Sukitte Ii na - Say I Love You
Title: Sukitte Ii na - Say I Love You
Type: Manga
Artist(s): HAZUKI Kanae
Status in Home Country: Unknown (5 Volumes)
Scanslation Status: Ongoing, Ch 13+
Scan Groups: Karma Fall Scanlations, CoyoMoose Scans, Midnight Scans, Sporadic Scanlations
Genre(s): Comedy, Romance, School Life, Shoujo, Smut
Summary: Mei Tachibana has spent her 16 years without making either friends or a boyfriend. One day, she injures the most popular boy in school, Yamato Kurosawa, because of a misunderstanding. For some reason he takes a liking to her and one-sidedly claims that they're friends. Furthermore, he not only protects Mei from a stalker, he does it with a kiss!
Review: At a glance, this is a typical shoujo where you have a plain girl hooking up w/ the most popular and hottest guy. However, I’m uncertain whether I like this heroine or not. She’s a plain Jane, w/ no remarkable skills, talent, or looks. Her only redeeming feature seems to be her straight forwardness, but she still never speaks her mind about her own emotions. On the flip side, the guy is super hot, willing to quit modeling because of her jealous insecurities, vocalizes his love for her, and waits patiently for her all the time.
In one way, the heroine, Mei, appears to be more realistic to an everyday type of girl who would rather not have any friends so that she can never suffer any betrayal. But in another, she’s kind of depressingly pitiful in that she suffers bullying quietly, drowns in self doubt and insecurity, and doesn’t really seek to improve herself. Like the heroine, I can’t quite see why Yamamoto would be in love w/ her. He’s gorgeous and kind, so of course anyone would fall for him. To be honest, I actually like the pairing of his best friend w/ the heroine more. They have more in common.
For whatever reason, the mangaka chose to have every character have some sort of dark past that involved bullying, which kind of got eye rolling boring. Do all villains need to have a dark past? That being said, the story was a bit hard to put down, and made me curious about what would happen next in the drama. You can find the summary of the rest of the raws up to Ch 23 here: http://bebexiushoujo.blogspot.com/2009/08/sukitte-ii-na-yo.html.
Rate: 6/10