Manga Review: So Cute It Hurts!!, Volume 1, by Go Ikeyamada

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: June 2, 2015

Volumes: 11+

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Kobayashi Mitsuru and Kobayashi Megumi are twin brother and sister, with identical faces but radically different personalities: while Mitsuru is a confident charmer who wins the hearts of dozens of girls, Megumi is an average otaku who is in love with a virtual hero. Yet, the two's lives start to turn upside down after Mitsuru and Megumi switch roles...

A complicated love story starts!

Review:

I’m not even sure what I was expecting with this series anymore, but I was a bit surprised.

This is about twins Megumu and Mitsuru. Mitsuru goes to an all-boys school, and when he starts failing in one of his subjects, he forces Megumu to switch places with him for a week. And on the first day, Mitsuru falls in love with a deaf girl, and gets Megumu in trouble with her popular supermodel classmate. While Megumu has to deal with the consequence of real Mitsuru hitting on a classmates girlfriend, and also falling in love with a boy with an eye-patch.

I’m intrigued, mostly. Mitsuru is a playboy with a big ego, and he’s in the kendo club. He’s learning how to tone that down, though, and use it for good, when he falls in love. And the girl he likes is a sweetheart. I like that he’s learning sign language to communicate with her.

Megumu is a lot of fun; she’s very girly and peppy, a bit of a crybaby, but I like her a lot. The guy she likes has a bit of a hard outside, but I think I’m going to like him as well.

There seems to be a bit of a mystery going on, there’s the cross-dresser element, twins, plus the love interests. The humor is very exaggerated, and it's a bit much at times; I'm hoping it calms down a little. I wasn’t expecting both twins to get so much attention and their own love interests, and that this is going to bring the twins closer together. I’m liking it so far, and look forward to the next one.

A review copy was provided by the publisher, VIZ Media, and Erik Jansen from MediaLab PR. Thank you so, so much!