Review: HONEY AND CLOVER

It's September, which means it's time for The Manga Test Drive to go back to school with a month of manga about schools. ( After all, it's safer than going back to actual schools as of this writing.) 

That being said, for all the focus that anime and manga put on high school sometimes it's nice to read a series about college for once, even if it's not perfect.

HONEY AND CLOVER (Hachimitsu to Kuroba), by Chica Umino.  First published in 2000 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Takamoto is a sophomore at an art college in Tokyo.  He lives in the broken-down men's dormitory, where he's surrounded by his equally strange (and equally poor) classmates.  There's the senior architecture student Mayama, who is always in some sort of relationship drama, as well as Morita, a bizarre and hapless slacker.  Things change for them when one of their professors introduces them to Hagu, an elfin blonde who looks like she's 12 but is in fact an artistic prodigy.  In the midst of all the wackiness all around them, all three boys end up falling for Hagu to some degree over the course of the school year.

STORY:

Looking at the cover and the imprint this was published under, you would expect Honey and Clover to be a light and fluffy shojo story.  Instead it's a slightly zany slice-of-life josei story, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

It's actually kind of unusual to see this sort of story focusing on a bunch of guys, much less college-aged ones.  Normally these sorts of stories about wacky classmates and the interactions between them tend to focus on cute high-school girls.  Those kinds of stories often tend to revolve around fanservice, which is absolutely not the case here (unless your idea of fanservice is "young men being disasters").  That being said, things do settle down as the volume progresses.  More women are introduced to the cast and the tone gets a little more serious.

If there's anything that gave me pause about this series, it was Hagu.  At times she seems sickeningly moe: tiny, shy, eccentric, and childlike in her fondness for frilly things and sweets.  She barely says more than a few sentences at any time, but seemingly every guy who meets her falls for her.  She feels less like a character and more like a collection of quirks.  It's not even like she's the only girl around! We meet other female students who look and act more like college kids.  I can only hope she gets better in later volumes because as-is she feels like the weak link in this series.

ART:

Umino's designs are rather simple and down-to-earth.  The guys in particular seem to spend a lot of time in this volume stuck in a state that's only a step or two removed from super-deformed, with big expressions and strange dark squiggles for eyes.  The biggest exception is (once again) Hagu.  The linework used on her is very fine, which only further emphasizes her fair looks and delicate stature.  

RATING:

Honey and Clover has the makings of a good slice-of-life story, but it needs to stop fawning over how cute Hagu is and let her (and everyone else) develop into a more three-dimensional character to become something that could hold my attention.

This series is published by Viz.  This series is complete in Japan with 10 volumes available.  All 10 volumes were published and are currently out of print.