so the discrepancy is larger than usual between class mates.

i really enjoyed the first volume; it was crackelicious. i dislike plots driven by dumb misunderstandings, as well as super-dense uke, and those tend to ruin a story for me. but ougi manages to make the misunderstandings so inane, and somehow pulls out a sweet synergy between rio and tomo, which makes the story fun. rio isn't an idiot (he's a top student), just very, very, very naive and good-natured. tomo, despite being overbearing and rough at first, and in denial for a time thereafter, shows in all his actions that he really cares for rio -- love that first date setup. i am seriously glad the original non-con didn't continue, because it would have tipped the balance of the story into crap, since rape and humour do not go together for me. even though rio is something of a standard uke (small, gentle, defenseless, needs to be rescued), at least ougi carries on with having him enjoy sex, and he doesn't pretend otherwise.

the second volume is more of the same and i started to get tired of the misunderstandings by the end, though there was some character growth to partially make up for that. the third volume switched the viewpoint characters to rio’s older childhood friend haruka, a surgeon, and associated men, as well as jou (tomo’s love rival). while we're back to actual men, the humour is gone and i don't feel there is anything much between any of those people; but while haruka / ayumi / whatshisname are mildly entertaining because there's the suspense of whom haruka will choose, jou and seira's story turns me off entirely. my rating is only for rio and tomo's story in v1 and v2; the 3rd volume would be a 5.

i like ougi's art, and her sex scenes when she steps away from the usual. but the very best thing, frankly, are her atogaki; she is hilarious -- i want to hang out with her!

rating: 8 / 10.0