Ai Morinaga

In one word: Ugh.
I read 7 volumes of this manga before I realized I hated it. For a few volumes it's kind of funny, definitely wacky, but oh so stereotypical.

The premise is rather fun. Hana Suzuki unwittingly joins the Hockey Club at her school - a school she studied hard to get into so she could sleep in an extra 15 minutes and walk to it. The Hockey Club rarely -- er, never, really -- plays hockey. Instead they travel to places to have matches that never happen. The other members are rich show more so they pay for everything, and Hana is showered with all the wonderful food she can eat. (That's why she stays with the club.)
The other club members are the handsome leader, who starts falling for Hana, the handsome studious megane friend who is harsh on Hana (rightly so), the handsome cute quiet one who turns evil a couple of times (which was quite funny), the handsome identical twins, and... so, you get the picture. Yes, it's a reverse-harem, and no that's not bad in itself. All the characters were 2D. Hana had a bit more life in her (which is ironic), but the rest were just blah - pretty manga boys.

It reminded me a LOT of Ouran High School Host club, but Ouran is a few hundred times better. I don't know if it's because Ouran is making fun of what this series just does... and by the way the characters randomly fight bears and befriend monkeys and get into such stupid, impossible situations that are, rather than funny, aggravating.

I think perhaps the characters are supposed to maybe start growing, but I couldn't see that happening any time soon. If you like shojo reverse-harem school manga, try out the first volume, it will tell you all you need to know about the series - the next 6 volumes, anyway. show less

The Gorgeous Life of Strawberry-Chan is about Strawberry-chan, a frog whose human owner likes to stick a straw up its butt and blow it up. The frog likes this in a masochistic sort of way, but is also mutually in love with its owner's roommate, though it cannot bring itself to leave its owner as, again, it likes the straw. Its owner also has another admirer of his own, one of his classmates who keeps trying to dress up as/turn into/etc a frog in order to make Strawberry-chan's master like show more him, but it never works because he is too enthusiastic and the master likes Strawberry-chan's unhappy, tortured, tearful faces.

This manga is pure random. Most chapters don't exceed ten pages and detail things such as Strawberry-chan switching bodies with a human, being taken care of by a friend and dehydrating into a mummy, or growing human-sized and disturbingly muscular and then sleeping in the same bed as his master. The humor is more of the “be as bizarre as possible” category than the actual clever sort. While I'm not a fan of that usually, I will admit this manga takes ADD randomness to heights higher than any other I've read, and that is sort of, kind of, maybe, a compliment. It never slows down enough to let you get tired of an idea, either.

Personally, I only cracked a smile once the entire time reading it. You don't really need a sense of humor to be bizarre, and it's not going to tickle mine if that's all you are. It seems to be one of those cases where reading a summary/description of the manga was more entertaining to me than having to sit through an entire volume of the stuff. Still, for those who do laugh at the purely random, it could very well work. For me the most satisfying part of the reading experience was stopping occasionally to contemplate the fact that someone actually sat down and wrote this odd, crude, bestiality-joke-centered clusterfuck, and that person was a female shoujo mangaka. Because actually, yeah. That is pretty funny. show less

Your and My Secret is bout two people who outwardly look like ideals of their gender but personality-wise are the complete opposite. The girl, Nanako is crass, rude, and violent, while Akira is delicate and dull (though he has a crush on Nanako). Through randomly thought up negligible reason #146 (nutty mad scientist grandfather), the two switch bodies, and suddenly, society (that is, not just everyone at school but their families as well) find them a lot more likable. Hijinks ensue.

You'd show more think this sounds like a setup to shake fingers at society's need for people to conform to gender norms and extend a message to just be like yourself. However, the message here, at least so far, seems to be more something like “Look how much happier these two could be if they just decided to live in each other's bodies.” Problematic, but sometimes that just means it's time to tun off your brain and try to have fun, right?

On the other hand, even trying to read the manga for what it was didn't come up with much for me. Rather than a story of exploring gender issues and identity, it's simply about the hijinks that can ensue in a gender swap situation. It does seem more willing to address some of the issues some manga (Ranma, perhaps?) somewhat disappointingly decide to ignore, but in the end each time it all still boils down to them first being surprised, then either reacting with something only slightly more detailed than “Hey, cool!” or freaking out because it's unpleasant, then moving on to the next scene. (Also frustratingly, the Hey Cools seem to go almost exclusively to the girl-in-boy's-body, while the latter go all to the other.)

That's not really a crime either (besides the fact that some reviews I glanced at gave me the impression there might be a TAD more depth in this area), only there's not really anything remarkable about the manga besides the not-particularly-original-but-still-potentially-fun-if-done-well(but it isn't) premise. The art isn't bad (though the eyes on girls are HUGE) but not particularly striking, and the personalities of the characters are to me not so much ill suited to their genders as just bad in general. Such a level of wimpiness is no more attractive on a girl than a boy, and Nanako is not a “tomboy” as the back cover claims, but simply an incredibly selfish jerk (and, once she becomes a boy, also a sexist pig). The humor is the sort filled with not-particularly-clever over-the-top zaniness so common in manga which I still fail to understand the attraction to.

But the manga isn't ineptly done, and I do get the sense the author sat down and tried to think of the issues that might come up in such a gender swap situation rather than just fill their chapters with completely random hijinks as some might have. For that, I'll give it average. Still, while series like Ranma may sidestep issues this one doesn't, at least Ranma had sympathetic, memorable characters, occasionally fun action, and was in it's better moments even genuinely humorous. If a manga doesn't have human enough characters to make proper use of its gender swap premise, all it's got left is the quality of its writing, and this one just isn't anything special. show less

What a surprise! I'll be honest-- I'm not huge into stories without a lot of romance. Give me a good dose of love triangles and I'm set. That's why I was very surprised when this story, filled with gags and very little of the love bug, had me laughing page after page.

For fans of sports manga-- I don't recommend this title. They rarely play field hockey. It is more like Host Club than a hard core sports manga.

Try it out, you might enjoy it!