Coffee & Vanilla

Takara Akegami's "Coffee and Vanilla" was often times listed as "most generic shoujo" series, and against my better judgement, I wanted to experience it – and an experience it was. Maina character Risa Shiragi is introduced within 6 panels of the first chapter, and hers backstory goes like this: timid but now good looking uni student, turning people down because of the lack of experience due to hers "unpopular saga" high school life. To ease hers mind, she goes into "Coffee and Vanilla" starbucks-like cafe, where she is being hit on by ikemen just to be saved by random, better looking guy in a suit. One event leadsto another. Rapid pace! Boom, bang, story! So by the end of the first chapter Risa, and hers savior, Hiroto Fukami, are already dating and madly in deep love. After that, in chapter two and onwards, story makes 180-turn pace vise, and events which could or rather, should take few pages, drags one chapter after another chapter, and crawl slower with each page. Offensively generic style makes this read punishing monotony initially gets broken by smutty "love" scenes. But even those become boring as character always declare mad and deep, understanding love, as if they knew each other for decades instead of days. To not spoil few sparsely scattered plot points, I can easily say that this is "50 shades of Grey" for readers who'd blush almost fainting hearing "stop, just give in" during tame kissing scene. That said, it have enough flatulent smut making it unsuitable read for underage people. Continuing, said art style makes it hard to decode age of characters, so it makes easier for target audiences self-insert. Additional characters are introduced only to move sluggish pace a bit. And yes, each extra character is copy-paste stereotype seen everywhere else to the point, it is almost surprising author bothered drawing them with any detail. To end this review somewhat positively: at any time, you can drop this series, and that's something Akegami-sensei was able to make – probably one of most offensively generic not even comic books, but reading materials of the new millenia.