Watashi ni xx Shinasai! by Tooyama Ema

Mami;Yukina;Shigure;Akira

Konbanwa~

It’s Nadeshiko-chan and I’ll be reviewing Watashi ni xx Shinasai! by Tooyama Ema, an ongoing shoujo manga that is currently on volume 10 and has steadily become quite smutty and rather annoying. Lets start with the summary:

Yukina Himuro is a quiet and observant girl with a sharp gaze and low body temperature, because of this she is known as the “Absolute Zero Snow-Woman” and is feared by most of her classmates. She’s also secretly a popular cell phone novelist, disguising herself with the penname Yupina. But she’s losing many of her readers because her story lacks romance and the emotions that come with: desire, jealousy, and such. She’s great at expressing themes like family and friendship, since she has a great relationship with her parents and her friend and cousin Akira Shimotsuki. Then she discovers that Shigure Kitami, who acts like the “typical bishounen”, is actually an arrogant womanizer. She decides to blackmail him into “love-acting” with her in order to learn more about love and to better describe it into her writing. But, Akira doesn’t like her holding hands or hugging another boy; soon enough he confesses his love and demands she learns about love from him.

Poor Shigure gets hurt because of
Yukina's selfishness

Intentionally, this story is quite interesting; Yukina is comically indifferent and is rather eccentric once you get past her “icy” appearance. She loves writing and is willing to do some research in order to improve it. She uses everything that happens around her to add to her story and develops an odd relationship with Shigure; he intentionally thinks she’s a pest and hates completing her missions, which are things like holding her hand, embracing her, and such, But as they gradually start spending time together, he develops feelings for her. He especially doesn’t like Akira and Yukina’s strong bond, extremely jealous of how close they are. He understands that their bond is shallow and wants to go out with her so that their relationship can become deeper and stronger than the one she has with Akira. Both him and Akira wish to monopolize her and are desperate to be the one by her side. And Akira, who appears to be happy-go-luck and gentle boy in the beginning, becomes quite assertive when trying to win over Yukina.

Now, this where things begin to drag on and become unbearable: You’d think that Yukina would explain to Shigure why she asked him to “love-act” with her once they begin developing a serious interest in each other so that their physical relationship can become more emotional, but she doesn’t. She begins mixing up her life with her story research, not listening to her own feelings when considering whom to choose, but simply thinking about what’s best for her story. She starts out as a strong female lead, but gradually becomes dumb, dense, and very selfish, saying and doing whatever she wants, only think about others’ feelings when it’s too late. Then the story stops making progresses and her decisions and actions seem to drag on for chapters. At some point, the only interesting part of the story isn’t what she’s doing and her problems, its Shigure’s childhood friend Mami and Akira are doing.

Mami was in love with Shigure and her relationship with him made Yukina jealous. She was selfish and

Akira comforting Mami

dependent, but her character, unlike Yukina, grows and develops, especially after she’s rejected by Shigure. And the friendship that develops between her and Akira is cute, becoming even more so when she starts to like him. Her and Akira are the only reasons I’m still reading this manga, and I honestly only glimpse at the Yukina parts, since its either her thinking about something she’s been pondering for the last 6 chapters, or she’s doing something annoying or stupid. I don’t really recommend reading the manga, since you’ll just be disappointed by the change in her character  and probably annoyed by the pace the story begins to take, focusing mainly on shallow smutty scenes instead of character development. But the Akira and Mami story sounds interesting to you, the 20 or so chapters aren’t bad and are rather entertaining, you’ll just have to endure the increasing stupidity of Yukina and shallowness of the romance.

~Nadeshiko-chan