Daijoubu

• Art: 5
• Story: 3
• Shoujo Rating: 3

Super Condensed Plot Summary: Kohanamaru (Hanamaru) arrives in the big city and barely leaves the train before he switches bodies with Nanao and is sent on a date with the guy she likes named Konatsu, who turns out to be his own brother. They can switch back by kissing each other, but on their second switch they take too long and are stuck, but soon discover that a kiss from Konatsu can put them back. Its complicated and its a love triangle too!

I enjoyed the manga Your and My Secret, which also had a boy-girl body swap theme, but that was one of those many ADV titles that fell by the wayside after the first volume a few years ago. That one had a single swap near the beginning, and the story was about the consequences–how the characters dealt with their new situations of being in a new body of the opposite sex for the long term. On the other hand, this one has frequent swaps (3), so the story is not so much about how they deal with being in the other’s body. Instead, the swapping here (at least in this first volume) is more a device to create situations to forward the love triangle plot. I mean, they get over their shock at switching the first time pretty fast and launch right into a date scenario with Konatsu!

I’m still trying to decide what a shoujo rating should represent, but I suppose the highest rating (a 10) would be like the best parts of something like Fruits Basket, where the angsty intensity and introspective character-driven dialogue just hits me with a feeling that I’m experiencing a real shoujo moment. Its hard to put the feeling into words! Whatever it is exactly, this manga doesn’t reach that level, but there is a hint that something interesting might develop in the remaining two volumes of this series. There are some good love triangle elements, with characters who (typically) have yet to discover what they really feel. The character of Konatsu is particularly difficult to pin down (I think this is a shoujo staple–the moody guy who’s hard to understand). Its hard to figure out why Nanao would be so interested in him, except for a childhood memory (a Love Hina-like mystery). But by the end Konatsu lays down a challenge for Kohanamaru, so it could get a lot more intense and, since this is shoujo, the characters’ figuring-out of their own hearts is what its all about.