Merry Month of (Shojo) Manga: CRIMSON HERO

There's a long tradition of shojo manga about volleyball, going all the way back to Attack No. 1.  Today's selection is an example from the 2000s that would be great...if not for the lack of actual sports action.

CRIMSON HERO (Beni-iro Hiro), by Mitsuba Takanashi.  First published in 2003 and first published in North America in 2005.

PLOT:

Nobara is a 15-year-old and heir apparent to her mother's traditional Japanese restaurant, but she couldn't care less.  While her younger sister Souka is the very picture of femininity, but all Nobara wants to do is play volleyball.  Her obsession leads her to Crimson Field High School, which is renowned for its volleyball team...its men's volleyball team.  Nobara is determined to play, though.  She's so determined that she's even willing to go so far as install herself as house mother to the men's team in the hopes of winning them over to play on their team, all in the hopes of pursuing her dream.

STORY:

Crimson Hero is marketed as as sports drama, and while it succeeds greatly as the latter, it's rather lacking thus far on the former.  

Takanashi takes great pains to establish Nobara and her dilemma.  I love how unrepentantly stubborn and tomboyish Nobara is, and her frustration is vivid.  Her mother, on the other hand, only gets increasingly ridiculous with each new plot twist.  The solution to her need for an heir to her restaurant is all but staring her in the face, but instead she's determined to ruin her eldest child's life and force her into a role she does not want solely because Nobara is the eldest child, and Nobara's reactions are just as over-the-top in return.  Sure, it all makes for good drama and good motivation, but the melodrama of it all sticks out like a sore thumb.

Crimson Hero also may be shaping up to be a bit of a reverse harem on top of everything else.  She's already managed to win over the token Childhood Friend (Habuiki) and Tsundere (Yushin) respectively, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a handful of other teammates with personalities that fit into some of the usual reverse harem character types join them after too long.  Nobara has no time for romance though.  She's busy enough coping with all the household duties that come with maintaining a boy's dorm (and anyone who has ever seen how sloppy teen boys can get knows how hard that job would be), on top of trying to convince every woman on campus that crosses her path to join a women's volleyball team.

You've probably noticed that while I've talked about lot about Nobara, I've not really mentioned much about volleyball.  That's Crimson Hero's biggest problem: with all the time it takes to establish the premise, there's no room in this first volume to have anyone show off their skills.  We don't even get to see Nobara practice on her own or something in that vein, something that would prove her skill to the reader.  It's not even like it's building up to her first match - it feels instead like Takanashi forgot what the series was meant to be about, and her reader's patience may not extend long enough for her to finally get to that point.

ART:

Takanashi's art is polished and confident.  While her character's faces do tend to look all the same, she has a fine sense of dimension, detail and emotion.  Otherwise, it's fairly standard as far as shojo art from the 2000s is concerned.

RATING:

Crimson Hero has some good story hooks going for it and a compelling heroine, but it needs to make the volleyball just as much of a priority as the drama around Nobara and to do so soon.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 20 volumes available.  14 volumes were published and is currently out of print.