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“My Love Mix-Up!” Volumes1-3 by Wataru Hinekure

EisahOct 18, 2022, 9:11:52 PM

I went into this manga in the mood for a cute, fluffy story, so as I talk about this it will be based on if I got what I wanted.

Volume 1

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The story gets right into it from page one. Aoki forgets his eraser. He asks his friend, “Akkun”, to borrow one, but he doesn’t have an extra. Hashimoto, the girl he has a crush on, offers him one of hers. When he slides the plastic around it off he sees that “IDA” is written on it with a little heart. Ida, sitting in front of him, turns around to hand him papers and accidentally knocks the eraser off. When he picks it up, he sees that Aoki’s eraser has “Ida” written on it.

Aoki wants to tell him the truth but Hashimoto is terribly shy and he doesn’t want to out her.

From there it bounces quickly from scene to scene as Aoki tries to figure out how to tell Ida the truth and support Hashimoto pursuing her crush, even though he has a crush on her. By the end Aoki has continuously spent time with Ida, who is supportive and kind, and he finds that he’s starting to have feelings for him.

It ends with a twist: It turns out the edge of the eraser was used or broken off. Her eraser was actually supposed to say “Aida” (Akkun’s real name).

The story moves along at a breakneck speed, so that I never felt like I got to spend much time with the characters because they were bouncing from one scene to the next at a frantic pace. Sometimes how fast it went also made it confusing.

Both a play and a cultural festival happened in quick succession. Because of this, I don’t feel we know any of the characters on a deeper level. We don’t know what hobbies they have, for instance. We have a basic understanding of personalities, and they follows those well enough throughout the story, but I don’t think there is much depth at this point.

On the other hand, none of the characters are annoying. They’re generally positive and kind to each other, even if their reasoning or the story gets a little convoluted sometimes. For example, at one point Aoki is on the roof and a pigeon steals his sandwich. He chases after it and Ida sees him, thinking he’s going to jump because he was rejected, and tackles him. That’s a pretty baffling setup just to have a misunderstanding that lasts for seconds.

The art is nice and competent. It’s not the best artwork I’ve ever seen, but it’s never distracting me from the story. The characters are discernible from each other.

I think what this manga needed were some ‘quiet’ moments and perhaps better transitions. I understand it’s a comedy, but a comedy can slow down sometimes, too. We do get a little bit, such as the whole group staying behind to fix a prop when Aoki and Hashimoto accidentally knock paint all over it, and I think it would have benefited from more scenes like that.

Overall, I think it ended up about average. It was cute. The characters are shallow but likable and supportive of each other. There’s nothing particularly depressing or that would bring anyone down. The art is nicely drawn. It stays light-hearted, and I curious where it’ll go after the ending. It’s already set up for a happy ending, with Aoki liking Ida and Hashimoto liking Aida, so there’s not fighting over the same person.

Volume 2

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In the next volume, Akkun realizes the whole mix-up with the erasers from the first volume and makes Aoki admit the whole thing was a mistake, but at this point Aoki really does like Ida, but he can’t bring himself to admit it in front of Akkun. Hashimoto finds out and slaps Akkun for being accidentally insensitive. Eventually, Akkun figures out that Aoki really did like Ida, and that he’d unintentionally made him take back his love confession.

This volume addresses the major issue I had with the first volume – that is, the frantic pace. Things feel like they take more time to develop here, and the scenes are given time to settle before jumping into the next scene. Whereas in book one it was constantly from one place to the next, covered in text all over, volume 2 spends more time letting art do the storytelling, with more pages that have less text on them.

I still wouldn’t say this is the top of the top. It does a lot of normal stuff like relying on miscommunication all over – though that pretty much is the premise of the entire series. I would bump this up in score from the first volume because it feels like both author and artist have matured in their storytelling.

The characters remain likable and I would like them to get their happy endings. Right now I’m waiting to read volume 3 because it’s on hold at the library, so there will be a bit of time before reading the first two and reading the last one. If both author and artist continue growing, I think it will be a pretty good series, even if a lot of it is fairly cliché.

Volume 3

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It took a few weeks for me to get volume 3 after volume 2, so I don’t remember every detail from the first two. But it should be fine.

Going into it, I want it to continue on like volume 2, giving characters time and space.

Volume 3 turned out to be a mixed bag. At the beginning, it seemed quite hectic like volume 1 was. They were suddenly going on a school trip out of nowhere to go skiing. The point was to say that Aoki and Hashimoto were giving up too easy, but it seemed a rather bizarre way to do it. The setting is a bizarre one and doesn’t really have anything to do with anything in the story. They’re just skiing for no particular reason.

After that they get back to normal school life again. Aoki finally admits he really does have feelings for Ida. Hashimoto also admits her feelings to Aida. Ida asks Aoki if he wants to date, but Aida rejects Hashimoto. From there, most of the comic is made up of Aoki panicking over every little thing and miscommunications.

As it turns out, the things Hashimoto remembers as the reason she fell for Aida he doesn’t even remember. They talk and Aida just can’t picture them dating. Hashimoto decides she needs to stop being embarrassed and go after what she wants.

I’d say it’s pretty standard as far as these kind of stories. They run into a lot of the same problems you tend to see – like a character saying something and another character misinterpreting it. It has it’s moments, but I think it could be a lot more engaging if it didn’t concentrate on that sort of thing. I’d prefer to watch Aoki and Ida have a first date over Aoki constantly wondering if Ida is serious.

All-in-all, I would say it’s fine. There are volumes after three, and I might read them if they happen to become available to me, but I’ll be stopping here for now. If it sounds interesting to you, pick it up and try it out.

Next time will be “My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! Volume 3” by Satoru Yamaguchi.

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