Secret Sweethearts

When it comes to romance stories, I've always enjoyed "forbidden love". Be it between the same sex, step-siblings, student & teacher or cousins; I tend to enjoy these flavours over the vanilla stuff. So here I have Boku wa Imouto ni Koi wo suru. A Shoujo, Romance, Drama themed around the forbidden love between siblings and yet I did not enjoy this as much as I hoped. Although Boku wa Imouto is a shoujo manga, it mostly follows the point of view of our male protagonist Yori Yuuki, where it is immediately apparent that he feels strongly for his twin sister Iku. So strongly in factthat he decides to act upon these feelings, but she is not all that accepting right away. So Yori ends up thinking of some contrived and immature ways to acquire his sister's affection, all without being found out, which is where the majority of the story's early drama comes from. However what's nice is that even if Yori is the main focal point of the story, situations are also given from Iku's point of view, making it a more interesting story in the process. Unfortunately that feeling does not last the full duration of this manga's story. The main dilemma between the pair continuously changes as the story develops, like the inclusion of a 3rd or 4th party, yet it's obvious that it's the mangaka's way of trying to extend the life of what should be a really short manga. It eventually degrades into some Twilight-esque drivel. Two attractive young males, vying for the affections of some stupid little girl; even though it's all kind of pointless, since she obviously likes one over the other. This is what led to the characters being the weakest aspect of this manga for me. We have Iku the ditzy blonde sister, Yori the dark-haired control-freak of a brother & his best friend Yano who's character confuses me the most. And we're supposed to believe the forced love triangle between the 3. I know I shouldn't be spoiling this love triangle for those who've yet to read it, but if you've read enough shoujo manga, you'd have seen this love triangle coming a volume or two before it even occurs. There are other characters to mention, but some you'll just despise and others that won't even become relevant until the final volumes. Now when looking at Kotomi Akio's other works, I noticed that she happens to be the author for one of my favourite shoujo manga, which is a bit of a surprise because the artwork for Boku wa Imouto is painfully average. From start to finish, it just looks like any other shoujo manga that is playing it safe and not trying to stand out from the crowd. I can only take solace in the knowledge that Kotomi Akio has improved, since the creation of Boku wa Imouto... To summarize, Boku wa Imouto is a manga that initially grabbed my attention with the way it handled this particular form of forbidden love, and how such love is never a smooth experience. Unfortunately story winds up degrading almost into soap opera territory, rife with the some of the usual tropes. This and several other issues I mentioned are what hampered my overall enjoyment of what should have been a rather enjoyable manga.