rmthunter's Full Review: Hyouta Fujiyama - Ordinary Crush 1: Yaoi
Hyouta Fujiyama, who created Spell and Lover's Flat, both of which I have discussed in "Reviews in Brief" at Hunter at Random, has also ceated a complex of stories that begins with Ordinary Crush. Most of them take place at Kinsei High, a highly regarded all-boys' school which is rumored to have a student body that is 90% gay or bi. Many of the students go on to Kinsei University. Since the stories are so heavily interlinked, I'll be dealing with both volumes of Ordinary Crush, as well as offering some comments on other titles in the series.
Ordinary Crush is the story of Koichi Nanase, whom we meet as a second-year student at Kinsei High, and Tsuguharu Taira, also known as Heiji, a first-year. Both belong to the volleyball club, Heiji because he's good at it, being fairly tall, and Nanase because he loves volleyball, even though he's smaller than average. Both are also among the few straight guys at the school, and Heiji proposes that they pretend to be boyfriends to avoid unnecessary hassles with amorous classmates, although the overriding reason, according to Heiji, is that he's being stalked by a girl and he likes someone else. (The "stalker" is Heiji's childhood friend, Azuma Ohno, who is actually enamored of Nanase and is the sister of Ryuhei, who figures in the romance of Furuya and Aikawa and is the central character of Sunflower [see below].) Nanase somewhat hesitantly agrees to Heiji's plan. Eventually, he realizes that he has fallen in love with Heiji, and when this comes bubbling up, Heiji confesses that he proposed their charade because he was in love with Nanase but didn't want to scare him away. The two are now definitely together, despite the attempts of others to separate them. (One such plot leads to a very funny scene between Nanase and one of the plotters -- a recurring character named Okouchi -- who has managed to have Nanase catch Heiji in a compromising situation with Mizusawa, a cute little first-year who has liked Heiji since middle school. I won't go into detail, but imagine Okouchi's dismay when he discovers that Nanase's concerns about the situation are just the opposite of what he hoped for.) The second part of the story revolves around Mizusawa's attempts to break the lovebirds up.
The second volume revolves around the boys' difficulties with Nanase's older brother, Youichi, who doesn't approve of their relationship, and approves even less when he realizes that his little brother is the bottom. (One spin-off, Freefall Romance, is about Youichi's own romantic entanglement with a work partner from his company's ad agency; it's a strange, spiky kind of story, and very well done.)
Mizusawa is the center of one of the ongoing side stories. He's an adorable little guy who has an unfortunate tendency to jump to conclusions and falls in love too readily, first with Heiji, then with Saijo, an ongoing character who is plugged into all the school gossip and also happens to be cousin to the school's handsome young doctor, Kazuhjiro Asano, whom almost every boy in the school has a crush on. Needless to say, Asano gets involved in Mizusawa's amours, mostly in providing a private place to cry and be comforted. The comfort goes a little farther than either of them expected, however.
Another ongoing side story is about the romance between Furuya, a Kinsei graduate who helps out the volleyball club, and Aikawa, who has been in love with him since high school. Furuya's "type" is small, cute, and lively, much more along the lines of Koichi Nanase than Aikawa, who tops Furuya by three-and-a-half centimeters and is a shy, earnest young man who is also a bit of an innocent. This one is equal parts comedy and romance, and is really heartwarming, particularly the story about these two in Sunflower titled "Love Takes Two." (The romance between Aikawa and Furuya also forms the basis of the first chapter of Sunflower. Ryuhei, the main character in that series, is one of the most appealing I've run across in this genre.)
The third ongoing story, and the only one that has nothing to do with Kinsei High, is the story of a writer named Narita and his android, Akira, foisted on him by his mother. Narita is a fairly bad-tempered, misanthropic sort who finds himself getting more and more involved with Narita, who is busily teaching himself to be more human. It's an interesting foray into the question of what constitutes attraction, liking, and love.
I've mentioned before that I enjoy Funiyama's stories immensely: she manages to come up with interesting plotlines, well-developed characters, and her graphic style is lean and expressive, all of which serve to make her one of my favorite mangaka. Koichi is a delight: small, volatile, a bit of an airhead who definitely has his own way of looking at things, which tends to throw a monkey-wrench into the story line from time to time. Heiji is cool, laid-back, charming, a little devious, and fortunately, immensely patient. The other characters are equally interesting and consistent, even if some of them aren't particularly likeable.
As I've noted, this is the core of a complex of stories all linked together by Kinsei High and the characters who make appearances across the group. The Ordinary Crush volumes in particular start to take on the feel of a soap opera, with scenes involving different characters that all fit into a larger narrative. Ordinary Crush and the spin-offs I've mentioned are all highly recommended.
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