rmthunter's Full Review: Ai Hasukawa - Love Control
What happens when two control freaks fall in love? That's the premise of Ai Hasukawa's Love Control, which has been on my favorites list for a long time.
Kei Yamashiro is a young interior designer who works for Sugimoto Life Design, specializing in interiors for offices and stores. (Keep in mind that the Japanese seem to use "store" for almost any commercial establishment, including restaurants and bars.) Their new client is the Jiri group, headed by Takashi Okumura, a magnetic and high-powered executive in his mid-thirties. Okumura, on their first meeting to discuss remodeling the group's flagship restaurant, makes a blatant pass at Yamashiro, who finds himself both annoyed and intrigued: Okumura is a rakishly handsome man with compelling, honey-colored eyes and a commanding, self-assured manner, who proceeds to pursue Yamashiro relentlessly. Yamashiro decides that two can play that game, and is determined that he will make Okumura fall for him seriously -- not really stopping to think what he's going to do about that when it happens. Do I have to spell out who falls for who?
The whole story is built on personalities, focusing on the play between Yamashiro, who is somewhat spiky, difficult, and determined to stay in control of the relationship, and Okumura, who is equally domineering but much more suave about it. The key word for Okumura is "relentless" -- even when Yamashiro finally blows up at him and demands that he stop with the cheap jokes and overt passes while Yamashiro is working for him, he only drops back -- he realizes that he's been behaving inappropriately for a work relationship -- and then comes on even stronger once the job is done. When Yamashiro realizes that he's in love with Okumura (after several people comment on how much nicer he's become), he's afraid that Okumura will not like him if he's not difficult and contrary.
There's a bonus chapter at the end portraying the two after the dust has settled and they've become a couple: Yamashiro is still spiky and difficult, and Okumura still loves it that way.
The side story, "Near the Rainbow, and You," is an odd, poetic little piece that becomes a meditation of sorts, on loneliness and dreams. Shiro Seno is a young executive, committed to his career, who has closed himself off from others: as he says, "the only one you can depend on is yourself." One day he receives a spam e-mail on his phone: "Find me. Please find me. I'm at the end of the rainbow." Intrigued, he finds the sender: a boy sitting at the edge of a fountain who seems strangely familiar -- there's something about the look in his eyes. The boy, Yuu Koubara, is just wasting time. When Shiro accuses him of looking for a sugar daddy, Yuu decides to play it for what it's worth. But it seems neither can get the other out of his mind, and they realize they have a lot more in common than they had suspected.
This is a volume graced by good, solid writing and well-executed graphics. Hasukawa's style is marked by strong-featured faces and big, somewhat blocky body types. Layouts and visual flow are what I've come to consider "shoujo standard," which is to say fluid and intuitive, with the images carrying as much of the narrative burden as the dialogue and narration. Sex scenes are also standard, unambiguous without being blatant.
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