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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane Well, this is it: not counting some later side material, this is the final volume of Boys Over Flowers, one of THE classic shoujo series, which brought about not only an anime series but multiple live-action adaptations. Love it or hate it, there's no denying that this story has been extremely influential and has impressive staying power. Personally, I don't love or hate it. As I've said before, I adored the J-drama version that initially came out a couple of years ago, but I wasn't at all crazy about the anime. My feelings on the manga vary wildly depending on the mood I'm in when I pick up a volume and on what happens in it, and yet...I've read almost all of it, and with a 36-volume series that's no small investment of time and energy. After all that preamble, I just want to say that I liked the final volume a lot more than I expected. Since it's the end of the story, it didn't suffer at all from the single thing that bothered me most about the series (once Tsukasa stopped being an abusive jerk, and let me say again that I'm impressed by how little I hold that against him by this point), which was the constant onslaught of implausible Dramatic Plot Points. The plotline in this book is remarkably believable for once, with Tsukushi trying to decide whether she should stay at school or follow Tsukasa, all while trying to juggle her family's eternal financial woes and make it to her prom on time. What volume 36 does do is stay true to the characters and the core of the story, offering a very satisfying emotional payoff for their many, many volumes of trials (and more trials, and more trials...). Tsukushi and Tsukasa's relationship gets a lot of focus, as it should--their lives are in a huge state of upheaval, with Tsukasa graduating and going to New York--but the other key relationships all get their moments, as they also should. While there are still things that disturb me about the dynamic between Tsukushi and the F4, the growing fondness between them is one of the things I've enjoyed most consistently, and that's treated very well as the series ends. I also really liked the bonus story about Akira that's included at the end of the book. Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Comment on this review of Boys Over Flowers v36 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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