To start the revival of my blog, let's kick in with a review of the first chapter of a new manga, Ane Doki. It's by the author of Ichigo 100%, Kawashita Mizuki, so you know it's going to be pretty good.
Story: The story begins with 13-year old Kouta walking home from school while eating an ice cream cone. While walking, he sees a hot girl standing next to a fence. She notices him and promptly asks that she be given a lick of his ice cream cone.
She takes it and eats some, promting Kouta to think of an indirect kiss. She somehow seems to know this, and calls him a Perv with a sexy smile on her face. Kouta freaks and goes running off, with her yelling that she still has to pay him back for the ice cream. She notices his student handbook on the ground, which apparantly fell from his pocket as he ran away, and picks it up. Back on his own, Kouta thinks of how strange the event was, before getting tackled and dragged away by his friends. Kouta can't stop thinking of how adult she seemed (theorizing that she has to be a high school student) while walking with his friends. Suddenly, his friends spaz out, as they see the school's appointed top hottie, Sakurai Kanade walk by. His friends leave to follow and oggle her, leaving Kouta to himself again.Before Kouta can continue on, his dad bursts from a bush in front of him sprinting. His dad got called out for a business trip, and is leaving town for a week to a month, so Kouta will have to stay on his own - or so was the plan. The ice cream girl from before has followed him home and overheard the problem, and has decided her chance to pay him back for the ice cream has come. Returning his student handbook to him, she says she will take care of him till his father returns home.
Walking right into his home, she announces that her name is Hagiwara Natsuki, she is 17-years old, a high school junior, that her specialty is tieing cherries with her tongue, and she will be his maid now. Kouta does his best to convince her not to stay, but she won't take no for an answer. When his dad calls on the phone, she answers it and says that she's the sister of one of Kouta's friends who will be staying there to take care of him, and the dad accepts, ending Kouta's easiest route of escape.
As she cooks and cleans for Kouta, she continues to be overly-flirty, tiring the poor boy out. She even goes so far as to want to take a bath with him, to make sure he cleans properly. After he goes to sleep, she goes into his room and crawls into bed with him, under the reasoning that she can't fall asleep on anything but a bed. Taking the futon he'd originally laid out for her, he asks her why she's there. She responds 'It's pretty fun to live in a place you're unfamiliar with. I've wanted to try this for a while now.' He complains that he wants to be able to handle himself like an adult, so she asks him to make sure that when he does become an adult, to become the kind that doesn't run from what they want to do.
At school the next day, Sakurai talks to Kouta and says that she can smell the same kind of shampoo she uses on him, promting all her fanboys to start smelling him. Sakurai thinks to herself how popular she is and how great it feels, showing that she really enjoys her status. But when Kouta begins to get more attention than her, she stomps off, frustrated. Later, in the hallways, a commotion breaks out because of a highschooler asking for Kouta. Walking up at just the wrong time, Natsuki spots him and tackles him to give the lunch she made for him.
As she leaves Kouta to deal with the disaster of her appearance, Sakurai freaks that there could be someone so much more idol-istic than her. She kicks a can in frustration, sending it flying into the back of a guy's head. Kouta is running away from more rabid fanboys, and gets away only to stumble into the scene. A group of guys is trying to get Sakurai to pay them to make up for the assault, and when she says she doesn't have any money, one of the guys suggests she go on a date with him instead. Kouta wants to help but can't find it in himself, until he remembers Natsuki's words. Gathering his courage, he rushes in to fight the guys. It doesn't go well, but he keeps getting up. Suddenly, Natsuki appears out of nowhere in a maid outfit with a broomstick, and takes the guys out. When she gets it down to the last one, she calls for Kouta to finish it, and without knowing what he's doing, he leaps forward and takes the guy down in one punch.
The fight over, Natsuki leaves some bandages with the guys, apologizing for being so serious on them. Sakurai tries to thank Kouta for his help, but Natsuki interrupts by trying to set them up on a date. Upon rebuttal, Natsuki asks Kouta how he can be so mean after they've slept together. Kouta chases her away while trying to get her to say it wasn't like that, leaving Sakurai to wonder just what the hell happened, and who the hell Natsuki is, while Kouta decides to let Natsuki stay with him for a while after all.
My Thoughts: Ok, first off - HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Mucho gracias to my good friend inferno for suggesting that I (IE forcing me to) read this manga. It's a new one, only three chapters so far, so it'll be easier to keep up with too.
The art here is really pretty and nice to look at, and the parts that are supposed to look hot do look hot. Then again, with a comment about tieing cherries with her tongue, it'd be hard for Natsuki to NOT be hot.
Kouta's occasional Ed Elric syndrome to being called short or a kid is plain hilarious, as is every time his imagination gets ahead of him, a problem that only gets worse and funnier later. And while none of his friends have played much of a part so far (I've read chapters 2 and 3 already, re-reading for reviewing purposes soon), I can only hope they will later on. I'm particularly looking forward to seeing how Sakurai develops, though I've got a good hunch that she's going to majorly crush on Kouta for a long while.
Anyway, apologies for the story part being so long while the thoughts are so short, but this was a HUGE opening chapter (56 pages!). The others are back down to a more standard just short of 20 page count, so it should even out a tad more in the future.
And apologies to AstroNerdBoy for stealing his review format. It works so well that I had to yoink it. ^_^;