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Reviewed by Michael Aronson Is a parental advisory for MATURE CONTENT on the cover of a book about a guy with an extremely bizarre panty fantasy really necessary? No, and here’s why: our protagonist Junpei is solely focused on panties and not what’s underneath them. Not only that, but he’s only obsessed with panties that have strawberries printed on them. He doesn’t even care about touching them or keeping them or anything weird and nasty. One day Junpei just happened to see a girl fall down and her skirt fly up, revealing her strawberry panties in the light of a sunset, and decided it would make an amazing shot on film. It’s not perverted so much as it’s harmlessly demented, like Lenny squeezing mice. If the high concept weren’t so courageously straddling the line between perversion and insanity, Strawberry 100% could be a perfectly average series instead of slightly subpar. The plot is heading in a fairly obvious direction, but it’s arriving there charmingly. The characters are the thrust of the story – weirdo Junpei, nerdy beauty-in-disguise Aya and social gypsy moth Tsukasa. The girls fill standard roles, though their interactions with Junpei unfold unusually due to his incomprehensible fascination with strawberry panties. He’s sure that one of the two is the girl of his (shudder) fantasies, but he vacillates between hunting the panties’ true owner and seeking genuine attraction. The character dynamics are more conventional than they could be, but they remain in good momentum throughout. It’s the art that really doesn’t take enough risks. If Junpei is a wannabe director, why doesn’t he see the world from behind the camera lens? Occasionally his fantasies betray reality, but he never demonstrates enough imagination to convince me that he has any sense about film, and this is something the art could better achieve. Then there are the pinup pages between chapters . . . staying within the not-nearly-mature-content limits, the only realm in which these images would actually qualify as “provocative” would be in a 10-year-old boy’s wet dream. The art’s so prude, it almost makes Amish girls sexy by comparison. Junpei’s fetishist exploits kept me guessing what bout of madness he’d come down with next, but the results don’t even approach first base. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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