Holiday Review #2: MY LOVE STORY WITH YAMADA-KUN AT LV999

Among all those new publishers are a number of digital-only apps or subscription sites making their first ventures into print.  This is just one of a handful of examples that came out this year.

MY LOVE STORY WITH YAMADA-KUN AT LV999 (Yamada-kun to Reburu Kyu-hyaku Kyu-jyu Kyu no Koi o Suru), by Mashimo.  First published in 2019 and first published in North America in 2024.

PLOT:

Akane can't believe it.  Her boyfriend convinced her to start playing an MMO, only to leave her for another girl in their guild!  She's utterly heartbroken, so she takes out some frustration in the game.  That's where she encounters Yamada, a long-time player of few words and even less sympathy.  She might not have thought more of that interaction if she hadn't gone to a tie-in event with the hopes of showing up her ex.  She runs into Yamada there and in a fit of pique declares him to be her boyfriend.  He's not willing to play along with her ruse, but he turns out to be not entirely insensitive to her and Akane finds her thoughts turning to him more and more both inside and outside the game.

STORY:

I feel like I'm not the best person to judge Yamada-Kun, as I've never been one for group gaming online in any form.  As such, I can't speak to the accuracy of how well it does or does not portray the everyday dynamics of an MMO guild.  That admittedly is not as important to this story as the potential romance, and that's a lot easier for me to speak about.

Bless Akane, she's a bit of a disaster but she's trying hard.  She's a sentimental young college girl dealing with her first break-up, so it's little wonder that her emotions are all over the place in this volume.  A big theme in this volume is her learning to let go of things, be it the necklace her ex gave her, the childhood knickknacks her mother saddles her with suddenly, or just her ex and their relationship in general.  It's a lesson most people will learn at one point or another, and having something like Yamada to fixate upon helps (even if you can argue as to how healthy that might be).

Speaking of Yamada, we have to ask: what is his deal?  Is he some flavor of neurodivergent?  Is he just a single-minded weirdo who keeps his emotions close to his chest?  A recluse who never figured out basic social graces? Your guess is as good as mine!  There's a lot about him that so far is unexplained.  Thankfully he's not a complete Asshole-kun.  He doesn't really respond to emotional appeals and won't go out of his way to help others, but he demonstrates more than once that he can be mindful of her needs, whether that's bandaging a scraped ankle or taking care of her after a drunken bender.  

As far as rom-com manga go, this is a pretty tame one.  The most novel thing going for it is that it puts as much emphasis on Akane and Yamada's online interactions as it does to their real-world ones.  It's far from the first romance manga to do this (some of you might fondly remember Recovery of a MMO Junkie), but it does add a bit of novelty when Akane has to try and parse the reactions of Yamada and others entirely through chatlogs and avatars.  Otherwise it's cute and fluffy nonsense.

ART:

There is something charming about Mashiro's art style.  The character designs are fairly streamlined, but they put a lot of care into things like their wardrobe.  They clearly had some fun designing the game avatars, almost as much fun as they had with the goofy little emoticon-style reaction shots that Akane tends to make. The backgrounds and paneling are nothing special, but I do like how they will use cut-outs in their screentones to create a sort of spotlight effect for certain moments and the patterns they use are cute without being obnoxious.

RATING:

I was a little wary of Yamada-Kun at first, but it ultimately won me over by being silly, fairly uncomplicated, and charming.  It's the perfect alternative to those yearning for romance manga without a lot of drama and featuring protagonists who are (mostly) past high school.

This series was published by Mangamo via Inklore Books.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 10 volumes available.  4 volume have been released and are currently in print.  This manga is also serialilzed digitally via the Mangamo app.

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