Four short stories about four high school girls looking for love!
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Arina Tanemura
Translated by: Mary Kennard
Adapted by: Heidi Vivolo
What They Say
A one-volume manga featuring short stories from Arina Tanemura, creator of Full Moon, The Gentlemen’s Alliance +, ION, and Time Stranger Kyoko.
Short Tempered Melancholic tells the tale of a female ninja torn between her ninja responsibilities and her need to impress the boy she has a crush on. In addition to the title story, the manga contains the shorts Rainy Afternoons are for Romantic Heroines, This Love is Nonfiction, and Tanemura’s debut manga, The Style of the Second Love.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Shojo Beat presents the debut manga and three other early short stories of Arina Tanemura, the mangaka of Full Moon and The Gentlemen’s Alliance, in Short-Tempered Melancholic And Other Stories.
Short-Tempered Melancholic: Kajika Yamano is a teenage ninja and protectress of her family’s legendary secret weapon. Oblivious to the fact that her childhood friend Yuga has a crush on her, she strives to attract the attention of an older classmate, Fujisaki, by giving up her ninja ways.
This Love Is Nonfiction: Too embarrassed to send her own picture, Yuri sends her penpal Ryo a picture of her friend Karin instead. So when Ryo asks to meet Yuri, Yuri begs Karin to go in her stead. However, things get complicated when Karin finds herself falling for Ryo.
Rainy Afternoons Are for Romantic Heroines: Shy Minori falls in love with Takato, a boy who shared his umbrella with her one rainy afternoon, and now purposely “forgets” her umbrella every time it rains so that she can walk with him. When she discovers that he “doesn’t believe in love,” she becomes more determined than ever to convince him of her love.
The Style of Second Love: Mana is despondent because she secretly likes her best friend’s boyfriend. Will boisterous Nakamura be able to help her forget him and win her heart?
This manga is a collection of four short stories. Except for Short-Tempered Melancholic, which has two chapters, all the stories are a single chapter, stand-alone stories. None of the stories are related to each other; the only thing they have in common is that they are all romantic comedies with high school girl protagonists.
Because the stories are so short, it’s difficult to say much about them without giving the entire plot away. However, generally speaking, each story deals with the joy and awkwardness of teenage love, and the problems that arise for our characters are because they are either too bashful or overwhelmed by their feelings of love or falling in love with the wrong person. Tanemura incorporates a lot of physical comedy into Short-Tempered Melancholic and This Love Is Nonfiction, which features the more unusual heroines, ninja Kajika and rich girl Karin. Minori and Mana are more along the vein of ordinary highschoolers, so their stories include more interaction with their girlfriends at school. In the end, though, all the problems are resolved, and the girls find their happiness.
In Summary:
This title will probably appeal to those who want a short dose of romantic fluffiness and manga newcomers who don’t want to get overly involved with a multivolume series on their first try. I also think that the length, simplicity, and content of these stories would make them ideal for younger readers. According to the publisher, this title is rated “teen,” but I’m not quite sure why they chose this rating because there is no swearing or nudity and the action scenes are largely silly antics. There is one “bathing scene” and a flashback where the child Kajika is looking at her deceased parents before their funeral. However, in the bathing scene, Kajika has her kimono on the entire time, and the funeral flashback, while sad, isn’t particularly traumatizing as her parents’ bodies are covered with cloths. I would personally rate this as appropriate for ages 10 and up if not all ages.
Content Grade: B-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: August 5th, 2008
MSRP: $8.99
Time Stranger Kyoko is one of my favorite manga series, so I’ll definitely have to look into this! It seems really interesting, and I’m a big fan of shorter stories, so I think I’ll really enjoy it. I’ve been seeing a ton of great series pop up recently. One that I’ve been really into lately is The Knight of The Falling Star. It’s about a man from the fae realm who has to travel to the human world for his last test to become a knight. When he travels over, he’s expecting nothing to have changed from the medieval period, and is shocked to find a more modern world. The story has been really interesting so far, and centers around the relationship between the fae man and a human girl he met when he crossed over. This series has such a unique charm to it, and I’ve really never read anything like it before. I definitely recommend checking it out if you’re open to trying new series!