YOWAMUSHI MEIKYUU

The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.

Yowamushi Meikyuu is a quick shoujo/school life read, possibly about romance but somehow a little Slice of Life-y too. Brought to us by the Queen Of Shoujo Smut Minami Kanan, it affords us a look into the life of Izumi, our heroine who like everyone has a thing for the resident school Prince, Kamo-kun but tries the indirect angle of approaching his middle school friend Torahiko-kun for background info on Kamo so that she can casually forge a deeper friendship with Kamo than her competition. And maybe along the way her object of affection changes to the reticent and tsundere-ish Torahiko. She goes about continuing the farce thinking she'll get a reaction out of Torahiko one way or another and make some magic happen between them, but why is Torahiko so damn enigmatic?! And what is with this new girl in school suddenly endearing herself to him despite her Gloomy Gussy ways?

The art is realistic (well shoujo realistic!) and appealing. Cute actions and gestures lend an overall happy tone to the story.
Characters on the other hand are not what I encounter often at all. The heroine is far from a typical besotted leading lady ready to blush and swoon at a moment's notice. Instead she's sneaky and confident in her ways while being a genuinely cool person to everyone around her. The hero is interesting in that his actions and motivations are never made crystal clear which is what carries the story forward. Also he's not given to sweeping anyone into his arms simply coz they grinned in his direction, which makes for a bit more realistic, if less quixotic feel to the plot. Check on the character growth aspect as well. Possibly, you'll walk away with a valuable life lesson yourself.

The real reason you should read this story is not the art or the romance though. You should invest ten minutes in this oneshot because it's a very different and alarmingly honest look at love and relationships and every disappointed shoujo reader who desperately wants a heroine they can look upto and admire will walk away satisfied after finishing this.

A short manga deserves a short review

There's 3 reasons I decided to read this manga:
1. I wanted to click on Yowamushi Pedal but my clumsy fingers misclicked.
2. People were saying it's a really sad story.
3. The girl on the cover looked disgusting for some reason, I don't know why.
and it was just a one-shot so even if it would have been bad it wouldn't have taken up my time.

I'm not the biggest fan of the shoujo genre, in fact I could probably count the ones I've read on one hand. But just because I'm a stranger to a genre doesn't mean that I have a negative bias towards shoujo manga. The ones I've read were mostly pretty intriguing and had a good story. Their stories however happened over the course of many many chapters, this one has only about 40 pages.

Yowamushi Meikyuu handled a one-shot romance story quite well. It doesn't waste much time with a slice of life angel and focuses on the feelings and actions of the characters. It talks about a (highschool?) girl who has trouble expressing her true emotions to the person he loves. She instead tries backhanded ways to get the boy to talk with her, the main one being asking about another boy from his class who she lies about having a crush on. However her actions cause her own defeat, as by the end of the manga she learns that if she had just been honest about her feelings from the very beginning things would have gone much better for her. The moral of the story is to be honest about your feelings, for if you hide them for too long you might lose the chance of ever obtaining them. And it does a damn good job of expressing that idea to the reader.

The two main characters, although being pretty standard romance characters, are believable and well done for the story to advance as quickly yet fulfillingly as possible. Although there is a side character that just exists to progress the story on and has close to no development, which doesn't ruin the story but is still a shame. The art looks okay, it does well in expressing what the characters are feeling visually.


In conclusion if you are looking for a good shounen manga that isn't too long or too heavy in a slice of life aspect I do recommend that you read Yowamushi Ped- I mean Meikyuu, Yowamushi Meikyuu. Yowamushi Pedal is just about sweaty men in tight clothing wanting to test each others limits, which has surprisingly nothing to do with romance.