Therefore, Please Choose Me

This manga is… something. It was passed around as a “so stupid it’s hilarious” thing but I don’t think it’s even that. And to be quite honest, it’s really hard not to give an equally shitty review for it but I’m going to try to be as professional as possible. The premise is that the girl moves back into town after 5 years to her old house and transfers to North School because she wants to get a boyfriend. Her best friend, Kanata, is the designated childhood friend and tries to stop her but she’s an Independent Woman, until she gets to class. Naturally, she meets theguy in her class and he’s an asshole. In the middle of class, the guy punches her in the stomach after learning her name is Hina. When she wakes up, there’s these guys who wants to rape her and it’s revealed that her childhood friend is in a gang named Hina (go on, guess what the gang is named after) and he tells her that he missed her so much that he named his gang after her. More upset that he’s a delinquent, she avoids him until she meets the guy that punched her in the stomach. She actually gets in the car with him just to defy Kanata because, she’s still mad about him being a delinquent. Only to find out that she was set up to get raped again. The guy who led her there decides to defend her and she almost gives it up to protect him (I don’t get it either). Then Kanata manages to save them all because it’s a mess anyway. Kanata reveals he loves her and the two try to have a date with each other. In the end, though, she goes back to Shugo, who tries to force himself upon her next. And that’s when I clocked out. There’s something else about fake amnesia and something about how uncool it is for friends to fight among each other but really, don’t waste your time with this. The characters are so paper thin and the heroine learns nothing. Not to say the continuous attempted rape was her fault by any means. The first time was because she was punched in the stomach and the second time is because the guy tricked her into believing that he means well. And the third, well, I guess that was him being jealous and because let’s add some forced drama that’s going to be ignored anyway. Shuugo is what happens when a shitty shoujo male lead goes completely unchecked and does whatever he wants, consequence free (oh, did I mention he’s also rich?). Hina is what happens when a shitty shoujo female lead does whatever she wants with only one person saying to stop to her (and being stopped by her using “comical” means) and her doing what she wants, consequence free. The saddest part of it is that while Kanata does do something rather shitty to her, he actually does apologize for it later and tries to make it up to her. Then again it happened at the end of the manga so I can’t really commend him for that. It’s a paper thin story line that’s barely held together. One part in particular that really made me go, “Really?” is when Kanata was in an accident while Hina and Shuugo were having (consensual) sex. When Hina gets the call, she runs out of there and heads straight to the hospital to deal with the fake amnesia subplot. After she comes out of the room, she overhears Shuugo saying that Kanata is in the hospital. Alright. Let me first go by saying that, once again, this plot is paper thin at best. The whole reason why Shuugo even bothered with Hina was to get back at Kanata’s gang. They never explained why they were rivals in the first place other than the location factor (North & South). They kept making it seem that Shuugo is going to be nice, for real this time I swear, only for him to use her as another ploy to get back at Kanata. Kanata does his damenest to protect Hina from Shuugo but Hina actually punishes him when he does do the sensible thing. Please don’t think that I think Hina “owes” Kanata something for saving her (although it comes as no surprise that he actually wants her and makes no objections to people making the claim that Hina’s is “his”) – far from it. There have been more than enough times that Shuugo is clearly up to no good and clearly has no good intentions despite him saying the contrary the very next page. So when questioned on his intentions (gang relations), Shuugo pulls out the jealousy card and actually says that Hina cares more about Kanata than him. And it’s really random considering Kanata’s in the hospital because of him and his gang. There’s another questionable scene where the gang bangers (after Shuugo decides to let Hina escape and they turn on him), Hina tries to stop them by saying, “Friends fighting each other is totally uncool!” Does she realize what sort of position she’s in? Normally, I don’t like saying saying that shoujo heroines are dumb because there’s usually some kind of mitigating factor that lands her in the situation (for example, being punched in the stomach in the middle of class) and usually it’s due to bad writing and forced conflicts. Not only is this manga clearly guilty for bad writing and forced conflicts, but the heroine is really dumb. Seriously. If you know someone’s out to hurt you and do you wrong because of an unexplained rivalry between two schools and one gang leader is your childhood friend, then yeah, it’s probably the best idea not to mess with him or believe a word he says – even if you’re hot for him. I wish I could pass this off as something stupid to pass around and make fun of but because of attempted rape, I don’t think it’s that funny anymore. If it didn’t have that, then yeah, I would definitely chose this to those who need a good laugh after a hard day.