Kare First Love: Review

The first two volumes of Kare First Love were a Christmas present with accompanying translations by Eugene. I have since made my way through the remaining volumes (now all available in English).

Kare First Love is classic shojo--classic to the nth degree: Will the couple survive their initial dates? Will they sleep together? Will outsiders--an older, overpowering man and a sneaky, manipulative female ex--undermine their trust in each other? What about estranged family members?

It's soap opera plus yet still more bearable than Ross & Rachel since the couple never breaks up completely. Still, I have to admit that the constant misunderstandings get tiring; I prefer couples who deal with the outside world as a unit (Finder, Yellow, Fake, What Did You Eat Yesterday?) or members of couples who deal with change individually in order to return to/operate successfully within the relationship (Yugi Yamada's oeuvre, Shoko Hidaka's Blue Morning).

Kare First Love leaves me convinced that dating in high school is a generally awful idea--(thank goodness for mellow)--which leaves me feeling that I must have missed the point of the series.

What makes Kare First Love work despite the plethora of classic tropes--or cliches, depending on one's perspective--is the reality of it all. Karin and Kiriya's reactions are real. Their friends' reactions are real. Their parents' reactions are real. And so on. Despite the soap opera additions (like Karin becoming a model or Kiriya's father pressuring him to take over the family business, a typical shojo/yaoi trope), the fears and doubts and questions and concerns are all very true-to-life.

Naturally, there are those splendid declarations of rebellion that litter shojo and John Hughes' films--the moment when the hero and/or heroine stands up to an adult, usually a parent, and declares, "This is who I am!" Such moments wear thin with age--yelling things at people doesn't actually solve anything--but the grown-up form still has power: Elizabeth's controlled confrontation with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, for instance.

Tone-wise, the following high school shojo manga fall into the following categories:

• Hana-Kimi is a romp within an utterly realistic high school milieu using absolutely accurate high school dialog; it is comparable to Buffy (first three seasons).
• Kare First Love is a drama with utterly realistic high school characters who operate mostly outside of high school; it is comparable to a combination of Hughes films and Say Anything.
• Mars is a thriller with high school settings and characters; it is comparable to Heathers and Brick.