All is fair in love and war, and war is most assuredly going to be on the menu when a prominent writer decides to blackmail the school’s most popular boy into helping her experience love.
Creative Staff
Story/ Art: Ema Toyama
Translation/Adaptation: Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley
What They Say
Cell phone novelist Yukina Himuro has decided that, in order to satisfy her fans’ demand for love stories, she must experience romance firsthand. But with her icy reputation, how can she find someone willing to play the part of boyfriend? By blackmailing the most popular boy in school, of course!
Technical:
Following in the template that Del-Rey established and which Kodansha has adapted for their label, the release of Missions of Love brings with it a look that will be familiar to those who have bought manga from either of those two companies. The cover uses a white base against which a slick and large image of Yukina Himuro is placed showing her dominance over Shigure Kitami as she almost straddles him as he is seated on a chair with his hand holding her back as she has hold of his tie and is smiling mischievously toward the viewer with the sun set beaming through the windows of the classroom and painting a glow around the pair. The back cover features a large close up image of Yukina as she looks far more demure than her appearance on the front cover as she is blushing and removing her tie as her long hair splays gently around her.
The pages for the book use a somewhat thick and rather more grayish than white blend looking paper that doesn’t quite cause the art to stand out as spectacularly as one might hope, particularly with the opening chapter images that look a bit darker than might be best suited for the images to make them sparkle but which does service really well to prevent image bleed through even when the art uses a heavy amount of black ink so it looks like the paper stock comes out as having a bit of a trade off. The art work itself is largely spectacular as the author is quite skilled in showing off the subtleties of her characters and changing their expressions to show how the same character can be absolutely gorgeous when smiling yet can also appear chilling when plotting that grants a tremendous depth to the characters and makes them feel like individuals with tremendous potential and who can do any number of unexpected things at any moment and which grants a capability of causing the audience to fall in love with them at first sight- but even that can be misleading as the characters are reveled to be so much more than their appearance.
For the translation the book keeps many (if not all, it is hard to say sometimes) of the honorifics intact (though on an odd point the usual honorific translation note that Kodansha typically includes is missing) and in addition the book contains a translator’s notes section where some of the concepts that arise which can’t be explained easily in little blurbs are fleshed out in more detail. Beyond that the series largely leaves the original effects in their Japanese lettering with the English equivalent being listed right near it most of the time and this is also used for instances where some written text is left alone but needs translation to communicate how that text is important to the events on the page. Largely the translation reads very fluidly and it avoids using a great deal of slang yet still presents a picture of a pair of individuals who likely wouldn’t be out of place if they were to be lifted and placed into a series created in the US as they feel like they could be more universal types than any one culture specific characters.
Content: (please note that content portions of review may contain spoilers):
The cell phone novelist (novels written by text message, often with very short chapters to accommodate the medium) Yupina appears to have the world by the tail as the author’s works have grown immensely in popularity, catapulting the author to the top of many web site rankings and catching the attention of a good deal of high school girls and on top of that their work has even broken through to see one of the author’s works being released in a physical book form. In fact about the only thing on the professional level that seems to be a challenge to Yupina is that the stories the author writes seem to all lack a true romance and plateau with the protagonists staying on a “just friends” level, but despite that the fans still clamor for the next release and wait with bated breath.
Oddly while the pen name of Yupina is one that has gained a lot of fame from her work the real life person behind the novels, Yukina Himuro, is in many ways just as famous in her school but for the almost the opposite reasons in terms of popularity as she is almost feared by her classmates who don’t know that she is the author that they all love and her odd manner has helped distanced her from them. Due to a circulation issue the bespectacled Yukina has a condition where her skin temperature is colder than most and, when combined with her perchance to stare at people with a gaze they find uncomfortable (in part as she has eyes that seem scary), she has become isolated socially from almost everyone but her cousin Akira. For the most part this situation doesn’t bother her much as she is still free to people watch from afar which is her great love and her powers of observation allow her to drink in details that then fuel her imagination for writing as she uses some of the same people who adore her works for the basis of her tales unbeknownst to them.
While Yukina seems to have come to terms with and arrived at a comfort level with her current social standing this isolation has left her with a gaping hole in her experience as having never felt a romantic love she can’t write about it and so she is contemplating how to bridge the gap in her experience where she can experience love without actually being in love. Fortune seems to smile on her when it drops a present in her lap when the boy everyone else in the school admires or swoons for, Shigure Kitami, drops his student notebook and she discovers his darkest secret as she peeks inside to discover the book’s owner. It turns out that the youth who has charmed everyone in the school except Yukina with a smile she sees as fake has indeed been playing people as he has been executing a plan to make the girls fall in love with him and the teachers see him as an upstanding youth as his notes detail just how he executed his plan.
With this piece of powerful blackmail in hand Yukina feels she has found the perfect vehicle for her to experience love without having to worry about the outcome that such a game might have on the other person and she has decided to use Shigure to her own ends. But Shigure isn’t just some easy wallflower to push over as his ability to plot and scheme is rather amazing in its own right and so the two begin a somewhat dangerous dance of Yukina trying to use her leverage to force Shigure to go along with her plans to experience some of the actions of love while he is at the same time using every trick he can think of to turn the tables on her and get out from under her control- and in the process their classmates may unwittingly find themselves caught in the middle as almost proxies in this war between seemingly great powers. But is there a chance Yukina might have overestimated her abilities and placed herself in a position where her deepest secret and long standing trauma exposed? And beyond that, as they go through the act of playing at romance might the most perilous situation occur when playing at love blurs the line between going through the motions and actually being in love?
Missions of Love is a series whose premise might leave a potential reader wondering just what route the book might be exploring as the idea of trying to force someone else to conform to their whims so that the first person can experience love (or an approximation thereof) isn’t exactly rare in relationship stories but the results can vary greatly as the number of paths open to the starting premise are rather numerous as are the reasons that one individual might try to impose their will on another and the path this title walks though has some of the elements that are a bit standard at times it seems as it presents hints on occasion that the playing at love might be affecting the participants more than they are willing to let on.
But that is about the extent of what may be considered standard as the author does a fantastic job of giving both her leads intelligence as well as a bit of cynicism and willingness to knowingly hurt others to achieve their goals, though in Yukina’s case she at least is capable of picking her target carefully and not as indiscriminately as Shigure does. It’s probably in this area that Yukina comes across as so unique as she knows that her activities in playing at love could wind up leaving the other person with deep wounds and until she discovers her leverage to hold over Shigure she actually looks to be at a loss as she is unwilling to hurt the one person that she does have a connection with or anyone else who she might otherwise have singled out and with her blackmail material she manages to justify her actions to herself.
What one gets along with this are some incredibly smart characters that have a fairly amount high self awareness as well as are rather sharp when it comes to reading others and which, at least in this first volume, avoids the common trap of having characters share a similar emotion but missing the moment or both misread the other and being unable to express themselves as confidence in themselves and self expression isn’t really something either lead lacks. Of course here much of that knowledge is used along the lines of scheming as the two battle each other, sometimes directly and sometimes (usually Shigure) using proxies in an emotional chess match as the two attempt to gain leverage over each other as their motives slowly start to come unraveled and hints are dropped that there is more to each character than what is initially seen and that there might be some strong reasons for why the characters act as they do (Yukina’s is kind of explained in this volume but there has to be some reason for Shigure’s action and every now and then it appears his outer shell cracks slightly). When coupled with some spectacular art work and a bit of a dominance undertone Missions of Love comes across as a fresh entry going a path less traveled in a genre that has a lot of titles that tend to take the path more traveled.
About the only determent in the book is found in how Yukina manages to gain leverage over Shigure as it seems difficult to believe that such a smart individual would do something as stupid as having written notes about his actions and manipulations that could be used against him, which the writer does at least acknowledge in the work but in a way that brings up the subject without making it something that the material will obsess about which also serves to partially disarming the reader a bit as it doesn’t leave an obvious question just hanging out there. Beyond that in a good deal of the images that the artist makes really deemphasize- if not almost eliminate- Yukina’s glasses in favor of making for the most striking images so that it can be easy to forget she wears them when they often are presented as thin, light lines and when their importance is raised it can make one have to go looking back to remember that she indeed is supposed to have them.
With such nitpicky complaints being the only real downside, Missions of Love comes off as a title that will likely appeal greatly to fans who like smart characters who aren’t godlike in their knowledge, and the title- at least so far- finds a way to avoid many of the clichés that populate a number of relationship manga titles while adding a bit of a domineering psychological subtext to some of its casts’ actions without ever being extremely explicit about it.
In Summary
Incredibly smart, sexy and possessing a wicked sensibility while maintaining a very plausible (mostly) and very human cast with all their foibles, Missions of Love is the kind of relationship comedy with just a bit of a sadistic bent that adds a special touch and creates a series with its own unique voice which brings a fresh feeling interaction between its leads to the market that will definitely thrill fans of who enjoy intelligence splashed with a good deal of slightly twisted interactions and humor. When combined with some rather spectacular images and a good sense of pacing the series will provide many opportunities to revel in the less-than-upstanding behavior of its leads as they clash and attempt to outwit the other and the sparks fly when each attempts to use the other to their own end, but there a hint here that each may be carrying a deeper scar that may allow for ultimate leverage- or perhaps that fulcrum may lead to something else being moved in a direction neither character who is looking for the ultimate advantage in this cerebral battle of the sexes is anticipating. This entire package teams to create a fun little trip in an unusual direction that brings with it an almost palpable sense of potential for the title moving forward. Highly Recommended.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 16+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: November 6th, 2012
MSRP: $10.99
