Renai Junky

A review for this manga, in my opinion, could easily be summed up with one word. Annoying. In brief, the story is about a delinquent who suddenly confesses to an "ordinary" girl. She finds him repulsive and wants nothing to do with him, but then immediately realizes she has feelings for him after she rejected him. The rest of the manga basically covers the ups and downs of their relationship and the problems she has going out with a guy like him. Sounds pretty typical, doesn't it? I should say now that the summary is the best part of this manga. Everything else goes downhill from theget go. First, characterization. Horrible. Sonoko has got to be one of the worst heroines I've ever come across. The entire story is pretty much based on her feelings of shame and embarrassment at having a delinquent boyfriend. She hurts him repeatedly and goes to extremes in trying to hide the fact that he's her boyfriend. She's constantly questioning how and why she ended up with a guy like him, how shameful he is, how her life would end if anyone finds out, blah blah rinse repeat. It could have been tolerable and even understandable in the beginning, except this happens throughout the entire story. In fact, the increasingly hurtful stuff she does to her boyfriend is what drives the WHOLE story forward. Narusawa (the delinquent boyfriend), on the other hand, is very bland as a character. To begin with, we were never shown why he fell in love with Sonoko. That, in itself, isn't a big deal as most short shoujo stories are like this. The problem is how scripted his actions feel, like he exists just for the story's sake. He pops in, falls in love after seeing her for the first time (when he had just finished beating some people up and she was completely terrified), acts like a total idiot in love half the time, while the other half was being "stunned" and hurt by yet another stupid thing that Sonoko did, walks off all depressed until Sonoko runs to him in tears and he's immediately all smiles in his idiotic glory again. It's all very one-dimensionally robotic. Like Sonoko, this is also how he is throughout the entire story as well. So is there any redeeming quality about this manga? There is, a little, which is why I'm giving it a 2 instead of a 1. The manga, when you strip away Sonoko and the horribly bad romance, has a couple of funny moments. Narusawa and his delinquent buddies are hilarious sometimes with some of the weird stuff they get up to - mostly in that loser delinquent Yakuza-wannabe way. If you like that sort of humor, a scene or two in there may be your saving grace for this manga. Unfortunately, there's always Sonoko's whining to immediately kill any joy you may have had. Art-wise, it isn't bad nor is it particularly exceptional either. Decent is a word that comes to mind. That's about all I have to say for the art. All in all, the only thing this manga did for me was annoy the crap out of me. If it weren't because it's only 2 volumes, I would've stopped reading it before I was even done with the 1st. I should add that I read a lot of one-shots and short shoujo stories. I'm well aware of their shortcomings but still enjoy them in general. Love Junky, however, was simply impossible for me to even overlook the bad side - not when the entire manga IS the bad side. If you enjoy reading a manga about a shallow girl stomping all over a guy's feelings and good intentions over and over and over again, then by all means, give this one a try. Otherwise, I'd skip it. There are plenty of better ones out there. * Yes, I'm aware this probably wasn't a very well-written review. I'm just now realizing that it's quite hard writing a decent review for a manga I find so horrible.