Handsome Girl, Band 4

ハンサムな彼女 [Handsome na Kanojo] #4

by Wataru Yoshizumi

Hagiwara Mio is a 14 year-old teen actor. She's currently in love with her neighbor, teen actor, Morimoto Teruomi. She is given a role in a short drama, but is dissatisfied that her roles always involve being the bossy antagonist. She was cast as the rival of her friend, Sawagi Aya in the drama.

Excited at the fact that Teru is also in the drama, Mio accepts the job. On the first day of the shoot, Mio meets Kumagai Ichiya, who calls Mio a bad actress. With their first meeting getting off to such a bad start, a chain of problems for Mio began to pile up.

Genres: Manga

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Wataru Yoshizumi (吉住渉) is a Japanese mangaka. She was born as Mari Nakai (中井 真里, Nakai Mari) on June 18, 1963 in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated with a degree in economics from Hitotsubashi University.

Yoshizumi started her career as a mangaka while working as an office lady. Her debut manga was a yomikiri (short story) called "Radical Romance" that was published in 1984, in the summer issue of Ribon Original. She is known as a social mangaka, and is a good friend of fellow mangakas Naoko Takeuchi, Ai Yazawa, Miho Obana, and Megumi Mizusawa.

Yoshizumi currently (as of 2007) has her works published in both Ribon and Chorus.

Reviews

[Bibliothecat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review for complete series



Mio and Aya are best friends, teen actor colleagues and rivals in love. While Aya is busy working on both her acting as well as idol career, Mio seems to be bumbling along. That is, until the young director Ichiya titles her as a bad actress. However, his intentions are not quite what they seem and he gets just what he wants – for Mio is furious and sets her goal on becoming a serious actress.

Handsome Girl is an early and very typical work by author Wataru Yoshizuki. Some authors seem to follow a specific pattern when telling their stories – and Yoshizuki is one of them. Her works are all sure to have a lot of falling-in-and-out-of-love with many love interests, rivals, broken-hearts and replacements. That being said, despite so much back and forth, the stories are often on a sweet and light-hearted note. In any case, there won’t be many broken hearts at the end for whoever does not get their original love interest will certainly be provided with a second chance.

Mio is a pretty standard character. Yet I ended up really liking her – perhaps because I followed her for 9 volumes? One thing I found very positive about this series is the friendship between Aya and Mio. Although Aya is clearly pushed out of the picture by Mio main character-wise, they have a very nice friendship and it is nice to see how they support each other rather than argue about the same guy(s) they like. Too bad Aya is less and less prominent as the story progresses.

Ichiya is an ok character. He becomes a good deal better once he opens up his heart towards a girl. Before that, he is a little too stand-off-ish which makes him kind of boring. But he becomes quite cute in the later volumes.

Show business always seems very popular in manga and is a common theme. In most cases, the characters are very young and a lot that is going on seems awfully unreasonable (You know, like, where are the grownups??). Handsome Girl has its moments like these as well – the best you can do is cast aside your disbelief.

In general, I find that this series handled the subject very well. Almost the entire cast is related to show business in one way or another – that is nicely explained by these characters all attending a special school for talents. Therefore, it is plausible enough that they are always hanging out with each other rather than being the sole famous person in the entire school. Mio and the rest start out as 14-year-olds. At the end of the series, they are said to be 17. I cannot say that the story felt as though 3 years had passed. Nonetheless, I prefer seeing them as 17-year-olds as they seemed too independent for being 14.

This series is set in the late 80’s~early 90’s and it shows both in the art as well as the story. And honestly – I loved that (they couldn’t fix every little inconvenience with a cell phone – hah!). The art is quite distorted in the early volumes. I find that Yoshizumi has a very plain style – but one that I find very loveable and sweet. Her style improves quite a bit by the end of the series and is almost as good as her more recent works.

A downside of this series is the length. 9 volumes seem overly unnecessary and it just makes the story drag. It becomes repetitive with all the new rivals coming and going. I think, if Yoshizuki really wanted to get 9 volumes out of this, she might have wanted to concentrate on some of the other characters such as Aya, rather than introducing more new ones. In any case, this is a nice enough story and certainly worth a shot if you enjoy show business themed manga or generally have a preference for 90’s style (such as I do).

[Muhammad Rajab Al-mukarrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The idea of giving this story to teenagers was a very good idea. Haha.