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manga: Love Attack Vol 1-6
Sep. 24th, 2009 02:33 amA violent high schooler, Chiemi gets into one too many fights, and is given an ultimatum: get Hirata, an even more violent classmate, to be less violent, and she won’t be expelled. Chiemi goes about this by kicking him in the face. He falls in love. Being a person of similar sensibilities, Chiemi quickly falls in love, too.
Strip away the violence, and Hirata and Chiemi are a fairly normal nice guy/spaz shoujo pairing. There’s the typical plotlines like Hirata proving himself to Chiemi’s father and Hirata’s childhood friend trying to still him from Chiemi, as well as a stalled non-romance between their best friends. It’s just all with about 50 times as much insanity as usual.
I hover between being vastly entertained and rather annoyed by the series. I actually dislike most of the subplots (a particularly annoying one lasts at least three volumes) and tend to find myself simultaneously laughing and growling with annoyance. I’m also not really fond of how the violence is depicted. Some of it is the typical slapstick approach, but some of it is also lasting, and acknowledged as maybe not being healthy, and yet, it’s never taken seriously. I’ve never been quite comfortable with the dismissive approach to violence (girls spazzing and beating up guys over accidents/misunderstandings and guys beating up groups of other guys for jokes/picking on the girl/etc.) that crops up in a lot of manga but can usually go with it as a visual gag. Here, though, I keep thinking there needs to be a plotline where both Chiemi and Hirata (and probably Hirata’s friend, Ohno) realize they’re in serious need of anger management.
Despite the problems, though, most of the characters are likable and entertaining, and the series is pretty fun, even if there are better shoujo fluff and/or comedy series out there.
Strip away the violence, and Hirata and Chiemi are a fairly normal nice guy/spaz shoujo pairing. There’s the typical plotlines like Hirata proving himself to Chiemi’s father and Hirata’s childhood friend trying to still him from Chiemi, as well as a stalled non-romance between their best friends. It’s just all with about 50 times as much insanity as usual.
I hover between being vastly entertained and rather annoyed by the series. I actually dislike most of the subplots (a particularly annoying one lasts at least three volumes) and tend to find myself simultaneously laughing and growling with annoyance. I’m also not really fond of how the violence is depicted. Some of it is the typical slapstick approach, but some of it is also lasting, and acknowledged as maybe not being healthy, and yet, it’s never taken seriously. I’ve never been quite comfortable with the dismissive approach to violence (girls spazzing and beating up guys over accidents/misunderstandings and guys beating up groups of other guys for jokes/picking on the girl/etc.) that crops up in a lot of manga but can usually go with it as a visual gag. Here, though, I keep thinking there needs to be a plotline where both Chiemi and Hirata (and probably Hirata’s friend, Ohno) realize they’re in serious need of anger management.
Despite the problems, though, most of the characters are likable and entertaining, and the series is pretty fun, even if there are better shoujo fluff and/or comedy series out there.
