Wild Ones (manga, vol. 3) by Kiyo Fujiwara

There are a few spoilers in this post, but I don't think they're too major.

Synopsis:

This volume starts off silly and perhaps a little creepily, with a panty thief storyline. A couple of the yakuza guys find sexy underwear lying on the floor in the house and immediately assume they are Sachie's. Rather than give them to her or pretend they didn't see them and somehow arrange for her to find them, the guys pick them up and then have to find a way to get them back into her underwear drawer. Meanwhile, a panty thief is on the loose, but who would be so stupid as to break into a yakuza household?

In the next part of the volume, Sachie wins two free tickets to a hot spring, but in the end everyone goes with her because she can't possibly ask only one person to go. While there, Rakuto has a period of emotional instability after he overhears Sachie's grandfather saying, "I want Sachie to be with an honest, good man. Not yakuza like us..." Then Sachie is kidnapped by a man from Rakuto's (and Sachie's mother's!) past. On the kidnapper's orders, Rakuto must get to Sachie in time, all on his own.

In the final part of the volume, Sachie decides to cheer for Rakuto at one of his kendo matches and asks him if he'd like her to give him anything. He asks for a bento box. Unfortunately, the bento box she puts together gets a bit messed up after an encounter with a rude little boy, but Rakuto happily accepts and eats it anyway. The rude little boy, Koh, turns out to be the spoiled, lonely son of an important yakuza guest of Sachie's grandfather's. Sachie and Rakuto do their best to treat Koh more nicely than he deserves, but when Sachie tries to help him out and he knocks a bunch of food to the floor, she can't take it anymore. Surprisingly, Koh's indulgent father is impressed by Sachie's behavior towards his son...so much so that he asks her to be Koh's bride.

Review:

The panty thief thing was not a strong beginning for this volume. It had its funny moments (I loved the image of Sachie's grandfather freaking out over needing to get girls' underwear, and it's worth a giggle to see the usually perfect Rakuto get embarrassed), but a lot of it just emphasized how...not very bright...the people in Sachie's grandfather's gang are. It makes me wonder if they're maybe the poorest yakuza in all of Japan - I can't imagine most of them are successful at anything more than being thugs. And yet, they can somehow scrape together the money to send everyone to a hot spring in the next part of the volume.

So, in the next part, Sachie and Rakuto once again teeter just on the edge of acknowledging that they would like to be a couple. Once again, Fujiwara tries to turn status into a good romantic obstacle (Rakuto is just another member of the gang and Sachie's servant, and Sachie is the boss's daughter), and once again it doesn't quite fly with me. Fujiwara hasn't revealed much about Sachie's mother's relationship with her former caretaker yet, but I'm not entirely sure their situation was like Rakuto and Sachie's, so Fujiwara's attempt to link the situations of the two pairs of characters seemed like a bit of a stretch. All this part and its few revelations did was make me wonder who Sachie's father is, since it didn't look like her father was her mother's caretaker - I'm thinking any feelings he had for Sachie's mother were one-sided, although it did seem as though she at least felt affection for him.

Wild Ones (manga, vol. 2) by Kiyo Fujiwara

The synopsis is a bit spoilery, so beware.

Synopsis:

Sachie, Rakuto, and the rest of the yakuza gang go to the beach, where Sachie attracts the attention of a hot young cook at a food stand. Rakuto intervenes, and Sachie of course does not understand why. This little love triangle isn't anywhere near over, however, as Rakuto and Sachie later learn that the hot young cook, Azuma, is actually the grandson of the guy at whose inn they're staying. The grandfather, a friend of Sachie's grandfather, asks that they take care of Azuma for him while he's being hospitalized.

Now Rakuto has to deal with a romantic rival living right underfoot. In fact, they have to share a room. Sachie continues to be completely oblivious to the sparks flying between the two of them, but even she starts to wonder if Rakuto might really have feelings for her after he tells her, "Just let me be by your side. No one else but me by your side..."

When the student council at Sachie's school hosts a 3-day camping trip for everyone, regardless of what grade they're in, Sachie finds herself a little jealous of how popular Rakuto is with all the girls, and a little depressed/hurt that he can't spend time with her because he's so busy with his duties as student council president. There's a tradition in which people give their name tag to the person they'd like to dance with on the last night of the camping trip, and Sachie would like to give hers to Rakuto, but he's too busy to accept it...so she gives it to Azuma instead. Rakuto is hurt, and Sachie is miserable, but things work out in the end (for Sachie and Rakuto, anyway).

Next up is a school festival storyline, in which Sachie's class decides to do a netherworld cafe. Meanwhile, Rakuto is trying to fend off the president of the Film Club, who'd like to do another Rakuto-themed movie in order to drum up funding for her club. When Rakuto refuses to let himself be fangirl bait again (last year's film had him wearing glasses, standing in the rain, and starring in a shower scene), the Film Club president gets the bright idea to try to follow him around every second of the day and get whatever footage she can. She gets more than she bargained for when she catches Sachie in tough girl yakuza mode, going up against a guy who was taking surreptitious panty shots with his cell phone. The film becomes hugely popular at the school festival, and Sachie is horrified at the thought that she has inadvertently outed herself and Rakuto. Thankfully, some quick thinking on Rakuto's part saves the day.

Review:

I have to admit, I have a certain fondness for love triangles, depending on how they're done. I like the one Fujiwara introduced in this volume. Sachie probably considers Azuma a friend, but I'm not sure she recognizes that he likes her, and she absolutely doesn't realize that she has sparked a rivalry between him and Rakuto. What I particularly like about Rakuto having someone he feels is a rival for Sachie's love is that it puts cracks in his mask and forces him to show his true emotions more often. He also gets several great moments where he gets to demonstrate that he knows Sachie better than Azuma does - at this point, there's no doubt in my mind that Fujiwara still intends for Sachie to end up with Rakuto. Azuma isn't a true romantic rival so much as a way to stir things up a little.

Wild Ones (manga, vol. 1) by Kiyo Fujiwara

Synopsis:

All her life, Sachie's mother told her that she didn't have any other family, so imagine her surprise when, soon after her mother's death, a man claiming to be her grandfather arrives and invites her to live with him. She suspects something's up when she notices that he's missing a pinkie, but even that doesn't prepare her for the reality: her grandfather is the head of a yakuza gang.

Sachie's grandfather assigns the princely-looking Rakuto, the member of the gang closest to her in age (he's 16, she's 15), to be her bodyguard. He's a huge flirt, and all the girls at school love him (they have no idea he's a yakuza member), but Sachie can't even begin to guess what he's thinking.

What she doesn't realize is that Rakuto has cared about her since they first met, when they were children. Unfortunately for Rakuto, Sachie is the boss's daughter. He doesn't want to overstep his bounds when Sachie's grandfather has done so much for him. Sachie is the beloved princess of everyone in the gang, not just Rakuto - he can't just monopolize her, and he knows it.

In this first volume, Sachie tries to adjust to her strange new life. She invites Rakuto to the movies, gets a bit jealous when Rakuto receives a New Year's card from a person he calls his "first love," and tries to deal with the whole gang when they overdo things a little trying to get her a gift for her birthday.

Review:

I enjoyed this first volume, but there are already signs that the series probably won't be able to sustain itself very well for the 10 volumes I think it lasts. If Sachie weren't so blind, and if Rakuto weren't so averse to speaking about his true feelings, this series could have easily ended in one or two volumes. From what I could tell, Sachie's grandfather probably wouldn't mind if Sachie and Rakuto started dating – in fact, my current theory is that Sachie's grandfather is hoping they'll start dating. The other yakuza members would throw a fit, but they'd eventually be okay with it, too, as long as Sachie made it clear that Rakuto made her happy. There doesn't seem to be any obstacles keeping Rakuto and Sachie apart that they don't create themselves.

Even so, I found this volume appealing. There's not much here that lovers of shoujo romance haven't seen a million times before, except possibly the yakuza stuff that acts as background for everything, but then again the “criminals with hearts of gold” thing has been done before, too. “More of the same” isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as you enjoy it and don't expect too much. This first volume hit some of the same notes I tend to enjoy in a lot of other shoujo manga.