Hana-Kimi (Hana-Kimi)

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Characters
Review: Hana Kimi is a truly entertaining manga. The powerful characterization carries the plotline along smoothly. Mizuki is a strong female lead; Dr. Umeda is perhaps the funniest adult mentor I've ever encountered in a manga; and Izumi Sano is the epitome of attractive male leads. Many of the other characters provide extra comedic relief.

If you enjoy a good laugh and plenty of gender and sexuality confusion in a straight love story, Hana Kimi will certainly make your day.

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious Hijinks
Review: I'm just starting out with reading manga, but I can tell I've found a gem in this one (only the 4th manga I'd ever read). After being sort of bored and uninspired with Kare Kano after reading two good drama/action mangas, I wasn't too trusting of the shoujo genre. Then I saw a review for Hana Kimi online. It sounded promising, and lo- Viz was putting out an english version! So, I bought it and started reading. It was very interesting from the first page on, (although Mizuki's brief bout of fangirling was a bit offputting in the first few pages). Then Nakatsu appeared, and I was lost in laughing. The whole manga was just one long string of HILARIOUS occurences. I liked it so much I bought the second volume soon as I could!

All the characters are very likeable. My favorite would be Nakatsu cause he's sooo funny and sincere at the same time. Even Sano, for all his annoying angsty behavior, gets a more agreeable personality as the volume goes on. Mizuki is a good character too, and though a bit naive, turns out to be quite strong. And of course, who could forget doctor Umeda? ^_^

The one minor beef I have is that the artist, Hisaya Nakajo, tends to draw her characters with very similar faces, so that hair color/clothing is the only way to distinguish some characters. A few times, I wasn't sure if it was Mizuki or Nakatsu I was looking at! But that's a minor thing, and does not detract too much from the story at all.

So, if you're looking for instant and constant humor, can take some moderate angst and don't mind occasional references to homosexuality and gender confusion, or just like looking at pretty boys like Sano and Nanba, this manga's for you!

Rating:
Summary: For You In Full Gender-Bending Mayhem
Review: What is the concept behind Hana-Kimi? Let's see:

- Girl sees boy
- Girl adores boy
- Girl becomes boy

And for that, the manga becomes a huge success with over 20 volumes and counting.

[IMPRESSIONS]

Japan has pulled a "Yentl" in the world of manga, and that "Yentl" is Hana-Kimi, or Hanazakari no Kimitachi E(as if anyone's gonna remember that whole name, which is good for Viz to shorten it). Shoujo has become more of an acceptable genre for me. I got up with the slice-of-life, character-driven depth that is "MARS", and now I'm getting' down with this cross-dressing pleasantry. Is the Shoujo genre really that desperate to up the ante from the monotonous boy-meet-girl idea by depending on gender-bending? Well, it worked, or else this manga wouldn't have been a success, now would it?

Mizuki Ashiya is a typical American teen girl who travels to Japan as a exchange student for an all-boys school. Why: to get close to her track-and-field idol Izumi Sano she admire since her adolescence. How: by putting on a boy's uniform and pretend to be one. The result: one oxymoron of a biased school year. Fortunately for her, her incognito worked and fooled everyone in this school, almost even a reader like myself. Without much on the T & A, she can downright pull it off for being a man(Eat your heart out, Barbara Streisand). It's too bad that the "Yentl" thing didn't last for long, as later on in the chapter, a wayward homosexual doctor knew that she was a chick when she was knocked down and was sent to the nurse's office, but he was kind enough to keep this a secret. Sadly, another person knew about her gend-bend disguise, and it was the one she idolize, Izumi, but he didn't tell her about him knowing. Great, he knows about her manly disguise, but she doesn't realize that he knows that, so he knows that she doesn't know that he knows that she's pretending to be a he...where was I? Oh yeah, then there's the bleached haired Shoichi Nakatsu. At first, he was cool with Mizuki, now he's at a "gay, not gay" situation whenever he feel aroused around Mizuki, and sometimes act goofy, and he doesn't know that guy a she(*sniff**sniff* I SMELL A LOVE TRIANGLE!).

The cross-dressing concept may be somewhat of a gimmick, but with this manga, it comes off fresh. The idea mixed well with some above-par standards of a shoujo title: character development, back stories, exposed feelings, and a hint of gags. The story and humor drags down a little, and the characters are too similar by their facial structure, but other than that, the manga is solid and actually fun to read. Hana-Kimi has some nifty extras contained in this graphic novel. First off is the author's earlier work, "The Cage of Summer", which is about a girl who fell in love with her second cousin who is basically a ladies man, a nicotine addict, and a jerk, but the feelings around him couldn't be avoided. Weird incest material, and "MARS", it is not, but it's nostalgic at its best. Another extra is "The Osaka High School Dorms", which shows and informs the different dorms in this manga, plus a drawn blueprint of a room's interior. She may not be an architect, but she's good. There's also a short comic about the author working on a manga from her past, "Everyday Life", and her short discography.

To be frank, I'm quite discomfort about Hana-Kimi. This is the first volume, and already, two people know about the main character's identity. If she was to be exposed in front of the whole crowd within a few volumes, and continues to story from then on, I would eventually see this as another tedious which-boy-gets-the-girl romancer. But I trust Hisaya Nakajo, and if she can continue with the whole gender-bending phase for the rest of this series, I would definitely enjoy reading her upcoming volumes.