Your & My Secret volumes 2-4

Well, the wackiness continues as the plot spirals deeper and deeper into the gender-confused world of body-swapping. I recently picked up the first installment of this series by Ai Morinaga and really enjoyed it (review here), and now I’m fully caught up with all the volumes currently released in English. Your & My Secret continues to be hilarious and addictive. The artwork is enjoyable, and the story is engaging in spite of (or perhaps in part because of) its extreme implausibility.

A lot happens in these three volumes (Morinaga’s really good at keeping the plot moving along nicely; many manga series tend to stagnate once the basic premise is set up). So rather than try to give a thorough account of all the plot developments, I’ll just try to sum up the most important elements so I can talk a little about the characters and the series in general. Momoi Nanako (pretty but rude and violent) and Uehara Akira (gentle and unassuming) are still stuck , apparently indefinitely, in each other’s bodies. Momoi-in-Akira’s-body has fully embraced being a guy and has even started dating her pre-swap best friend Shiina, who for her part is quite taken with the suddenly strong and manly “Akira”. On the other hand, Akira’s pre-swap best friend, Senbongi, has taken quite an interest in the now demure Momoi-who-is-really-Akira. Oh, and we mustn’t forget that the real Akira harbors a longstanding, unrequited love for the real Momoi, whose body he now inhabits.

On the whole, the biggest disappointment of the series for me so far is the character of Momoi (the real Momoi, not the Akira-in-Momoi’s-body Momoi.) I kind of enjoyed her wildly exaggerated character in the beginning, back when I still thought she had hidden depths that would surely emerge over time. But no, she’s turning out to actually be exactly as shallow and selfish as she seems when you first meet her. She’s still funny and entertaining, I’m just kind of disappointed that she’s not turning out to be more of a diamond in the rough. She’s basically just a rough.

On the other hand, the most pleasant surprise has been the recent character development of Senbongi. At first I thought he was kind of scummy and even a bit of a jerk from the way he went chasing after Akira-in-Momoi’s-body, even though he knew about the real Akira’s feelings for her. But as their story progresses, and especially after Senbongi learns about the Swap (end of volume two), I find myself really warming up to him. It was difficult at first to figure him out or understand what makes him tick, but volume four provides a nice little backstory that gives some insight into Senbongi’s character and his relationship with Akira, which by this point has really become the main focus of the series. Or at least, it’s eclipsed the non-existent Akira/Momoi relationship that never really was to begin with.

Shiina’s a very likable character; she’s sweet and good, but not too unattainably perfect. She has her little moments of jealousies and insecurities that make her a real person and not just a foil for Momoi.

Akira’s really the heart of this series. We experience the story completely through his perspective, hearing all his thoughts and inner turmoil. He struggles a lot with being in a female body, especially since he was a very gentle, almost effeminate boy to begin with. He wants so badly to retain his masculine identity but is finding it increasingly difficult to do so. It’s quite understandable, what with the love of his life now being male and his relationship with his best friend being so completely turned around. Plus, being a girl just seems to come so much more naturally to Akira, just like being a guy seems more natural to Momoi. In the midst of all the surreality of body-swapping et al, Akira’s narrative voice rings pretty true.

Oh and let’s not forget our minor characters. The grandfather really is pretty vulgar, and I don’t find him that funny, but he’s not a major part of the series so it’s not that big of a deal for me. Katsupei, Shiina’s ridiculously overprotective older brother, is actually quite hilarious.

So that’s about all I have to say about volumes two through four of Ai Morinaga’s Your & My Secret. Volume 5 will be released by Tokyopop on May 5, 2009.

First volumes of Your & My Secret and Otomen: a hit and a miss

So I wrote a few days ago about the finale of Rinko Ueda’s Tail of the Moon, and now I’d like to take some time to review the very first volumes of two brand new (to me, at least) series, one of which I found thoroughly engaging and the other one … not so much.

First up: the initially promising yet poorly executed Otomen, by Aya Kanno. Maybe I wouldn’t have been so dissatisfied with this one if my expectations hadn’t been so high. Yet I’d heard and read so many glowingly positive reviews of this firs volume (the only one of the series yet to be published in English), that I just bought it on impulse, completely confident that it would be awesome. (Side note: manga is expensive, so I usually don’t purchase a volume unless I know it’s something I really need to own. That would include mostly continuations of series I’m already hooked on, or series I’ve previewed and researched online.) So anyways, I get home and get ready to be blown away, or at the very least to be amused and entertained. And I really did try to like it; I wanted to like it. Alas, it just wasn’t meant to be.

The concept of the series sounds fresh and interesting enough: a shoujo manga about straight guy Asuka who harbors a secret penchant for all things girly, and forms unlikely relationships with tomboyish girl Ryo and playboy Juta (who’s also got a few secrets of his own). Sounds like there’s lots of potential in there for humor and drama about the trials of coming to terms with oneself and one’s identity, right? Unfortunately, I saw none of that potential come to fruition in this book. I found the plot and dialogue to be un-stimulating and even repetitive, with the same basic scenarios and conversations rehashed multiple times throughout the volume. (And these guys’ lines aren’t particularly interesting to begin with.) The artwork is pleasing enough, but the characters themselves all seem pretty two-dimensional. I had to really push myself just to read through to the end of the volume, never a good sign. I know that many series improve as they go on, but they’ve got to at least keep up my interest in the meantime if I’m gonna stick around to find out. So it’s with a (relatively) heavy heart that I bid farewell to the slam dunk Otomen series I’d conjured up in my imagination, and pass this book on through the paperbackswap to somebody else.

Now reading the first volume of Ai Morinaga’s Your & My Secret, however, was a totally different story. Whereas Otomen completely failed to capture my interest, Your & My Secret drew me in almost instantly. The story features shy, quiet Akira Uehara, who it seems will never be brave or assertive enough to talk to the girl of his dreams. Especially since said girl, Nanako Momoi, although beautiful and elegent, is also incredibly rude, loud, pushy, and selfish. Poor Akira! There’s no way this girl would ever notice him, except maybe to steal his lunch money. Still, he’s hopelessly smitten, and so he pines from afar. Then one day, due to a series of Freaky Friday-like circumstances, the two get flung into each other’s bodies! You haven’t seen wackiness until you’ve witnessed Akira and Nanako wreaking havoc on their school trying to pretend to be one another. And you can bet their classmates are mightily stuck by the bizarre changes in these two. (Mostly they think the “new” Akira and Nanako are vast improvements over the original versions.) The laid-back Nanako seems to take it all in stride, even enjoying the advantages of being a boy, but poor Akira is having a terrible time of it. Confusion and hilarity ensues, and it’s all very entertaining. And I haven’t even said anything yet about all the gender confusion that goes on in our main love – rectangle? Diamond? Dodecahedron? It’s anyone’s guess at this point.

I’ve never read anything by Ai Morinaga before, although I know she’s got some pretty successful series to her name, and so far I’m really impressed. She manages to capture and keep this reader’s attention, and to leave me eager to find out how the story will continue to unfold in the next installment. The artwork is really nice, too, just the combination of detail, cuteness, and animation that I like. Morinaga does a super job of portraying motion; the drawings all seem very lively, whereas I found Otomen to be pretty, but sort of stiff. So, yeah, I’ll definitely be checking out Your & My Secret vol. 2.