Hit the “Random” button and see what comes up! In this feature, we take a look at whatever manga the Random Number God decides to throw at us and find out if it’s worth your time.

This time: Aka no Yuuwaka, by Nanao Mio

Iro’s deep in the throes of NANOWRIMO despair, so I, your writer who didn’t have enough determination to last half that long, am here to fill in.

I swear i didn’t cheat. The first thing that popped up was a shoujo oneshot.

Fresh out of college, Hitomi Nomiya is a high school teacher who constantly gets in trouble with her highers up. After getting caught disposing of contraband beer the old fashioned way, she finds herself blackmailed by the school’s “prince” Sakou. As she helps him in his house she finds herself falling for the greatest taboo, an attraction to her own student.

This is a pretty simple set up honestly. The only real outside the box idea is a student-teacher relationship. The most readily apparent theme is that of temptation. The use of pomegranates is interesting, as it’s really an uncommon fruit. I imagine it’s supposed to be a symbol of that temptation, as the title implies, Hitomi continually finds herself staring at his hands for no real reason except they’re “pretty”. Hitomi never really seems to have much of a character, and I get she’s supposed to be young but she just acts like shes still a high schooler in the guise of a teacher. I suppose it’s somewhat hard to establish that in the 50 pages a typical oneshot gets, but I felt more could have been done to build each person instead of having them stare longingly like every shoujo ever.

What is it with pretty boys that gives them a natural predeliction to disregarding people’s personal space?

Same can be said of our love interest Sakou. On the nice to douchebag scale of pretty boy personality archetypes he is on the jerkish side, straight up blackmailing his teacher. It’s meant to be the catalyst for his seduction but it still doesn’t make it seem any less exploitative on his part. He himself has even less personality than Hitomi, only given character through offhand comments made by those around him. It really is lazy to depict character by implications of ability rather than application of said ability.

By the end it makes it seem like there’s a deep mental struggle Hitomi has by the end of it about whether to follow her feelings or maintain the proper relationship with her student. However, nothing is really shown to imply this infatuation is anything but skin deep. Of course we know what path she’ll take in the end because this is shoujo and you always have to follow feelings instead of rationality. Unfortunately I and my grade-school maturity kinda ruined the ending, as her final line is translated as “Give it to me.” Yeah. Seriously.

Verdict: If you really find yourself possessed to read a very by the numbers shoujo story then this is for you, but otherwise I wouldn’t bother. It’s just more of the tired shoujo formula of shy girl getting the interest of the popular boy, with the only difference being the added taboo of a student-teacher relationship. It might just be that My Little Monster’s fresh take on the typical shoujo relationship has poisoned me to the old archetypes, but I think you can definitely find better shoujo elsewhere.