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Reviewed by James Hanrahan When her politician father gets embroiled in some sort of scandal, Haruna Aizawa has to transfer from her more exclusive "K Academy" high school to a public school called Kita High. She likens the crudeness of public school attendees as like being on a mountain inhabited by monkeys all screeching and pushing to be in charge. To her, everybody even looks plain and ordinary. Only the tall, handsome boy, Atsu, considered to be the "Prince" of the school, seems like a match for her. Thus it is a huge surprise to everybody when she seems inexplicably drawn to short, loud, plain ol' Macharu. This boy even makes her think of a baby monkey, but she can't stop herself from falling for him. This book is just so gosh darn nice... Haruna shows up determined to snub all the peons at this public school but everyone warms up quickly to her, especially after she starts falling for Macharu. Rather than the usual shojo manga cliche of people trying to stop the heroine from getting together with the guy she likes, her classmates practically force them together, going out of their way to make sure things work out. That's sort of the whole point, though... The whole book is a bizarro version of shojo manga cliches like that, where the reverse happens of what you might expect from such a story. Rather than being lovable and misunderstood, the main character tries to stay cold and aloof. Rather than her classmates trying to keep the potential lovebirds apart, they push them together. Rather than a rival who tries to destroy their happiness, the guy turns out to be just a heck of a nice guy. Even Haruna's ex from K Academy, whom she unceremoniously dumped, is a pretty good sport with how everything is going. Most of the conflict in this story is Haruna's reluctance to believe she might be actually happy with a regular guy like Macharu and her inability to be mean to such nice classmates. The whole volume is so nice and the conflict is so low-key that it really feels like Monkey High should just end with this one volume. Seriously, one could read this single volume and decide that one never needs to pick up the forthcoming second one at all. I'm sure that things will spice up in volume 2 since it IS a shojo manga series but if I never got volume 2, I probably wouldn't mind... therefore, I give this title a C. It's pleasant and really cute, and I really like it for those reasons. Its gimmick is to turn the usual cliches upside-down, but I wish at the end I felt like I had to rush out and buy the next one. As sweet as this was, I thought this volume could stand alone, and that just seems bad for the beginning of a series, doesn't it? To finish the first volume and feel like the whole thing is done? Personally I wanted to like these characters more, and I wanted the conflict to be stronger. Comment on this review of Monkey High v1 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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