My Pink Is Overflowing

This shoujo manga is a bit of a hidden gem. My Pink is Overflowing (and can I just say, what a title...) is basically a short romance series where the main girl is a total horndog, but tired of being considered "easy" and just getting toyed with by playboys. After a literal page one sex scene that's crashed, on page two, by the revelation that her boyfriend is two-timing her, our heroine comes to the epiphany that the solution to her perpetual boy troubles is obvious. She can easily avoid all the playboys... by only dating virgins! Fortunately for her, it doesn't even take untilthe end of chapter 1 to find one, and he's a real dreamboat to boot. Unfortunately for her, that boy is straight-laced as they come with a very traditional view of romance - he's totally committed to saving himself for marriage and "dating with the idea of marriage in mind". She decides to take the plunge anyway and proclaims her intent, to his face, to take his virginity. From there, literally 80% of the manga is MC swooning over her dreamy hunk of a socially awkward, virgin boyfriend, and attempting to tempt him into the carnal side of dating through the tried and true method of steamy risqué shoujo scenes. And I'm totally here for it. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's sexy, sometimes it's endearing, but the end result is a pretty lovable and entertaining duo. Think of B Gata H Kei (which, if you haven't read and somehow got here first, you totally should!) but with a much more "experienced" female lead and with the steam dial turned up to max. And I mean, sure, if you want to get technical there's a regular shoujo plot outside of that in the intervening panels - a love rival or two, a brief foray into the characters' relationship with the parents, what have you - but none of that really matters. This manga is about not-quite-pornographic, racy but vanilla bedroom scenes of the kind liable to induce a nosebleed in your median Japanese teenage girl. And it excels at this task. But I do have to say that despite the way I'm making this manga sound like it's nothing more than erotica, it's actually pretty wholesome and I really liked the dynamic of this couple. It's not very often we get a borderline-nympho girl as the main lead in a shoujo manga, and much less often we see her complemented by a less assertive, less experienced boy - and even less often we see them both taken seriously and given proper development. The two of them aren't just played off as a comedy gag. This manga definitely errs more on the side of rom than on com, it treats the characters and their relationship seriously, and it somehow works out beautifully. Score one for sex positivity here. As to the aesthetics the quality of the art is pretty above average, minimal but clean, distinctly shoujo but modern stylistically. It's not an award-winning masterpiece by any means, but it sure was well-crafted and a lot of fun. Overall I give My Pink is Overflowing a solid 8/10 and do strongly recommend it to any fan of shoujo manga who's in the mood for something a bit more spicy with an MC who's got no qualms about her own healthy sexuality. Before I wrap this up though, there's just one more thing I have to point out. What's really crazy is just how underrated this series is on MAL. At the time of writing, it has a score of only 6.88 with only 160 users having even scored it! That's really low for a manga that's by any metric at least half decent, and fully translated / officially licensed in English. I feel bad for Kodansha, having gone to the trouble of publishing this and apparently not seeing any return on their investment. So if this review's convinced you... please support the official release!