Otomen is a story about a young teenager, Asuka Masamune, who is suppose to be the manliest man in the school, but in reality that is just a facade as he is most feminine male in school who falls in love with Riya Miyakozuka who is suppose to be the ideal girl in school, but like Asuka it is just a facade as she likes to do a lot of manly things.
Volume 6 has Asuka and his self-proclaimed arch-rival Hajime Tonomine finish their double-life as the Beauty Samurai they finally realize they've strayed from the path they once embranced and go back to their normal lives. Following the Beauty Samurai storyline, Yamoto Ariake and Juta Tachibana's younger sister, Kuriko. Finally the manga ends with Asuka forced to play the role of a punk rock band's lead singer when he doesn't know much about them.
Overview:
Otomen being a comedy series about a feminine guy means that like most manga after a few volumes a lot of the jokes tend to repeat themselves. Indeed, volume 6 does have some of that. Aya Kanno seems to have found a way around this by focusing on Asuka finding those around him who have one or two particular traits similar to him, but to a much greater degree, like Hajime and his enthusiasm for makeup or Kitora Kurokawa's obsession with flowers; This allows Kanno a bit more latitude in the types of stories she can tell and gives it some life, although there is the continual problem of having the same basic theme repeated with different actors and props. There is also the exception, Yamoto, who mirrors Asuka's demeanor—Yamoto is a girly guy who wants to manly while Asuka appears to be manly but would like nothing better than to act girly. Yamoto, and the stories from previously volumes with Ryo, help give the manga more diversity. That being said, Kanno is still quite good at coming up with great ideas to make the same basic story continually interesting.
Kanno's artwork in this volume continues to be great. She also appears self-conscious enough to realize some of the faults and turn them into strengths. In the manga she tells how one of her coworkers noticed the similarity between Yamoto and Kuriko's drawing style and incorperated this into her manga by having the two go on a date together and having the other characters comment about the similarity in-universe. That is one of the reasons I particularly like that chapter of the manga and has further improved my opinion of Kanno.
Another thing in this volume of particular note is that Kanno created some lyrics for the made-up band Fra*Fra. This was also quite entertaining and I think the translators did a good job with that. Probably one of the best parts of the volume for me was reading those lyrics especially once I knew they were original from Kanno herself.
Otomen volume 6 continues its humorous attempts to show males with feminine qualities. More people introduced and development of side characters should definatly please many fans of the series out there. Whereas many series seem to run out of steam about now, Ottomen volume 6 seems to just finally starting to get into things so fans of the series can probably look forward to plenty more Otomen.
ComicsOnline gives Otomen volume 6 3 out of 5 girly-looking guys who want to be manly.
