Print Review: Kare Kano Volumes 1-10

Review Kare Kano Volumes 1-10Written by WarpshadowRating Excellent

Character interaction is important to any manga but for shojo it truly is the genre's heart. In the case of Kare Kano that heart is a heart of gold.

There was nothing more important to Yukino Miyazawa than to be praised. When she entered high school an obstacle to be being adored entered her life. That obstacle is Soichiro Arima, a boy who is just as perfect as Yukino. So she begins a war for supremacy with Arima until he discovers the truth one day; the image of a perfect student that everybody thought was Yukino was nothing more than a false front. However even if she doesn't realize it at the time tthe the may may just mark the beginning of Yukino's real life.

When it comes to anime and manga many stories have some sort of gimmick. Kare Kano on the other has enough faith in it's own characters to rely on a fantastical premise. Although it does have the main characters the manga does follow several other characters, largely because character development occurs at a steady pace and the story could have become stalled otherwise. It also includes some other one chapter stories that do not connect with the main story but are nice to read. This manga is still worthwhile to those that have seen the anime, volume 9 being especially interesting to those people as it ties up several of the anime's loose ends. Overall if someone has seen the anime I could call the manga more of the same but given that I think the anime is some of the best Shojo ever I would hardly consider that an insult.