Manga A Day : Honey and Clover chapters 1 & 2

Amazon.com: Honey and Clover, Vol. 1: Books: Chica Umino ISBN: 1421515040 ISBN-13: 9781421515045

Day two of my Manga a Day blog post challenge (to myself.) I feel like I should make up some sort of Momiji styled name for it but I haven't come up with anything yet. Any suggestions?

Day 1 was Fruits Basket volume 17 and I wrote a lot. Day two instead of doing a full volume I'm going to put in my reaction to the first two chapters of Honey and Clover in  the September 07 issue of Viz's ShojoBeat.

When this first came out in Japan in 2000, I immediately started to hear a buzz and started getting hearing people say it's a manga I should read. At the time it came out I didn't have time to track down translations of anything besides Fruits Basket so I pretty much missed it's first wave. So I was pretty excited to hear that it had been licensed.

I have to say, from the first two chapters at least I'm not seeing where all the excitement is. The first chapter introduces us to a pretty wide array of cast members, all art students and living in a run down dorm near campus. The three main characters seem to Yuta Takemoto, a second year student, Shinobu Morita a 6th year senior, and Hagu Hanamoto a baby-faced 18 year old girl. (Seriously, she looks about 12.)

There are things I liked, like the very realistic swarming of the art students at the thought of free food. I also like the "art angst" when Takemoto sees Hagu at work on her sculpture. I still get uncomfortable when I see someone doing some great piece of art, I feel like I haven't done enough myself or that I've wasted time. When you're in art school you can often get the feeling that everyone else is clued in and you're left behind. Thats one thing the creator of this manga managed to capture very well in a very short scene.

I also liked Morita's crazy antics, like creating the fairie website with photos of Hagu and his bizarre sculptures. He's not terribly believable yet, but it did make me laugh. It bothers me that Hagu doesn't seem to talk. I checked, she only speaks once and that's in a flashback where she's trying to get away from Morita.

It's hard to judge on just two chapters, and I did enjoy what I read. I just haven't seen a reason to care about any of the characters yet. And the interest in Hagu is faintly disturbing to my western sensibilities, it skeeves me that two guys who look like they're college age showing interest in someone who looks like an elementary student. Perhaps I've watched too many episodes of "To Catch a Predator."