Can’t Lose You 6

Well, this one still didn’t quite grab me, even in the end, but I will admit it got much better in these last two volumes, and the conclusion is probably some of the most… well, passionate girly stuff you can lay hands on.

Well, it’s all so tragic, just as promised.   A few people don’t make it to the end.  One death in particular broke my heart, because he was actually my favorite character.  A lot of other things work out exactly as you would imagine, though I will give this series a lot of credit: the cliffhanger from last volume?  Where it looks like Gaon is just going to go out and kill the Grandfather?  Total red herring.  I loved that the hunting didn’t actually take place.

It did have a happy ending of sorts, though, even without the deaths.  As I said, everything is very passionate, too.  Even though I wasn’t particularly fond of most of the characters (I didn’t really think they became very original or fleshed out as the series went on), I really got into the continuous love confessions and heart-to-hearts that were running throughout the volume, even between the two twins, the mom, the bodyguard… just about everyone had something passionate to say, and it came off pretty sincere.  It’s hard to do that.

I still think it was kind of a quick girly fix.  It’s not particularly deep or noteworthy, but it’s got a lot of good things about it.

Can’t Lose You 5

I remember really disliking this series when  I marathoned the first four volumes, but I was actually quite won over this time around.

The main character, poor girl, is living with poor boy on an isolated island to keep away from rich girl’s family.  Of course rich boy is doing all he can to find her.  There are plenty of dramatic moments as rich boy is coming unhinged due to his absolute need for poor girl, some drama where he pines for her (aside from coming unhinged, the unhinged stuff mostly has to do with him ruining other people’s lives), some bodyguard sacrifice drama, some romantic drama between poor girl and poor boy, and a really great chase scene.

Somehow, mixing mafia and romance works spectacularly, and having the hitmen come after poor girl again and again just made things… hotter.  It was pretty good.  The characters all came across as quite fleshed out this time too, and the romance was written really believably (I’m tired, so I can’t remember if that’s a word or not).  The reunion between poor girl and rich boy was to die for, too.  Even after I didn’t like the first several volumes, I really got into that scene, which was straight out of a movie and kind of by the book, but great nonetheless.

It really felt like it had concluded at the end of this volume, but there’s one more volume left, and I worry it may make an asshole out of rich boy.  We’ll see.

Can’t Lose You 4

So this volume decided to whale on poor girl, as if she wasn’t already the one recieving the raw end of the deal.  Everything bad that could have happened to her, did.  On one hand, I kind of liked it because it gave the series a much-needed stirring.  On the other hand, it was pretty bad since it pulled the carpet out from under her completely and used some more cliches that were in poor taste.  The mother’s hints were disgustingly true, and there were prophecies involved.  Please.

The romance was also heated up in this volume, and as trite as some of the lines were, I enjoyed the passion that came from the otherwise emotionless Gaon.  I was saddened by the choices poor girl made.  I’ve definitely been drawn into the story at this point, though.  I’m a sucker, and I want to see how the prophecy plays itself out, because I know it will.  I also hope that poor girl and rich boy hook up.  All I need is some smut at the end and I will forgive all the faults of this series.  Seriously.

So, the next volume comes out in about a month, let’s hope for some poor on rich action by then!

Can’t Lose You 3

I don’t know what I was thinking last night, but those were some uncharacteristically weird entries.  Maybe it was because Broccoli confirmed the Boysenberry title for their yaoi line, which is by far the best name for anything ever.  Better yet, two of the titles look good.  That was just too much for me to handle, I guess, on top of a bad volume and really good volume of manga.

So the series got pretty decent this time around.  Stuff happens, which is what I approve of in my manga series.  We finally get a few more people in the know about the rich girl/poor girl switch, and rich girl comes back to live her life since poor girl has gotten rich boy to agree to an engagement.  It seems like the only two people who know poor girl’s face from rich girl are poor boy, rich girl’s mom, and rich boy.  This makes for some wonderful manga as the respective people find out, and the volume comes to a head during the engagement party, where both rich girl and poor girl appear.

I’m a bit sad if what rich mom was hinting at was true, because that would be another lame manga cliche that this series is calling forth.  I did like rich boy’s reaction at the engagement party, and let me tell you I gained a lot of respect for this series when rich girl got hers (twice) at the end of the volume.  Now I’m ready for volume four.  Real ready.

Can’t Lose You 2

I know I promised no more big slugs of series, but I’m on a roll lately with my backlog (if you couldn’t tell by the huge number of posts).  I’m finding it hard to stop when I get going on a series.

Yeah, this isn’t… this isn’t good.  Not at all.  The only people who would be able to tolerate this are the kind of card-carrying women who… I don’t know, cry a lot and sleep with Mr. People Pillow at night (which is like a teddy bear, but blue and with a surprisingly frightened face).  I am one such woman, fortunately, and this series has not wound up in the trash yet.  I seem to be making good progress on it, but this is possibly because I know there’s no avoiding W Juliet now that I’ve got the entire 14-volume series.  It’s time to read it, Connie.

There was no improvement in this volume, actually.  Everything pretty much stayed the same as last volume, except we find out a little more about poor girl’s father.  Poor girl doesn’t find this info out herself though, so it’s not like it really meant anything to the story.  Rich girl is still a heinous bitch, unfortunately, but she’s not in too much of this volume, which is fortunate.  Rich boy is still none the wiser when it comes to the two playing “Prince and the Pauper,” and now poor boy may be getting in on the triangle.

That’s it!  That’s the entire volume.  You don’t have to read it now.  That vague summary is all you need to know.  If you’re not a total genre hound, it’s probably not for you as it’s two volumes in and the plot still hasn’t gotten any deeper.  It’s got all the elements of the good romance story and romantic triangle though, so if you’re a total girl like I am, you’ll probably wind up liking it.  The romance between rich boy and poor girl is pretty good, I will admit… it does make me wonder if rich boy will go for rich girl when she gets back, or knows that he fell in love with poor girl.  Hm.

So yeah, my apologies, I’ll probably suck down the next two volumes of this while I’m reading it.

Can’t Lose You 1

Great, just what I need, another drama-tastic high school romance comic.  I tell myself this everytime I read a plot summary, then somehow wind up with the book in my hand.  Usually significantly more than the first volume.

Anyway.  This is another Netcomics series, which I think I bought solely because it is a Netcomics series.  I passed up Pine Kiss for the slightly more interesting-sounding doppelganger story, though I might as well have just picked up Pine Kiss, because… well, because.

The doppelganger thing is… well, I don’t want to say not as big a part of the story as you’d think, because it is the plot.  Basically, it’s like every romance manga you’ve read, except instead of the spunky poor girl who just transferred in getting picked on by the rich girl and falling in love with the rich guy who’s supposed to be dating said rich girl, the poor girl looks exactly like the rich girl, so the rich girl is just mean to her AND the poor girl has to go to ritzy social events in her place because she needs the money rich girl gives her for it.

It’s… okay.  I think the doppelganger thing is all that saves it from being too lukewarm, and I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, but it’s nothing fabulous.  I think what swayed me was that I found out it’s only six volumes long, so I bought the first four together.  But it sweats cliches out of every pore nonetheless.  Poor girl doesn’t even have any parents, she stays with a woman who she doesn’t know and takes care of her.  Poor girl also holds down thirty jobs, and poor girl also has a dream of being reunited with her father.

Yeah.  I want to make a Fruits Basket comparison, but I’ve already hated on Fruits Basket enough, I think.  We’ll see where this series goes in its five more volumes.  Maybe it’ll do something fun!