Although Hot Gimmick is widely referred to as the manga of feminist shame among some blogs, I still hold some fondness for the series despite not liking the way it ended very much. Miki Aihara is a master at writing gripping soap operas about downtrodden heroines. So I was excited when I saw the latest issue of Shojo Beat on the newsstand with the first chapter of Honey Hunt.

The downtrodden heroine in this manga is Yura, who has the misfortune to be the child of celebrities. Her mother is a famous actress and her father is a successful composer. Her teachers at school always hold up her parents as an example to her, but Yura isn’t particularly talented. One of her few friends is Shin, the boy next door who tutors her.

The first chapter packs more soap opera plot twists in a few pages than you’d expect to see in a collected volume of manga. There’s the drudgery of Yura’s life in high school. Her parents decide to get divorced. Shin betrays Yura in a spectacular fashion. Yura’s mother is a raging bitch. Yura bumps into a cute musician who wrote the theme song to her mother’s TV show. Her father sends his manager Keiichi to Japan to look after Yura during the divorce. Yura has to move into a hotel to escape the media frenzy. She has a meltdown on TV, and it is pretty clear that both Keiichi and the composer dude are interested in her. What will she do now that she’s been abandoned by both her parents?!

The tough thing about a new series being serialized in Shojo Beat is that it takes forever for the collected volume to come out. I’m excited about this series, it looks like it will be full of over the top drama. I’m just sad I have to wait until April 2009! There’s an online preview of the series at the Shojo Beat web site.