Hot Gimmick
Hot Gimmick! The comic in which our gullible and insecure heroine has, by the end the first mammoth volume by Viz, been nearly raped in a neighbouring boy's bed, given a rape drug by her boyfriend, nearly raped by the aforementioned neighbouring boy while under influence of the rape drug given by her boyfriend, and finally saved by the next-door would-be rapist when a certain someone organised to have her gang-raped as a revenge ploy. Essential to this story is that the next-door rapist is blackmailing our heroine into being his "slave", but moderates his stance after the boyfriend turns out to not be the ultimate man after all: instead of being his slave, she'll be his girlfriend. Hot Gimmick is the story of our heroine being torn about whether or not she loves the asshole who bullied her when they were children, verbally abuses her in the present, and repeatedly pressures her for sex.
To take it from the start: one day when sixteen year old Hatsumi comes home from picking up a pregnancy test for her fourteen year old sister - like you do - she runs into two old neighbours and classmates she hasn't seen since primary school: Azusa, her first love who moved away when his parents divorced and has taken up modelling in the meantime, and Ryoki, son of her father's boss and the tyrannical owner of their apartment block, and who also is the jerk who used to bully her when they were children. Ryoki makes harsh demands for not letting his mother (or hers) in on the little sister's sexually liberated ways. Azusa, meanwhile, starts courting her.
There's your setup for the early series, at least: Hatsumi going between the verbal abuse of the dick who blackmails her into being his girlfriend with having her father lose his job and her family kicked out of their home, and the emotional stress of the boy who is too good to be true. Add to that that Ryoki's initial plan was to have his way with her so as to lose his virginity and not sleep with his hot tutor completely inexperienced, and that Azusa's intentions for her is a complicated spoiler. By the end of the third book, Ryoki has revealed himself as probably having a real interest in Hatsumi even if he doesn't realise it - as well as most likely having a heart somewhere, while Azusa's actions has been explained by a past considerably shittier than what you knew. Hatsumi has also been molested thrice, almost raped two times, and kissed against her will three times. That I remember. If you want an apt illustration of the problems of men's perceived entitlement to women's bodies, pick up the first three-in-one volume of Viz' publication of this one.
I'm not going to start reviewing every series I read by way of feminist analysis, I promise, but the staggering amount of sexual harassment and coercion here had me going "Oh Japan, really?" more often than I'd like.
The essential part of understanding why I went and bought the last three books after that promising opening is my background in reading dubious shoujo, if Gravitation counts as such: Ryoki Tachibana, our foul-mouthed, glasses-wearing, rich and spoiled and lightly socially dysfunctional slave owner and love interest. He makes funny faces. He reminded me of Eiri Yuki. With the kind of praised heaped onto the covers, I was expecting him to make a turn of a somewhat similar nature and end up as a cantankerous but likeable fellow who for all his faults at least loves our heroine, and whose faults makes him a change from your average shoujo love interest.
Yeah, no. Here's the spoiler for those who consider paying money for this comic: character development does not exist here. Some characters are rendered sympathetic by getting their motivation explained, but none changes, as such. Not Hatsumi, not Azusa, not Ryoki, and not the third love interest that shall remain unnamed here because he's not exactly introduced as such.
It's not intelligent, it is in fact quite ridiculous, but it's not like I have that high standards. Hot Gimmick delivered no new Eiri Yuki, but it was better crafted, it was funny at times, and it kept me entertained. The blurbs insisted on it being ~different~ and edgy because of the adult storylines, but it isn't; it is your regular shoujo with a cast of love interests who are all fucked up to greater or smaller degrees, but it doesn't make anything out of this except to portray Hatsumi as a girl with impressively bad taste in men. When the alternatives are one emotionally underdeveloped and abusive shit, one damaged and morally indifferent bad boy, and one extremely nice and selfless but definitely not entirely wholesome young man, you start wondering why she didn't just go for the awkward but cute otaku next door. Because of this, it also gives the uncomfortable vibes of her diddling around them not because she's romantically interested in them (Azusa being the exception), but because they are somehow miserable and she sees that she can make them happy. The love interests of Hot Gimmick might well be worse than average, but that alone is not enough to make it stand out as "mature" when it never makes it a problem that Ryoki is a bully, that Azusa is on his way to self-destruct, that the third guy grew up as he did.
It starts dragging in the middle, when Hatsumi's feelings for Ryoki goes from "God, I hate that jerk" to "why can't he ever be nice to me". By the end, I was just reading to see which boy she'd pick and if we would get some kind of closure for the rest - would Ryuki stop being a dick, would Azusa find peace, would the third guy get some happiness after all. All three of them are screaming to be healed, but Hatsumi can't help them all, and because of the aforementioned lack of character development, doesn't even help the one she picks. That, I think, is the biggest let-down of the comic. It's a decent enough story, if you can get past the frankly uncomfortable amounts of time Hatsumi spends worrying about not being good enough for Ryoki and his ridiculous possessiveness. I'll probably re-read it sometime during Christmas, but good God, I would not pay more money for it.
For a taste, here's your rather average chapter ca. mid-series.
(I also went through the bother of hunting down and reading Hot Gimmick S, the light novel with an alternative ending in which Hatsumi picks another boy than in the manga. It read like a bad fanfic, but I'm satisfied with how the good author declared that those who did not like the end of the manga can consider this their canon instead. Don't buy it, it's terrible. I'll show you where I found the scans if you must read it.)
To take it from the start: one day when sixteen year old Hatsumi comes home from picking up a pregnancy test for her fourteen year old sister - like you do - she runs into two old neighbours and classmates she hasn't seen since primary school: Azusa, her first love who moved away when his parents divorced and has taken up modelling in the meantime, and Ryoki, son of her father's boss and the tyrannical owner of their apartment block, and who also is the jerk who used to bully her when they were children. Ryoki makes harsh demands for not letting his mother (or hers) in on the little sister's sexually liberated ways. Azusa, meanwhile, starts courting her.
There's your setup for the early series, at least: Hatsumi going between the verbal abuse of the dick who blackmails her into being his girlfriend with having her father lose his job and her family kicked out of their home, and the emotional stress of the boy who is too good to be true. Add to that that Ryoki's initial plan was to have his way with her so as to lose his virginity and not sleep with his hot tutor completely inexperienced, and that Azusa's intentions for her is a complicated spoiler. By the end of the third book, Ryoki has revealed himself as probably having a real interest in Hatsumi even if he doesn't realise it - as well as most likely having a heart somewhere, while Azusa's actions has been explained by a past considerably shittier than what you knew. Hatsumi has also been molested thrice, almost raped two times, and kissed against her will three times. That I remember. If you want an apt illustration of the problems of men's perceived entitlement to women's bodies, pick up the first three-in-one volume of Viz' publication of this one.
I'm not going to start reviewing every series I read by way of feminist analysis, I promise, but the staggering amount of sexual harassment and coercion here had me going "Oh Japan, really?" more often than I'd like.
The essential part of understanding why I went and bought the last three books after that promising opening is my background in reading dubious shoujo, if Gravitation counts as such: Ryoki Tachibana, our foul-mouthed, glasses-wearing, rich and spoiled and lightly socially dysfunctional slave owner and love interest. He makes funny faces. He reminded me of Eiri Yuki. With the kind of praised heaped onto the covers, I was expecting him to make a turn of a somewhat similar nature and end up as a cantankerous but likeable fellow who for all his faults at least loves our heroine, and whose faults makes him a change from your average shoujo love interest.
Yeah, no. Here's the spoiler for those who consider paying money for this comic: character development does not exist here. Some characters are rendered sympathetic by getting their motivation explained, but none changes, as such. Not Hatsumi, not Azusa, not Ryoki, and not the third love interest that shall remain unnamed here because he's not exactly introduced as such.
It's not intelligent, it is in fact quite ridiculous, but it's not like I have that high standards. Hot Gimmick delivered no new Eiri Yuki, but it was better crafted, it was funny at times, and it kept me entertained. The blurbs insisted on it being ~different~ and edgy because of the adult storylines, but it isn't; it is your regular shoujo with a cast of love interests who are all fucked up to greater or smaller degrees, but it doesn't make anything out of this except to portray Hatsumi as a girl with impressively bad taste in men. When the alternatives are one emotionally underdeveloped and abusive shit, one damaged and morally indifferent bad boy, and one extremely nice and selfless but definitely not entirely wholesome young man, you start wondering why she didn't just go for the awkward but cute otaku next door. Because of this, it also gives the uncomfortable vibes of her diddling around them not because she's romantically interested in them (Azusa being the exception), but because they are somehow miserable and she sees that she can make them happy. The love interests of Hot Gimmick might well be worse than average, but that alone is not enough to make it stand out as "mature" when it never makes it a problem that Ryoki is a bully, that Azusa is on his way to self-destruct, that the third guy grew up as he did.
It starts dragging in the middle, when Hatsumi's feelings for Ryoki goes from "God, I hate that jerk" to "why can't he ever be nice to me". By the end, I was just reading to see which boy she'd pick and if we would get some kind of closure for the rest - would Ryuki stop being a dick, would Azusa find peace, would the third guy get some happiness after all. All three of them are screaming to be healed, but Hatsumi can't help them all, and because of the aforementioned lack of character development, doesn't even help the one she picks. That, I think, is the biggest let-down of the comic. It's a decent enough story, if you can get past the frankly uncomfortable amounts of time Hatsumi spends worrying about not being good enough for Ryoki and his ridiculous possessiveness. I'll probably re-read it sometime during Christmas, but good God, I would not pay more money for it.
For a taste, here's your rather average chapter ca. mid-series.
(I also went through the bother of hunting down and reading Hot Gimmick S, the light novel with an alternative ending in which Hatsumi picks another boy than in the manga. It read like a bad fanfic, but I'm satisfied with how the good author declared that those who did not like the end of the manga can consider this their canon instead. Don't buy it, it's terrible. I'll show you where I found the scans if you must read it.)