Merry Month of Shojo Review #18: CHERRY JUICE

It's weird to come across a shojo manga that feels so much like a shonen ecchi manga without actually being an shonen ecchi manga.

CHERRY JUICE (Cheri Jusu), by Haruka Fukushima.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2007.

PLOT:

Minami and Otome are seemingly as normal as step-siblings can be, even if Otome's best friends all envy her for having such a hot, popular step-brother.  Then Minami's best friend, Amane, confesses to Otome and kisses her.  Now he's not sure just what the nature of his feelings towards his step-sister are, and Otome is starting to feel equally confused.

STORY:

Incest: it's not just for weird, indulgent ecchi manga!  Make no mistake, Cherry Juice is all about justifying why these two step-sibling should get together, using many of the same excuses you'll find in the grossest imouto stories.  Fukushima herself makes no excuses about it, as in her first side note she states that this series came about in part because of her own fantasies about having "a hot older brother."

I'll pause for a moment to let those of you who are older siblings or have older siblings to have a bit of a shudder.

Yet this taboo topic dovetails shockingly well into your standard shojo romance love triangle.  Fukushima just treats it as just another facet of the drama between Otome, Minami, and Amane, seemingly as normal as can be.  She definitely is counting on it to carry the story for the most part.  Otome is suitably bubbly for a shojo heroine, allowing her to serve as a counterpoint to both the cool and aloof Amane and the more temperamental Minami, but none of them are particularly complex or original character types.  If anything, Otome is little more than an object that Amane and Minami use to one-up one another.  Everyone else around them is there to serve as the world's most suspicious Greek chorus as the leads go through the usual plot motions of shojo romance (complete with a summer festival and school festival), doing their best to gaslight the main characters (and the reader) that it's totally normal - even expected - that you would totally want to kiss your attractive step-sibling.

ART:

Fukushima's art is chaotic and obnoxiously cutesy.  Her character designs call back to the 1990s with their gangly proportions and absolutely enormous eyes.  Seriously, they take up half of their faces.  This extends to the pages as well, which are a jumble of bodies, faces, messy hair, and flowery, sparkling screentones.  It's like she was afraid to leave a speck of white space.  In a weird way it fits with the energy of the story, but it also makes it all a bit hard to parse.  

The one thing that stood out to me what how much fanservice she throws in.  I'm not talking about things like princess carrying or kabedons - I'm talking having Minami stumble into seeing Otome naked (or at least in a state of undress) more than once.  Much like the incest angle, it's the sort of scenario I'm used to seeing in skeevy imouto ecchi titles and it just feels weird to see it used completely unironically in a shojo setting.

RATING:

The only thing that really distinguishes Cherry Juice from other shojo manga of its time is focus on fanservice and its incestuous love triangle.  If you can't get past that, then you're out of luck because beyond that it's nothing but cliches and gaudy art to offer.

This series was published by Tokyopop.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  All 4 volumes were released and are currently out of print.