Crazy For You - Karuho Shiina
One of the earlier works of Karuho Shiina, published in Maragret magazine, or so I assume, since the art style is typical of Margaret-serialized comics, and Karuho Shiina’s later work, Kimi ni Todoke, was published in Margaret. I’ll probably do a write-up on Kimi ni Todoke sometime soon, especially since I’m on a manga-reading binge. I have lots of manga in my possession at the moment. Am being temporarily reunited with them.
Crazy For You. It spans six volumes. I was expecting quite a lot from this manga, after I had read quite a fair bit of Kimi ni Todoke, and got interested in whatever else Karuho Shiina had published previously.
The manga starts off at a snail’s pace, but gets more intense in the later volumes. As intense as a non-violent shoujo manga can be.
The heroine of the story is Takamura Sachi, a naïve, innocent highschooler searching for her hatsukoi. Alas, she is but short and not a bijin, and therefore shunned by most of the general population of males, who are revealed to be shallow. Yet, she hopes, and hence when one of her friends arranges a get-together with some caddies from a nearby boy’s school, of which the friend’s boyfriend attends, Sachi jumps at the chance. At the meeting, she has an encounter with Miyamoto Yukihiro, a flirty sort-of boy, who calls her “cute”. Sachi, easily swayed by words, is taken by him. She resolves to make him her own, in her indirect, naïve way. At the meeting is also Akahoshi Eiji, at first glance a sarcastic and cold-hearted being, Hotta Akemi, the friend in question, Kawanaka Yuhei the friend in question’s boyfriend, and a smattering of minor characters.
The rest of the story involves Sachi and her quest to obtain Yukihiro’s love, throwing in the obligatory love triangle (except in this case, it is a square), misunderstanding, and happily ever after.
In brief, Yukihiro rejects Sachi. He will hit on “any girl but her”. Sachi is puzzled as to why that is, thinking of herself as inferior. Akahoshi begins to develop an interest in Sachi, however Sachi is unwilling to return his advances, because she is too enamoured with Yukihiro. Yukihiro, Akemi and Yuhei also have this little love triangle-misunderstanding going on, which is not quickly resolved due to Akemi’s indecisiveness. Initially, I thought that Yukihiro was indecisive too. This is not so. He is just slow at realizing his feelings, ignores them, and takes action too late. Either that, or it is the mangaka’s way of creating suspense and generating interest in the story.
Once I see a coupling that I prefer, I stick to it and refuse to budge. This might have dampened my appreciation of the manga the first time round, particularly because I was not swayed by the mangaka’s reasoning for putting a different couple together.
I much prefer Akahoshi to Yukihiro, but that is probably only because Akahoshi is dark-haired, unyielding, and a partial tsundere, the mysterious character, while Yukihiro has been typecast as the misunderstood metro who is prone to random outings with girls he doesn’t even like.
Sachi, you have chosen the lesser man.
Crazy For You has its plus points, but it took me a second read to collect them, due to the marred view I had of this manga because of its rather jarred canon pairing. The characters are lovely, rather fleshed out, and not entirely violent masochists. Comparatively, Kimi ni Todoke is cuter and more flowery, although Crazy For You is so too. Naïve heroines are the mangaka’s speciality.
Overall not a bad read, especially if you enjoy the sweet innocent romance that Karuho Shiina so loves drawing. Plot holes are quite common, and the typical shoujo plot devices are used, but can be overwritten since a large majority of shoujo manga have them.