2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A fun read Apr 29, 2008
reviewed by Michelle
Kare First Love starts out pretty predictably. The main character, Karin Karino, is a shy, awkward girl who manages to attract the attention of a very handsome boy named Kiriya. This leads to trouble for Plain-Jane Karin, because her popular and attractive friend Yuka wants Kiriya, too. Initially, it seems like the common (and relatively unrealistic) hot, popular guy falls for quiet, ordinary girl sort of story, but it really evolves beyond that.
One of the biggest downsides for me was that Karin's character was a little hard to like. On the plus side, she is not the average squeaky clean shojo heroine--she gets drunk, she sneaks out, and she is actually very sexual and not ashamed to admit it. My problem with Karin is that she often over analyzes situations and constantly worries about doing things she doesn't really want to do for the sake of pleasing Kiriya. I sometimes skip her dialogue, because she alternates between being childish and being mature, and it does get annoying.
On the other hand, Kiriya is very well developed, and he's a wonderful character to read about. His past is dark, and not all of it is revealed at once, which I found really helped make the story interesting. In terms of dialogue, Kiriya seems like he could be an actual person, because his personality is defined so well.
Unfortunately, characters like Tohru and Yuka are extremely two dimensional, but as for the rest of the cast, they're all right. Nothing spectacular, but tolerable.
The art is wonderful, and is probably my favorite aspect about the series. Too many times I've been disappointed by the difference in skill level and effort between the cover art and the actual story, but expect to find beautiful art on every page in Kare First Love. Every panel really had a lot of care and attention to detail put into it.
Overall, it's a good series. The story gets a little repetitive in places, but there's a nice balance between humor and drama, and I really enjoyed that. It's a pretty average series, but it's definitely got some great things going for it, so I recommend it.
Michelle also recommended: Mars, Marmalade Boy,
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