A Devil and Her Love Song

This review is a little more SPOILERIFIC than most of them I write.  Be warned.

Title:  A Devil and Her Love Song
Japanese Title:  Akuma to Love Song
Mangaka:  Miyoshi Toumori
Length:  13 (Complete)
English Translation?  Yes.  4 volumes so far by Viz Media.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Slice-of-Life/Romance

How did I hear about it?  I noticed it on Viz's new releases and thought I would give it a try.

After being expelled from an elite school and transferring to a new school, Maria Kawai's blunt nature immediately makes enemies of her new classmates.  However, her beautiful singing voice and love for the hymn "Amazing Grace" catch the eyes of friends Yusuke Kanda and Shin Meguro.  But is their friendship enough to convince her classmates that she isn't the devil they assume her to be?

Whenever Viz Media licenses a new series, I test it out.  This series already had a handicap since it's a high school romance.  Given its predictable nature, it's not exactly my favorite genre.  Nevertheless, I looked it up online and read the first chapter.  It seemed interesting enough, so I began to collect the volumes as they were released here in NA.  Volume 4 was just released here on August 7th, and after reading it, I decided that I was really quite fond of the series, so I headed online to read the rest of it.  What I could at least.  Though the series is actually complete, the scanlations are a bit behind.  I'm all caught up now, and I'm ready to review the series.

I suppose I'll start with Maria.  So many shoujo titles out there (especially high school romances) are plagued with weak heroines.  I've read (and enjoyed, more or less) High School Debut and Imadoki, and both of those suffered from a bland, cookie-cutter heroine.  Kaichou wa Maid-sama, on the other hand, is one of my most adored series, despite its setting.  I chalk that up to the fact that it has such a unique and strong female lead.  That's exactly what swayed me here.  Maria is certainly no Misaki, but she stands head and shoulders above the majority of her brethren.  Her serious and frank nature is refreshing.  I love that she's not the least bit dumb, and she's quick to realize it when she falls in love with Shin (for the record, I absolutely hate heroines who bumble about wondering why the hell their heart speeds up when they're near a certain guy).  She says exactly what's on her mind, and as the series progresses, she learns to be a little gentler to respect others' feelings.  It's nice to see a heroine who learns as she goes along.  Also, I'd like to add that I loved her design.  Sometimes when she was wrapped up in her winter coat, I could almost believe that she was some glamorous actress who stepped out of 1950s or 60s Hollywood.  She had an "old" beauty to her, and I loved that.

Her love interests were also pretty well done.  Yusuke, at first, came across as a bright and bubbly idiot who was too nice for his own good, but then his serious side starts to shine though, and I took a liking to him.  Shin, however, stole my heart.  If you've read my other reviews, then you know I love a good tsundere character.  He's not the perfect embodiment like say, Ren Tsuruga (of Skip Beat) or something, but he's pretty solid.  Naturally, I was thrilled when Maria chose him.  And then the ball dropped...

Enter Anna, Maria's "friend" from her previous school.  Just when I was thinking that ADaHLS would dance around the usual high school romance tropes, Toumori-sensei drops a big one right into the middle of her series.  Anna is a crappy and petty villainess.  Nothing is more frustrating than seeing the couple you're rooting for being pulled apart by one selfishly jealous brat.  Maria accidentally presses "Send" and thus texts her confession to Shin's phone, which Anna happens to have at the time.  What does she do?  Replies in the negative, then hurls his phone in the river.  Yeah.  Really mature, asshole.  I mean, look at Misaki and Usui (Maid-Sama).  Nothing anybody did was gonna come between them.  What about Rei and Kira (Mars)?  Nothing doin'.  And Mars even had a great villain who was truly sick and twisted, and still, nothing was gonna stop them.  After that frustrating scene, I loved Maria all the more, since she decided that wasn't good enough, and she wanted to hear Shin's answer face to face.  Of course, things can't be that simple though.  Noooo, Maria has something really effed up that happened when she was small, and she repressed the memory.  Anna is all too happy to tell Shin about this and explain to him about how being held by someone could possibly make all those painful memories come back.  Won't she be better off alone and not remembering?  This is when I could really kick Shin right squah in the nuts.  Really?  You're gonna listen to that bs?  Yeah, you find out its true, but what does Yusuke say?  "I don't need to know the details.  If she remembers, then I'll stay smiling by her side."  What does Kurusu say?  "If she remembers, I'll be her shoulder to cry on."  And still Shin won't budge and give in to his feelings.  Look man, learn from your friends.  If she remembers, she remembers.  Just be there for her.

Aside from the frustrating romance, Anna was still shit.  She kept trying to blame Maria for how she (Anna) was acting.  "I hate myself because of you!"  "You corrupted me!"  Yeah, okay, so no one is responsible for you except for you, bitch.  Also, I really didn't feel that Maria was doing anything wrong.  Anna lost her voice, and while everyone else ostracized her because of that, Maria stayed by her side and tried to help her express herself.  What thanks did that get her?  "You put things more beautifully than I ever could, and it made me feel ugly."  Anna pissed me off, yo.

Ok, so I just went on a huge, spoiler-filled rant on this series.  I probably made it sound like I hated it.  Actually, I'm still quite fond of it.  I will continue to collect it as volumes are released, and I'll keep on reading when new chapters are scanlated.  I think this series made me so angry because I liked it.  Toumouri-sensei did a lot of things right, but she did a few things wrong, too.  This series tries to swim against the current, but sometimes it finds itself tugged along by some of the same, predictable plot developments that we've seen in so many other high school romances.

Oh, and one other thing, I loved the presence of music in the series.  I would love more scenes of Maria singing to Shin's accompaniment.