Very! Very! Sweet 6

JiSang Shin / Geo – Yen Press – 2010 – 8 volumes

Okay! Things are starting to right themselves in a shoujo-manga way. The four main characters are no longer pursuing depressing paths, where they hope and wish that the person they have a massive crush on returns their feelings, and things are looking much more positive and healthy towards the end.

For some reason, Erica’s always given me a bad vibe. She’s never really done anything underhanded or more deceitful than loving Tsuyoshi, so I’m not sure where all the hate came from. She gets burned pretty badly in this volume, and shot down in a way that she finally can’t ignore. One of the other characters points out that she’s always been a good sport about Tsuyoshi, and I realized there wasn’t really any reason to hate her. I suppose in other stories, she’s usually the bratty, clingy ex-girlfriend that tries to set up the heroine, but not in this one. She turns out to be more of a friend than anything, and she gets along with everyone very well.

Meanwhile, the language barrier continues to pique my interest. Tsuyoshi confesses his feelings to Be-Ri in grand style, but in Japanese. Be-Ri mishears his “daisuki” (I like you) as “Ya ee saekki” (you bastard), with hilarious results. Tsuyoshi laughs at this later, and finds a more genuine way of confessing his feelings later, turning the mistranslation into a heartfelt sentiment. Meanwhile, Be-Ri’s sister’s boyfriend still confesses an interest in Be-Ri. She’s had a crush on him, so she’s confused about that. On a secondary plotline, Be-Ri’s sister is trying to figure out who it is that she really loves.

There’s lots of absolutely adorable moments as Tsuyoshi tries to find a way to get his feelings through to Be-Ri. Again, I love the language barrier in this series, I wish that was a plot device that was used consistently more often (the only other series I can think of that used it occasionally, off the top of my head, is Hana-Kimi). It’s a cute shoujo romance with genuinely strong and likable characters (in fact, Be-Ri’s strong will is central to the plot of the series), but again, if you don’t like girls’ romance comics, there’s not going to be much here to sink your teeth into. And yes, I will continue to repeat that at the end of every review until something interesting happens.