Deficits All Expectations. Sigh. 2.5 wasted stars:(
Perfect Girl Evolution/ The Wallflower is about an “ugly” (read: perfectly beautiful but unpolished, the boys have partial blindness perhaphs) girl who happens to live in an awesome house. Enter four spectacularly gorgeous(um, no, not really) boys who wish to live in that house, and chance on a lucky opportunity by the landlady to live rent-free in the palacial mansion, but on one condition: to turn the wallfower, who is also the niece of the perky landlady, into a proper lady, befitting of the spacial residence. In three years. Easy? Not really. Especially when our girl, Sunako, is a agoraphobic, horror flick fanatic, and introverted recluse, whose face hasn't seen the light of day since years. Literally.
Enter four angelic boys(Radiant Creatures Of Light) giving rise to explosive nose bleeds and fainting fits, in our Sunako. How hard can it be with four(opinionated, pretentious, and vain) fashionistas working on specimen001? Well, hard. They need something more. Like a miracle. Well, miracles.
Start, Makeover of the Century.
Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Well, its not, for most of the part. I like the message that beauty is nothing but attitude and presentation, both because it’s true and because it reflects the Japanese motto of “anything can be achieved through hard work,” but the rest of the manga is a mess.
The manga tries to cram in too many fan-conscious clichés and hooks and then somehow justify that with unique flourishes of its own, but they turn out to be awkward or really steange at best. The Wallflower feels like the result of some halfway decent artist reading far too much shojo(that's the term, i think) far too quickly. There’s also an anime for this show-Perfect Girl Evolution. I’ve never seen it, but the character designs–already pretty sub-standard and fake in the manga-reach new levels of terrifying in the show. For God’s sake, when your pretty boys look like they’re from a world either off in space or under the sea, you have a problem.
The girl is not unreasonable though, hiding herself in her room, with only slasher gores for company, she has a past, with her own assortment of skeletons in the closet.(Again, literally.) But that reason is vapid, she's just a girl living in her past, unable to move on or leave her pity-party because of what one guy said two freaking yeats ago. Yeah, she's dumb. (But she can kick ass{lots of them} and does know how to murder her fish, so...not bad, S)
The boys, our airbrushed 15-year olds(yeah, right) are the most haughty, noses-in-the-air and fake personalities I've ever come across. They're self righteous, unrealistic, asinine, elite club members, who I don't give a rat's ass about.(cough, excuse me)
And of course, then there are the caricatured "teen mean girls". Tell me, if a girl is conscious about her looks, is that really so bad? And if a guy calls a girl ugly, scary, horrific and creepy, often to her face, shamelessly, is it justified? I am new to this entire genre so maybe I'm wrong and I don't know jack, but this is just wrong and redundant and denigrating.
In ways, maybe it was funny, with intersperses of belly aching laughs, but I'm not touching the next book, so you can go figure.
Its not awful, but verily, it could be loads better.
And definitely not so tacky, for sure. I was hoping to love this, but what the hey. Maybe reading this after Death Note, did vitiate it.
Sorry, K, I really tried. :"(