Manga Review: Kare First Love, Volume 4, by Kaho Miyasaka

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: VIZ Media (Shojo)

Publish Date: 2005

Volumes: 10

Spoilers?: Some.

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Goodreads Synopsis:

Karin and Kiriya's relationship is in jeopardy after a heated argument during Club Day at Kiriya's school. The following morning, Karin gets wind that her rival Yuka went on a group date with members of Kiriya's class, but Kiriya isn't talking. Is Kiriya cheating on her? But despite Karin and Kiriya's romance blowing hot and cold, their desire to spend Christmas together is overwhelming. Too bad Karin's father has them swaying to a melancholy holiday tune instead...

Review:

This volume actually surprised me a little. I had much less hopes for it in being stereotypical, but it actually turned out better than I suspected it would.

Karin and Kiriya make up, and talk some more about the S-E-X stuff, and Kiriya feels actually bad about how he reacted, and what he said, and Karin is happy about his feeling bad. She isn’t as mad as she should be, but still—it’s better than I thought it would be. Then there’s some sweet moments between the two, them growing closer again, and her taking care of him when he gets sick.

There’s a small scare for Nanri, as she finally tells Karin about how she might be pregnant, and she tells the guy, who immediately becomes nonexistent as he avoids her, and Karin goes with her to get the pregnancy test. This just ends up worse, and they get picked up by the police, but that’s a different matter. Nanri ends up being fine, her period is just late, but she gets a lot closer with Karin because of it, and gets smarter about boys as well. It’s good that she’s not, but I also feel that it would have been exciting if she had been—that could have been an interesting turn of the plot. Anyway, I like Nanri. And she gets close to Hiromu, the friend of Kiriya’s, which is nice.

The big plot of the volume, though, is that Karin’s father is back. Her mother just seems to ignore Karin when she can, isn’t around much, but we know that she does actually care about Karin from when she got sick in a previous volume. When her father finds out she’s sneaking around with some boy, and gets in trouble with the police because of another friend of hers, he freaks out and wants her to stop hanging out with him. And her mom just stays silent through it all. Her phone is taken away, but her and Kiriya stay in contact as best she can, and they kind of decide to move in together when they get enough money saved. I don’t think that’s going to work very well, but we’ll see, I suppose.

Also, the volume ends with Kiriya and Karin back in her room, I believe, in the middle of the night, about to have sex. We’ll also see how that goes in the next volume. 

Once again, I’m liking this series so far. It’s interesting, it’s fun, it’s very drama-filled. It’s also cliché and nothing that I haven’t seen before (especially compared to Mars). But I’m enjoying it, and hope to get more soon.