Title: My Love Mix-Up! Vol. 1
Author: Wataru Hinekure (Story), Aruko (Art)
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 176
Genre: Romance, Comedy, Yaoi
Publication Date: October 5, 2021
The Story
My Love Mix-Up! Is a story about a convoluted romantic mess between three classmates. Aoki has a crush on his classmate Hashimoto. He thinks the world of her and how sweet and pure she is. One day, he forgets his eraser so she lends him one of her spares. When he goes to use it, he discovers that Hashimoto wrote the name Ida on the eraser with a heart on it. At that moment, he realizes that she likes another classmate of theirs, and his heart is completely broken.
He drops the eraser and Ida just happens to pick it up! Not wanting to reveal Hashimoto’s secret, he lies and says that the eraser is his. He invites Ida to the rooftop in order to explain the situation; however, he just can’t bring himself to spoil Hashimoto’s crush on him. This causes Ida to get the wrong impression and since he has never experienced emotions (let alone romantic ones), he begins to give it some thought about what it would be like to date Aoki but doesn’t really commit to anything just yet.
The volume continues on with mishap after mishap… including the class putting on a performance of Cinderella where Aoki notices that Hashimoto is put onto the prop team. Thinking that he can get the two of them together, he volunteers Ida against his will and ends up getting paired up with Aoki instead!
What makes matters even worse is that Aida, one of Aoki’s best friends, is approached by Ida who wants some help to try and smooth things over with Aoki after a misunderstanding caused Aoki to cry. The worse situation for all of them comes when Hashimoto puts Aoki deep into the friendzone and finally gets the nerve to talk with Aoki about her crush.
Apparently, Aoki didn’t see the full name on the eraser. It’s not Ida that she likes but Aoki’s friend Aida! Aoki realizes that he got the person’s name wrong and he’s beginning to get in too deep with Ida, causing a bit of a quandary for him!
Characters
Aoki is sweet, caring, and thoughtful. He’s also an idiot. By not telling Ida about the mistaken crush Hashimoto had on him, he’s doing a few things here. He’s playing the good guy because he’s protecting Hashimoto from, what he thought to be, an embarrassing situation should Ida find out about the crush she had. This means he’s taking her feelings into consideration and shows that he admires her too much to cause problems for her. On the flip side, he’s also taking his own feelings into account in hopes that maybe he could be a good enough friend to her so her feelings would sway in his direction. Why else after getting your heart broken would you continue to go out of your way to listen to your crush’s problems? That would be torture for just about any guy and, yet, Aoki does it with a smile on his face. Plus, his conflicting feelings through it all clearly show that he wants to try and sway Hashimoto.
When he finds out that it’s Aida that she likes and not Ida, the volume ends but one would think that this would open the doors for Aoki to just tell Ida the truth and get out of this mess but… since the premise of this manga alludes to the two of them becoming a couple, you know as well as I do, that he’s not going to go through with the truth…. And this is where Aoki is an idiot (well, it’s not the ONLY example but it’s going to be the most glaring one).
Ida, on the other hand, for being the age he is, is still rather impressionable only because he admitted that he had never experienced these kinds of emotions before. You get to see the inner conflict in him because he needs to really ask himself if it’s okay to think of Aoki as someone he could date. At one point, he wants to just start out as friends but Aoki flat out rejects that idea. Then, mishap after mishap happens that continually draws the two of them together. All of this could EASILY be solved if Aoki would just open up and tell Ida the truth but we all know it’s not going to happen. It ended up making a lot of the scenarios between the two characters cringe moments.
Hashimoto and Aida are kind of in the background for now. I can understand why Aida was. He’s just Aoki’s friend and helped play a role in getting Ida and Aoki to clear up a misunderstanding but until you reach the end of the volume, there’s not much to him and there shouldn’t really be. To set up a twist like that, you can’t make it glaringly obvious and you’d be surprised that a lot of series make that mistake but this one hasn’t. Hashimoto is as I described her in the story section… just a sweet and pure girl who is completely oblivious to what’s going on around her in terms of Aoki/Ida but she still sees Aoki as a friend and innocently just talks to him without realizing just how much it is tearing Aoki up inside! She’s evil and not even aware of it!
Final Thoughts
So far, I have to honestly say that the first volume didn’t really do much for me. Maybe it’s with the way some of the panels/characters are drawn but it seems like a series where the comedy is overexaggerated to the point where it’s no longer comedy but an eyesore. I get the whole angle of Aoki being dense, yet, protective of his crush causing a huge misunderstanding and how that is supposed to lead to a series of comedic events that get him in deeper and deeper but when the solution to the problem is too painfully obvious and the characters don’t go that route just for the sake of comedy, that’s an issue in my eyes.
I found myself more frustrated with Aoki for letting this go on any further than it already has and the situations where he and Ida end up in together are more facepalm moments more than anything. I didn’t really laugh at all that much, to be honest, and when I read the ending, you would think that Aoki has a get out of jail free card but since the entire premise of this series is a yaoi relationship between Aoki and Ida, you know that card isn’t going to get played and that, to me, isn’t really a believable or convincing story plot.
I’m sure there is probably more to this under the surface but this is just an observation based on the first volume alone. First volumes are there to make good first impressions and while I completely understand where the series wants to go and what it wants to be… It just conflicts with my personal tastes in romance series and produces, what I perceive to be, too many flaws to enjoy. Of course, not everyone is me and some people absolutely love this kind of story so if this is your thing, My Love Mix-Up is going to be a great pick-up for you. For me, I think I will wait for a better romance series to sink my teeth into.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
