Akuma to Love Song

'Akuma to Love Song' or 'The Devil and her Love Song' is a refreshing manga that, as of yet, hasn't fallen into the grips of typical shoujo cliches. Something admirable, since shoujo is a narrow genre rather unforgiving to an unoriginal plot.

The manga is based around the story of Kawai Maria, a girl expelled from the prestigious St. Katria's school for violence and transferred to a very low performing public school. Once there, her sharp tongue, blunt personality and honesty - not to mention her beauty and arrogance, cause her to immediately come to blows with most of the class. Apart from two boys, Meguro and Yuusuke, who befriend this devilish girl, who has a secret for singing beautifully.

Often the mangaka can focus too much on the story and not enough on the art, or vice versa, but Toumori Miyoshi has it spot-on. The art style is one of my very favourites - close ups of the characters leaving me in awe of her work. She has a way of making every character portray exactly what she wants them too in every scene, almost like a movie, setting the mood with just a few body language changes, something rare to find (from what I've seen) in a manga.

The way it's written is poetry in itself. The story unfolds very slowly, but not so slowly you're tapping your foot waiting impatiently for it to unravel. It's so masterfully done you don't realise your being given the background, rather than the character stating it outright - it being forcefed down your throat in one steady go, you are fed bits of information until you can piece together the whole image.

The storyline is incredibly inventive and original, so you are left guessing to the twists and turns it takes. You are introduced to Kousaka 'Nippachi' Tomoyo, Ibuki Hana, Ayuuchi Nakamura and Anna Mouri, all of whom will pose problems to Maria (watch out for Anna, I will be surprised if you don't hate her as much as I did).

Maria as a character is one of the most original and most easy to empathize for, a girl who's past has caused her so much pain and trouble she just wants to wash her hands of it. She's blunt and speaks her mind, but hurts and loves like any other. Yuusuke's attempts at a "Lovely Transformation" for her will make you laugh, and at other times she will make you cry.
Meguro and Yuusuke both pose as love interests, though, as of yet (chapter 42), it is undecided exactly whom she will end up with. I like the fact the mangaka doesn't force the character into a relationship with either one suddenly, for I fear it would kill stone-dead the brilliant chemistry between them all.

Altogether, I sincerely recommend this manga to you, as one which will appeal to anyone. It has comedy, romance, slice-of-life and school stories all unravelling slowly through the story, and I swear you will eat this brilliant manga up avidly. (I check the mangascans twice a day to see if the new chapter has come out)

I had a lot of hope for this manga in the beginning, when we were presented with the strong, sassy, and "different" main lead female, Maria Kawai.

Akuma to Love Song does shake off a lot of the stereotypes surrounding shoujo manga, but those irritating cliches remain in the plot. The arcs in this story are all for the drama, and are excruciating to wait out while wholly unlikable and ridiculous antagonists come and go.

The main characters are brilliant; Maria, Meguro, and Yuusuke. And I find myself rooting for the romance in this story, despite all of the complications that are keeping it from actually happening.

But besides them, all of the supporting characters are detestable. There's no room to like the other students, and there is scarce reasoning for the unbelievable behavior of the teacher. They all dislike Maria, and it gets terribly old after a while.

Akuma to love song is mostly a pretty good but melodramatic story of a girl who is blunt and straightforward. The first few volumes were pretty good and unique and characters such as shin were the most entertaining but the story slowly going downwards towards the gutter after that. Not only did they decide to introduce the rapist of a 14 year old girl as a sympathetic character, who receives no punishment for his crime, who is forgiven by everyone and who goes on about how he loved his victim. The forgiveness angle would have been bad enough if he had to work for it, but the entire package and the way its presented just makes it feel not only vile but entirely, laughably actually, false and artifical. It shatters any suspension of disbelief and really ruined the series I think.

The art of this series is gorgeous, especially the way Maria is drawn. If you value the aesthetic beauty of a series, I would recommend it for that alone.

The story started out as really original, starring a multifaceted heroine and several other complex characters. I was always moved reading the series, feeling deeply for Maria in everything she went through, and I loved how Maria kept fighting through everything.

At some point, a few volumes before the end of the series, it suddenly felt like I was reading a completely different story. After some struggling to put my finger on exactly why, I've come up with a few possible reasons: It felt like the change in mood and character development was too abrupt to really be believable. Whereas things before had always seemed thought out, suddenly plot holes appeared, and some coincidences that felt too unbelievable. The story sent some, uh, "dubious" messages about consent in my opinion, whereas before I had felt like it had a pretty good moral compass (framing harmful actions as being as harmful as they are).

I enjoyed most of the series so much. Unfortunately, I felt disappointed by the ending. If you can bear with that possibility, I would absolutely recommend it.

I didn't have the highest expectations when I started reading this manga, but I was already completely hooked after the first chapter. The characters are not some flat boring stereotypes, I found all of them interesting, even the ones I disliked. For the first 50 chapters or so, I thought this was one of them best mangas I ever read..

Unfortunately after that there was a few things that made me seriously pissed off. First I was slightly annoyed at how Maria's personality changes, without spoiling too much, I think she gets too caught up in her feelings and become less independent, which I found a bit annoying.

But what really ruined it for me was something that happened around chapter 70, it made me so angry I went from reading the manga constantly, to ignoring it for weeks.. I did consider giving it a lower score, but up until that point I would have given this manga a 10..
I would still recommed it, because it was so great up until this point.

The art is beautiful and most importantly, the characters were easy to tell apart :P. I think in a lot of mangas the characters look exactly the same, this wasn't the case here.

I would say, try reading the first chapter, if this manga is for you, you will know after reading that one chapter. :)