Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Hiroyuki Tamakoshi
Translation: David Ury
Adaptation: David Ury
What They Say
Akira isn’t the best student in the world, but he always manages to scrape by – until he gets his fifth F of the year. Now he’ll flunk out unless he can ace his math makeup exam. The problem is, Akira is hopeless with numbers. Luckily, math wiz Yurika and her cute sister, Anju, offer to help Akira study. For motivation, the girls give Akira positive reinforcement every time he gets a problem right. The rewards start out small, but soon he has the girls feeding him cake, changing into their swimsuits, and hugging and squeezing him. With incentives like these, Akira could turn into the next Einstein.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This volume begins with Valentine’s Day and the desperate acts of guys in their quest for chocolate. Akira-kun stoops so low as to try to deliver himself chocolate while masquerading as Akira-chan. He wants to show his guy friends that he isn’t as big a loser as they are, but his plans never really work out well.
I can’t really relate to the whole ‘waiting to receive chocolate gifts from a girl’ thing since I never lived in Japan. However, I can relate to the next chapter as Akira-kun finds himself on the brink of flunking school and being held back a year. If that happens he will be left behind as Yurika moves on to a different school. In an act of caring that surprises me, Yurika offers to help Akira-kun study. By this time it has become obvious that she likes him, but she so often leaves him hanging in front of their friends that it surprises me whenever she offers to help him with stuff.
Yurika and her sister Anju have a weird love triangle building with Akira-kun. Masquerading as Akira-chan has allowed him to find out that Yurika likes him to a certain extent, but he is oblivious to Anju’s crush. I have no idea if Yurika and Anju realize that they both like Akira-kun. So I enjoyed seeing how Anju attacks her Akira-kun crush as aggressively as she does her martial arts classes. Anju finds herself taking care of Akira-kun while he is recovering from an arm injury. Quite surprisingly, she not only cooks for him but she cleans his room against his wishes. Of course this means she will find his porn stash, but she never expected to find a stash of Yurika photos. It worries Anju that Akira-kun doesn’t have any pictures of her and she decides she needs to pull out all the stops. I love her boldness as Yurika would never go into the bath and wash Akira-kun’s back for him.
How will Akira-kun react to having a half-naked girl washing him? Will he give into Anju’s advances or save his true love for Yurika?
In Summary:
Much of this series is full blown ecchi for the sake of humor and a chance for the author to show off his exceptionally deft hand at illustrating beautiful girls in skimpy clothing. Perfectly acceptable if that entertains you, but that would normally keep a series at a very average grade for most people. However, every volume in this series has some hilarious moments and usually a few chapters that stand out from the ecchi. It is these chapters that really keep me coming back to this series.
For me, this volume’s highlights are really Yurika watching Akira-kun babysit her little cousin. He is surprisingly good with little kids and she can’t help but be impressed and perhaps fall for him even more. I also really enjoyed the Edo era love story Akira-kun recounts about his ancestors and the way the story is played out by him and Yurika. It is fun to see them in that setting with Yurika dressed up in kimono’s and wearing hair pins, all while playing the role of a samurai’s daughter.
This isn’t a great series, but it always entertains me. Unfortunately, the Packaging grade is low because much of the dialogue text has a small amount of smearing or extra ink artifacts. This problem is never enough to render the text unreadable, but it is unattractive.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: C-
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Del Rey Manga
Release Date: September 8th, 2009
MSRP: $13.99
