Absolute Boyfriend

Title:  Absolute Boyfriend
Japanese Title:  Zettai Kareshi
Mangaka:  Yuu Watase
Length:  6 Volumes (Completed)
English Translation?  Yes.  All 6 volumes published by Viz Media.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Sci-Fi/Romantic Comedy

Riiko Izawa has only ever known rejection by boys.  One day, she returns a cell phone to an oddly-dressed stranger, and to thank her, he refers her to his company's website.  On the site, Riiko is given the opportunity to design her ideal boyfriend.  Not taking it very seriously, she fills out all of the options, only to wake up the next morning with a very naked and very handsome young man on her doorstep who meets all of her specifications. With one kiss, he awakens and is completely devoted to her.  Then, to give us a nice love triangle, Riiko's childhood friend takes this time to finally confess to her.  And thus, our story begins...

How did I find out about it?  A college bestie told me about it.  She's one of my very few otaku friends, and she's given me several recommendations.  I think this is the only one we've disagreed on at all.

First, I want to say that I do like Watase-sensei's art style.  It's clean and fairly simple.  I like the way she draws the menfolk much more than her female characters.  Her girls tend to have round, baby-faces with little detail in the mouth that make them all seem childish.  This, combined with the bubbly personalities that she often gives them, makes them a bit harder for me to relate to them.  This is also true of Riiko.  While I didn't necessarily dislike Riiko, I didn't find anything about her to be particularly memorable either.

The men, on the other hand, were quite interesting.  Night (Riiko's "absolute boyfriend") was handsome, funny, and spanned a rather large emotional spectrum, despite the fact that he isn't a human being.  I've always enjoyed storylines that explore the moral and emotional implications of creating life-like robots, so I was very taken in by the dilemma at hand.  Does Riiko choose Night, who is the perfect boyfriend and will always be devoted to her?  Or does she choose Soushi whose human heart loves her for all that she is, good and bad?  Is Night's love truly real?  I like this sort of thing.

So what didn't I like?  The ending.  I was reading, and everything was going just fine and dandy.  I really liked this series.  Then I came to the ending.  I greatly disagreed with it.  I won't go into anymore detail here, lest I spoil it for you.  I think I may type up a blog just to discuss my feelings on the ending.  I'll post a link to it here once it's done.  It's almost amazing how an ending can ruin a great series.

Overall thoughts:

I liked AB.  Watase-sensei has a penchant for the melodramatic, but she's still great at conveying emotions and helping readers to connect to her characters.  Would I collect this series?  Possibly.  I have others that are much higher up on my priority list.  I liked it enough to want to reread it.  The ending wasn't horrible.  It just didn't go in the direction I felt it should go...