Love is in the air
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Fuka Mizutani
Translation: Sheldon Drzka
Lettering: Lys Blakeslee
What They Say:
Whether it’s pondering blood types or investigating the seven wonders of the school for the class newspaper, Kanata and Kazuki manage to enjoy every day they spend with each other. But with decisions about their futures on the horizon, their mutual affection might not be enough to keep them together…
Kazuki and Kanata may be considered Class 1-B’s mature students, but they’re not the only ones getting tangled up in emotions and new relationships. Aoi quietly pines for Kanata, but her curiosity is piqued by the mystery surrounding the school nurse. The woman from the bus continues to fascinate Shota, and even class clown Kato surprises everyone when he manages to catch an unknown girl’s attention …
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
When they say love at fourteen, they really mean everybody. It’s been a bit since I’ve read this manga, so I kind of forgot just how much everyone is truly in love with someone else. Being 14 years old also rings true to the title, of course. It’s so incredibly cute to see their adolescent love bloom and blossom before my eyes. It seems just a scant few months ago that Kanata and Kazuki were being wishy-washy about whether they were dating or not, but look at them now.
The two anchor the whole series, but the supporting cast brings everything together in a fuller view of the school as a whole. All shojo manga have that supporting cast, but the unique format Love at Fourteen puts itself in gives greater light to those side characters, with its intermission shorter chapters in addition to the regular chapters (only through 38 in volume 8).
They have some incredibly cute moments in this volume too, my favorite being promising each other that their first, second, and third choice of high schools being the one the other goes to. At first Kanata has her heart set on a school that has a study abroad program, but also costs a lot of money. Kazuki has more (financially) realistic goals in mind, but they don’t really consider each other through the whole process. They’re both portrayed as relatively adult for their age, but it’s in these moments that they’re so clearly middle school students. It’s a great way to remind us that we’re viewing their relationship largely through the lens of their classmates until they’re alone, and we’re just flies on the wall.
Hinohara and Nagai still exist in a cute-but-not-quite-full-on-creep stage as of right now. Her friend, Mino, isn’t really steering the train away from full on creep, but they still work. Hinohara, beyond any potential romantic feelings for Nagai, also truly cares for him on a teacher-student level. She worries about his future when he only turns in a blank sheet for his choice of high schools and wonders how far he should push him in his singing. It’s probably the first moment of genuine care from teacher to student from Hinohara to Nagai, at least in this kind of thoughtful way. She’s done it before in more playful ways, like getting him into singing in the first place, but that isn’t quite the same in this case. Nagai, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to pick up on Hinohara’s love for him, even if he can read her pretty well otherwise. They tease each other in just a cute enough way that it’s acceptable…for now.
Speaking of age-gap romance, Mizutani introduces a new character in volume 8, that of fifth-grader Arisaka. She meets Kazuki and Kanata’s classmate, Kato, at the part, who mistakes her for at least a first-year high schooler. And boy-howdy was he wrong. He’s a bit of a childish character, and I don’t really recall him existing before now, so he must not have done much substantial, but he sure does in volume 8. Arisaka lies to her friends that she has an older boyfriend, and they have to create an elaborate ruse to prove that she has this boyfriend, which involves Kazuki pretending to be her boyfriend because he’s taller and appears more mature than Kato, a relatively diminutive and childish middle school second year. It’s a bit of a weird story that’s even more childish than their usual storylines because it involves a fifth grader. And also it ends up with Arisaka and Kato start dating. On the face, a two year age gap isn’t that much, it just feels extremely weird for a fifth grader and a middle school second year to be dating.
Shiki and the school nurse’s storyline I actually find highly enjoyable, and doesn’t involve them potentially dating I think. They just confide in each other, and it’s extremely nice and cute of them. They both find themselves with a crush they can’t quite follow through with, Shiki toward Kanata and the school nurse, Haijima, with Hinohara, with whom she went to school. They’re never quite able to say their feelings to each other until near the end of the volume, but Shiki confides about a pen she received from Kazuki in the class’s Christmas exchange, a pen that’s Kanata’s favorite color and that she’d love. I have a feeling Haijima had a similar dilemma when she and Hinohara were in high school, because her advice is just that sometimes the look of joy you can see when giving that gift can just be worth it all. It’s heartbreaking, and hopefully Mino allows Haijima and Hinohara to get together with his free-wheeling love.
There’s also Ichinose and a random woman on the bus he rides that he’s enamored with. I don’t really know why, other than he’s 14 and these random affections will hit at the most random places. This manga has a lot of age-gap romances, or the potential for them. I know I started this with how much the supporting characters add to the mythos of the manga’s setting, but it’s also its most questionable bit.
In Summary:
Love at Fourteen is low-key a great manga. It can get lost in a sea of, for lack of a better phrase, louder shojo manga, but this is something that I have absolute joy in reading. It’s very easy to forget they’re in middle school given how they present themselves, but Mizutani knows just how to bring us back to that middle school center. It’s the heart of the manga that they are so young, even as opposed to high schoolers in a similar manga. It’s just so cute.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: April 10, 2018 and November 13, 2018
MSRP: $15.00 each
