"Manga Mitai na Koi Shitai!"
(Fall in Love Like a Comic)
by Chitose YAGAMI
ISBN# 4-09-138152-9
Ciao Comics, 2003

It was actually the title of this manga that prompted me to buy it. The 'official' English title for the series is 'Fall in Love Like a Comic', but that translation seems a little odd to me. It should be something more along the lines of 'I want a love like in a manga!'. As one who reads a lot of shoujo manga, and sees so many hot bishounen, perfect guys on their pages, I can understand this sort of sentiment ^_^ I giggled a whole lot while reading this because it is just so darn cute and unrealistic! I really enjoyed this art style. It has a high cute factor, and the subject matter is so amusing!

Our heroine is Rena, a schoolgirl who has a secret life as a manga artist! Not only is she a manga artist, her manga stories are published in Chami magazine, and often have smutty H scenes in them! The only person at her school who knows is her best friend Yun. It seems highly unlikely that a manga publisher would hire a schoolgirl (I think she is in middle school) to draw smutty stories, but who knows ^^;; Anyway, while her stories may get steamy, Rena's real life is not. She, along with just about every other girl in her school, is in love with OKITA Tomoya. He is the most popular boy at school, and all the girls drool over him. Rena has never had a real boyfriend.

Rena manages to meet Tomoya in the usual shoujo manga fashion: She runs right into him. Spazzing over how great he is and how embarrassed she is to have collided with him, she leaves the scene without realizing that she left behind a very important envelope. In the envelope are the rough sketches of her latest manga. They are from a very steamy scene. Tomoya, of course, picks up the envelope and surprised when he views the contents! Thus begins the strange relationship between Rena and Tomoya. He seems fascinated that she is a shoujo mangaka, but he scoffs at her H scenes. His theory is that they could be greatly improved if she had a boyfriend to practice all that H stuff on. And he volunteers himself! It's purely to help her improve the quality of her work of course. Rena, not one to turn down the hottest guy at school when he wants to date her, agrees to use him as a lab rat for experimenting all the relationship stuff on so that her manga will be more realistic! She finally has a boyfriend who is like a guy in a manga!

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