At ALA I picked up a couple of advance copies of some manga that viz is going to be publishing in the next few months, Doubt! by Kaneyoshi Izumi (to be published 2/2/05) and Times Two by Shouko Akira.

Doubt! is the story of Ai Maekawa, a nerdy girl in junior high. She’s about to graduate and she’s worried that since she never gets noticed by boys she’s going to be doomed to remain a virgin forever. She’s determined to leave her jimi (studious and plain) image behind, so she spends the summer before high school dedicated to transforming her image. She is rewarded when she is singled out by the most popular boys in school, So Ichinose and his best friend Yuichihiro Kato, as soon as she steps on campus. However, she soon finds out that being popular comes with a new set of problems. People start making assumptions about her because she’s pretty, and as she’s thrown into new social situations she begins to discover that she has a difficult time maintaining her popular girl persona. Ai is able to improvise when things don’t go her way and So and Yuichihiro always seem to be around to help her out, but by the end of the volume she has met a formidable enemy.

The art is attractive, and reminds me of a mix between Hot Gimmick and I.N.V.U. The tone of the book is comedic and over the top, as the characters tackle the serious social issues of high school with empassioned proclamations like “Pretty girls aren’t born…they’re manufactured!!!!”
Doubt! was very entertaining.

Times Two is a standalone volume with several short stories focusing on the beginning of romance. Various characters develop relationships over a school field day, a can of soda, gardening and summer school, accidental psychic powers, and the idea of UFO’s. I thought Times Two was similar in tone and format to the first volume of Land of the Blindfolded (which had one main story and two back-up stories). But the characters in Times Two had less depth, perhaps because ths stories were so short. It was pleasant enough to read, but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Sort of like eating cotton candy, it is momentarily sweet and then it dissolves! If you like reading disposable teen romance, it is ok. Sometimes it is nice to read a single volume of manga that stands on its own, without having to read a multi-volume series.