Last weekend, I decided to try a new series, and I bumped into
Suzuka; a manga about a nice, but kind of clumsy guy called Akitsuki Yamato. He gets an invitation from his aunt; to come and live rent-free in her boarding house and baths in Tokyo. Just one catch; this boarding house of her is girls only, but that's not really a problem, since the tenants agreed on him living there.
His neighbour is Asahina Suzuka, a track-and-field star, on who he has a serious crush ever since he saw her for the first time.
To top it all off, two of the other tenants are partygirls, and one of them can't really hold her liquor and when she's been drinking, she tends to believe the only thing guys are after is her ample bosom. Since our hero is somewhat of a klutz, you know what's coming, and Suzuka herself often gets the wrong idea about Yamato. It has a
Love Hina-y feel to it, with a dash of Tina from
Ai Yori Aoshi.
Is that a bad thing? No, not in this case, as the manga progresses in a pretty normal way, Suzuka is not your run-off-the-mill Naru Narusegawa and is not blind for Yamato's personality, and the story in general is a pleasant read.
It's got some heavy fanservice too (that's what you get for placing the whole story in a ladies-only boarding house and spa), so Del Rey slapped the Mature-rating on it. However, it's not all tits and ass, so it's not that bad compared to some other manga I've read.
All in all nice to read, so I'm going to pre-order myself volume two; that one hits the stores at the end of November.
Cheers, K.