Manga Review QUICKIE - Boys Be

I've been writing and re-writing various reviews, trying to get something going, and now that finals are over, I'm picking up a book I got at Comic-Con on a whim. Now, I'm referring to this as a Quickie mainly because of this reason. The stories in this book are seperate from one another and are simply one-shots. However, there are multiple books from this series, so I'm ASSUMING that the rest of the series is oneshots...I think....so to quote Linkara, let's dig into Boys: Be Volume 1

Story:

As I said earlier, this volume is a series of short stories, so it's pretty much an anthology of short romantic stories. Also, I'm wondering if Tokyopop or another company released this under a previous name or title, seeing as in the credits page in the beginning page, it says Boys: Be Second Season. However, if there is a 1st season, I'm assuming it's either a longer and continuous story, as I remember there being an anime series as well.

There are 6 stories, so I'll give you the gist of all 6. First 3 chapters are one long story about a Judo student who fractured his wrist by a motorcycle-riding girl. Feeling guilty about it, she takes him to the doctor and invites him to a club. From there, a romance starts as they get to know eachother as well as deal with a sudden change in their relationship, and they fall in love and such.

The other 5 stories are as follows. Man goes out with a tall girl, makes a dumb move, and reconciles, another man gets another girl into cosplay and they bond. A guy dates a pretty girl and his best friend tries to cope. A guy hosts a party and when his friend leaves, a girl comes over and they party (Nothing happens) and a high school kid is teased by three office ladies at a vacation spot.

I have mixed feelings about the stories in this book. If my assumption is correct in that the subsequent books are simply oneshots, I don't see how the books have SO MANY volumes, unless it has a consistent story in the next couple of volumes. AGAIN, this is just based on my assumtions based on one volume of the book. I wil say this though. If you want simple romantic stories about a guy falling for a girl, this is a good start, however, I don't think it'd be enough to keep buying the books consistently.

Art

The art feels like a shonen-style of manga to me. The characters are not ultra cute like in more shoujo mangas, there's not a lot of tone or effects. Even the artist mentions in the afterword that he would like to do a fighting manga one day, which I think would be great. Now that I take a look at the cover, the story is written by someone else.

Personally, some would say it's a bit of a mismatch, but I find it appealing, at least to me. The art makes the story feel pure and a little more real, even though the stories are pretty standard. This may even get some guys who aren't into plain ol' romance (I would like to say I'm not a fan of romance in general).

I will say this, however. The stories all have very homogenous character designs. The first girl in the first story at the very beginning looks EXACTLY like the main girl in the 3rd story. Since these are one shots, I think it can be forgiven that the designs for the girls look similar, but I hope that in later books, it would not be the case. Again, they don't look exactly the same, but they're still very similar to me

Final Thoughts

I give this book....in all honestly, I'm going to give it a 6.Why? Well...to me, the similar characters just bugged me with both of the guys and girls. Also, since this is not a continuing story.Also, the first story was one I got somewhat involved in, and whne it suddenly shifted to a one-shot with another guy and girl, it confused me. The one-shots is the biggest reason sincve I don't feel emotionally vested to continue buying the series.

But that's me.

Now I'm gonig to write one more review since I feel like writing. XD