Title: I Want to End This Love Game Vol. 1
Author: Yuki Domoto
Publisher: Viz Media
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 203
Genre: Shojo, Romance
Publication Date: February 13, 2024
The Story
Miku and Yukiya are childhood friends. When they were young, they started to play a game by confessing their love to one another. The first one to have their heart flutter, loses. Four years later, on their first day of high school, they are still playing the game; however, it’s becoming more than just words!
This is the premise behind I Want to End This Love Game. Outside of this basic premise, the first volume takes us through several scenarios in which they try to one-up each other and make each other’s hearts flutter. It starts off with them beginning high school and this is where we learn that Yukia is an introvert. He seemed normal at first but it became quite evident that he could only talk normally around Miku. Despite that, he ends up making a couple of friends who just happened to be girls by way of Miku making friends with them first. Needless to say, Miku is a bit peeved and/or jealous over this.
Later, Miku mentions that she’s going out to eat cake with her new friends next week. After having a conversation with Hinako, the part-timer at Café Kanade, about what a girl likes to be given, Yukiya sets up a “date” for himself and Miku on Sunday that encompasses some shopping for a dress for Miku, an expensive restaurant, a trip to an upscale amusement park, and a final touch with a special gift; however, our volume closes with a sudden realization!
Characters
Out of the two main characters, Yukiya is someone who has far more layers to them than Miku does.
With Yukiya, he just seemed like an average snarky boy; however, when he gets to high school, the fact that he’s an introvert and has trouble talking to other girls adds a whole new dimension to him. Of course, the question is brought up about how he’s so normal around Miku but no one else. That’s because both he and Miku are in love with each other for real but they don’t want to lose the love game because if they do, they’ll feel inadequate when confessing their feelings for real. Both of them have the goal of winning so they can confess with confidence… it’s just that neither one knows how the other really feels.
For Yukiya to push himself so far to impress Miku with their date shows the best of both worlds with his character. It gives us more of the original Yukiya that we thought he was… the snarky boy who would seemingly stop at nothing to make Miku’s heart flutter for the sake of winning… and the introverted Yukiya who was nervously pushing himself beyond his limits and taking himself WAY out of his comfort zone just for the sake of possibly ending the love game. Plus, how he breaks down and swoons over Miku in privacy is also a different dimension because he becomes like a little kid in a toy store.
This makes Yukiya a very well-balanced character that truly shines in this opening volume.
Miku, on the other hand, is rather flat. Where Yukiya added dimensions throughout the volume, Miku didn’t. She’s just a girl who openly flirts with Yukiya in hopes of making his heart flutter so she can win the love game. Outside of that, she does get a bit flustered when she’s alone because she, too, is in love with him but that’s all she’s got going for her. Her mannerisms and speech are pretty repetitive throughout the volume but maybe this is a series that only focuses on one character at a time. If so, we may see more layers added to Miku in future volumes but, for now, her character just feels as if it’s there to play the role of the female counterpart.
As for our side characters, we have a couple of them. First up is Akane and Yanagi. They are the girls who immediately befriended Miku and became friends with Yukiya. This is how we learned he was an introvert. Both Akane and Yanagi are extroverted, full of energy, and very quick to judge Yukiya; however, they never seem to truly make fun of him. Instead, they keep up their engagement and they become the reason why he can start talking to girls. They played a very small role here so far but I’m sure we’ll see more of them in the future and, who knows? Maybe they might end up throwing a monkey wrench or two into Miku and Yukiya’s yet-to-happen relationship!
For another brief moment, we are introduced to Ishiba. He sits behind Yukiya and gets his last name wrong. He seems to have an eye on Miku so the best thing I can ascertain from this is that he might be a future love rival but a pointless one given how they already established that the two mains love each other. Maybe just a gag relief character? Don’t know much yet to make a full judgment call.
Then, there is Hinako from Café Kanade. She loves money. Lots and lots of money. In fact, she wants money to be thrown at her in the form of luxury gifts and while she is an obvious gold digger, she does make a good point about the value of gifts and how it can correlate into how much you love someone. (not true, by the way.) This ended up being the catalyst for Yukiya to dream up his Sunday date with Miku. As flawed as her advice was, it worked… for the most part. I’m just waiting for the eventual moment where her advice backfires because you know it’s going to happen.
Final Thoughts
I’m going to be honest here… I only mildly enjoyed this first volume and it’s because of one thing that I cannot stand… running gags that the mangaka feels that you have to constantly be reminded of. I don’t feel like going back and counting but there were way too many instances where the characters would do something and then ask “Did your heart skip a beat?”
How do I put this? It’s like… you establish the point of the manga which is for the two characters to end their love game and confess their feelings for one another. We got that right off the bar. In fact, it’s a great setup because we now know the end goal of this manga… whoever wins is going to confess… possibly.
So, the problem is that rather than the series being cute and subtle about the game, they constantly reminded us that they were in a love game and that they were trying to make each other’s hearts skip a beat through various forms of teasing. Teasing is fine because of the comedic aspect of this series but you don’t need to ask the other if their heart skipped a beat every single time you do something to them. This goes back to the show, don’t tell method of storytelling. SHOW us the reactions of the characters. You don’t even need inner monologues… just show the expressions. Have the one doing the teasing look as if they are about to win only to have the other change the subject or say something to make the teaser aware they didn’t win.
The other red flag is the shelf life of this gag. I can’t imagine this being a 15-volume series with fourteen of them running the same “Did your heart skip a beat?” gag in every chapter (I don’t know how many volumes there are, by the way.) There has to be a change to keep things interesting and since I’ve already grown bored of the gag by the end of the first volume, that change needs to happen soon.
We did get several side characters that were around for a cup of coffee and left so there are opportunities to build things there. With the way the first volume ended, change COULD be coming as soon as the next volume as some interesting implications could be had from the way it ended so there is hope that this just doesn’t end up as a running gag manga that overstays its welcome.
Outside of my gripes, I enjoyed Yukiya as a character. There is a lot of potential here and it makes me think that he is going to be the one to confess in the end… most likely by ending the love game without a winner just because he can’t take it anymore. At least, with the way he was portrayed, that’s the conclusion I can draw from things. I just can’t see Miku being the one to confess but there’s still time for things to happen to change my mind.
It’s a decent start, though… one that I will stick with some more to see how things play out.
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This item was provided for review by Viz Media
