Holiday Review #8: TEPPEKI HONEYMOON

Of course, we got plenty of shojo manga this year as well (even if it continues to be a struggle to get anyone - even the publishers - to make a big deal out of it).  We even got some new titles from older, proven creators like this one.

TEPPEKI HONEYMOON (Teppeki Hanimun), by Meca Tanaka.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2025.

PLOT:

Ena's been trying to hold her family business together with nothing but hard work and her unusual strength, but that alone can't save her from the millions of yen in debt hanging over her head.  A chance encounter with a strange young man leads to her getting summoned to the Kugo security company.  They want only the strongest young woman to marry their son Kanae, but Kanae just wants them to stop so he live and work in peace.  Eventually he and Ena come to an agreement: he'll pay off her debts in full if she's willing to pose as his fiancé for two months.  That sounds simple enough, but what happens when the lines between reality and the ruse start to blur?

STORY:

'Forced to pose as a couple' is not all that unusual of a premise for a shojo manga.  I did at least hope that Ena's super-strength and the involvement of Meca Tanaka would be enough to make it a little different.  After all, this isn't the first time I've talked about her work and she's managed to make the most of far sketchier premises than this in the past.  Yet Teppeki Honeymoon struggles more than those previous titles to find its footing.

Maybe it's Ena.  There's not much to her personality-wise, and her unusual strength seldom comes into play narratively.  She's mostly there just to react, whether with dropped-jawed shock at something outrageous or full-body blushes anytime Kanae enters her personal space.  Kanae doesn't make the best first impression either, as a lot of the early chapters focus more on his childish tendencies than his otherwise gentle good nature.  It doesn't help that Tanaka relies more than she should on having others exposit about him within earshot of Ena, or that those early chapters can feel very confined because they take place almost entirely in Kanae's apartment.

It's only in the last chapter that this series (and Kanae and Ena's status as an increasingly not-fake couple) finally starts to take shape.  It's there that it finally sinks in for both Ena and the reader just how long Kanae has had to fight his own family (sometimes literally) to prove his worth as a person and heir.  They value only physical strength, and they see Kanae's reliance on cunning and his dead mother as proof of his unworthiness.  This also gives Ena an opportunity to put her own strength to use, instead of having it serve as fuel for her all-too-cliché insecurities about Not Being Properly Feminine.  It's the point where the story finally rises above the gimmicks and finds its heart, but how many readers will be patient enough to get to that point?

ART:

Visually, this series is very much in the vein of the other Tanaka manga I've talked about in the past: cute, competent, and very typical of modern shojo manga art.  That being said, she is clearly too used to drawing teenagers - you'd never guess by looking at them that Ena and Kanae are supposed to be 18 and 25, respectively.  

This one has fewer cute flourishes and physical comedy than I've seen in her past work, which I suspect is a side effect of spending most of the book inside a single apartment.  It improves some in that final chapter when Ena gets to enjoy a bit of a makeover and we finally see some new territory and characters.  I guess you could call this a fairy down-to-earth book looks-wise but is that what people come to Meca Tanaka (and shojo manga as a whole) for?

PRESENTATION:

I will admit that part of my motivation for picking this series in particular was my desire to see if One Peace Books had improved after their disastrous handling of Tales of the Tendo Family last year.  There's definitely been some improvement - at the very least, there are no words literally spilling out of their space.  That said, there's still some issues with weird font choices, small amounts of text in large speech bubbles, and some awkwardness in Laura Egan's translation that could have likely been smoothed out with a little more editorial input.  It's not enough to completely mar the release, but it shows that they still have some work to do.

RATING:

Teppeki Honeymoon has an awkward start, but manages to shape itself into something pleasant by the end of the first volume.  I don't think it's the mangaka's best work, but it's pleasant and familiar enough that shojo manga fans would enjoy it.

This manga is published by One Peace Books.  This series is complete in Japan with 8 volumes available.  1 volume has been released and is currently in print.

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