Mamotte! Lollipop

Review Date: 2008 January 13 10:44

Reviewed by: Azure

Released by: Tanoshimi

Publishing Country: UK

Author: Michiyo Kikuta

Age Rating: 13+

Page Count: 208

ISBN-13: 978009950677

ISBN-10: 99506777

Summary

Love is in the air or at least the soup, Nina accidentally mixes love potion in with the curry and suddenly everyone is head over heals in love with her. It also appears someone has a fiancée but has neglected to mention the fact to anyone, so it's a bit of a shock when the said fiancée shows up.

Review

Sugar. Mind numbingly super sweet sugar, in manga form. Three volumes in and it's incredibly hard to shake that feeling off, still. The opening chapter treads the well worn love-potion set up. Rokka brews a love potion in order to ensnare Ichi, she leaves it unattended and Nina accidentally puts it into the curry the group is brewing. Cue lots of misunderstandings, as most of the reoccurring cast start chasing Nana around the woods ( which is very Shakespearian in a fluffy sort of way.)


There's also some more classic rom-com plotting as Zero's 'fiancée' shows up out of the blue, and starts very aggressively and slightly creepily trying to win over Zero. Whilst the idea is that Kuku has gotten all her ideas on how to behave from a "hot-to" book for adults, thing do end up veering towards the disturbing even if they are actually pretty funny.

This volume also including the bonus short " Sun on the 17th of July" a self contained short which explains some of the back-story between Sun and Forte. Whilst it's still sickenly sweet there's something really touching about the story, since it's short the pacing is top notch and the more serious plot line adds some much needed depth.

Mamotte! Lollipop is fluff pure and simple, but after three volumes I'm actually starting to care for the characters. Whilst the story is supposed to be a comedy it would be nice if it touched upon the serious a little more often. After all comedy and tragedy often go hand in hand.

Rating: 7/10