Sekaiichi Hatsukoi is the Yaoi-Anime I will watch next spring, so I decited to check it out a bit and since there’re only 3 scnalated chapters, it really is more like a short preview into the material. By the way, I’m totally convinced the other chapters will be scanlated pretty fast after the anime comes out and I will read them as well, because the impression this manga gave me was actually not that bad. In fact, it was better than I expected.
First things first, this story is about an editor who is forced to work in the Shoujomanga-department, altough he wanted to be an editor for literature. Wow, this is what I call professionals: place someone who applies to work with novels and has no idea about manga whatsoever in the manga-department. It turns out is boss is an ass. It also turns out, his boss is his first love from 10 years ago he has sworn to never love again. Truth to be told, I don’t really like this incredible unlikely coincidences, like… your first love from 10 years ago turns out to be your boss. Or: the very same person turns out to be your neighbor (I’m not making this up, it’s all in the manga). Yeah, the world is small, huh? It’s so unconvincing and feels forced, that’s why I don’t like it.
Well… yeah, this is one thing I don’t like. The other is that the main character (the uke, btw) who swears to himself to not fall in love with his former lover again, actually rushes into having a crush on him again pretty fast. He may not want to, he may try to fight against it, but he’s falling in love with him much too fast. Ok, it’s pretty clear he will eventually fall in love with him again at some point, but come on! We’re in chapter 3. This is volume 2 and a manga I expect to be a little longer than just 2 volumes. (note: it is longer than just 2 volumes)
Next: the art – yes I’m still going on about the stuff I don’t like, so don’t expect me to praise it too much. While I wouldn’t really call it bad (at least it’s better than in Junjou Romantica, same Mangaka btw), it’s overall… ok. I can live with it, I’ve seen much worse. What’s really pissing me off, are the kisses. I’ve lost count on how many badly drawn kisses I’ve seen, but there are certain things artists (in this case: Mangaka) tend to do wrong. Sometimes, you don’t even see anything touching, or it looks weird with their lips or… whatever, for Sekaiichi Hatsukoi it’s the “one character looks like he’s eating the other”-phenomenon. even for a french kiss, you don’t need to look like you’re trying to bite a good amount of flesh out of his face. No om nom nom for you while kissing. And they do kiss… more often than I’d like to see. It’s actually not that good when the panel that’s supposed to move me and draw me into the manga, makes me look away. I’m not kidding, I really don’t want so see those kisses, I’m seriously skipping the panels.
Well, I hope the anime will do it better.
Now, finally: what’s left that I like? Altough our main character is the uke, at first he doesn’t seem too shy. He screams, he gets loud, he gets pissed, he wants to quite his job, because he doesn’t like it, but on the other hand he wants to achieve something without the help/name of his successful father, so he stays. And he doesn’t want his boss / former lover to just do like he pleases (e.g. kissing him). If only the huge blush would disappear… What’s pissing me off a bit is he’s seriously melting away as soon as he’s in contact with bis former lover. It’s like his character disappears and all what’s left is the shell of an average uke. I’m really worried he might turn into a boring uke as soon as there’s something like a relationship between those two. I want him to stay more active, to be stubborn and all this. His “better half” is a pretty outgoing seme after all… I’d really like these two to break out of the classic seme/uke-pattern a bit and it seems like our seme has some kind of weak spot, too. Please, please, please, I’d love that so much.
Let’s move on, what else do I like? Their age is not too far apart. I don’t like the 30+ year old successful businessman x 18-year old naive little guy – kind of stories. Probably because the seme/uke-pattern is going “to the extreme!” (KHR-reference here) in cases like this. I’m also bored by the Highshcool Romances, it’s always the same old stuff anyway (exception: “Seven Days” is really great, check it out), so it’s refreshing to see two adults who’re more or less… normal. No Mafia, no illegal work, no politicans, just people working in an editorial department. This is a real life situation for me, these are normal people I want to know something about. Probably because their life is normal, I’m more interested in what’s out of the ordinary in their lives.
Completely unrelated: I’m reading Bakuman and you often get to see how the famous “Weekly Shounen Jump” works, you get a pretty good view behind the scenes and it’s weird to see a different mangadepartment now, especially since they’re hardly alike at all. You have to admit Bakuman is a manga that has it’s main focus on drawing and publishing manga, while Sekaiichi Hatsukoi is more about the relationship between our main characters and less about the manga they’re editing/publishing. They could be working in a factory for chopsticks and it wouldn’t be different at all.
So, after 3 chapters (yes, all this text is only about the first 3 chapters. xD I swear, I don’t understand Japanese and I haven’t looked into the following chapters) I’ve come to the conclusion that this manga has it’s flaws, pretty annoying ones so to speak, but it’s not too bad. It actually managed to leave a pretty good impression despite all the stuff I’ve been mocking about and I think it’s an anime I can look foward to. The manga really raised my expectations for the upcoming anime and I’m glad I took a look into it, before the start of the springseason.
PS: sorry about the mistakes in the text (typing, grammar…), but it’s 2:45am here right now, I’m tired and I’ll crawl into my bed as soon as I’m finished with this very sentence.
A Glass of Manga 
