All B.O.D.Y. and no heart.
It is painfully true that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, which is unfortunate for Ao Mimori and her school-age melodrama B.O.D.Y. Not that subsequent impressions would've helped. The trouble begins right on the cover with the tagline "She could hire him to date her, but she'd rather win his heart." Excuse me? Perhaps I am an emotionally challenged male whose knuckles drag on the floor most days, but is that supposed to sound romantic? Swap pronouns around and you'll see what I'm talking about: "He could hire her to date him, but he'd rather win her heart." Aside from being the plot to Pretty Woman (and don't get me started on that preposterous fairytale), it sounds more creepy than romantic when you put it that way, doesn't it? Or we could try this headline: "Schoolgirl in relationship with teenage gigolo." Yeah, that doesn't sound any better. Nor does it get any better. In the span of just the first two artistically anemic pages of B.O.D.Y. Volume #9, it was clear this was just a bad idea badly executed.
The "she" is perpetually stupefied sixteen year-old Ryoko, the obtuse angle in the distorted love triangle between Ryunosuke (gigolo) and Kurama, rival suitor, musician and agent provocateur. Much of the cast's energy in Volume 9 is consumed with either revealing or concealing (depending on affiliation) Ryunosuke's secret former life as a "host," a sort of in-house escort paid to entertain female patrons of an establishment called a "host club." Apparently, there is a social stigma attached to being a host as Kurama, on discovering Ryunosuke's former employment at Club B, cunningly refers to him as a "sleazy guy" and promptly seeks to inform Ryoko, hoping thereby to sunder their relationship and take her for himself. Unbeknownst to Kurama, however, Ryoko is already aware of Ryunosuke's disreputable past and pleads with Kurama not to reveal it. Enter Miss Izumi, a teacher at Ryoko and Ryu's school and winner of this manga's Nuttiest Character Award. She, too, is aware of Ryu's extra-curricular activities and lobbies Kurama hard (no hyperbole here) not to reveal his secret. What makes all this particularly dull is the fact that Ryu is a rather undeserving bloke. He maintains his brooding and morose temperament for the entire volume and you can't help but wonder what it is about this guy that so inspires these women. Whatever skills he has were not in evidence at any time or on any page of the ninth volume.
Highlights
By the halfway point of the book, I was sure there was little that could redeem this yawn-inducing teen soap opera. The good news here is that everything about B.O.D.Y. is equally inane, from the title on down; no bright spots were therefore compromised by the inferiority of the rest. The characters are dull and the dialogue as banal as those who speak it. The artwork is wildly uneven, with some interesting and attractive character designs but flat composition and poor camera placement. The illustrations lack energy and each page is a lifelessly rendered collage of half-finished sketches. Mimori-san does know how to do eyes, so many of the close-ups are a welcome respite from the storm of mediocrity raging everywhere else. Page to page, the panel layout would be commendable were it not for the stuff in them. Of particular note here is the tragically poor screen-and-tone, employed so haphazardly and amateurishly that Mimori-san simply MUST fire somebody over it. It is possible to see what they were going for, but they missed…badly. The dialogue balloons aren't anchored to a specific character or sometimes even to a specific frame. This gives the dialogue an oddly disassociated feel, like the characters are speaking internally through the whole story. It makes me think of a cast of mimes acting out the story on a Paris street corner using title cards for dialogue. It's just another in a long string of questionable style choices. But worst of all, the character designs, though good in some respects, are so stylistically generic that it is difficult to tell the boys from the girls, even by shōjo standards. It took several passes over the first half-dozen pages just to figure out who the boys were, who the girls were, who was speaking, who was hitting (yes, there was a fight) and who was getting hit. There is no need to put any reader through that exercise, even a dim bulb like me.
Overview
Shōjo is supposed to be aimed at girls. If I were them I'd be outraged that a story so uninspired and lacking in any real insight or depth was being pawned off on them. I'm willing to concede that there may be a gender or generation gap at work here in my loathing of this book, but my gut tells me even a teenage girl of moderate manga experience and modest intellect would be unsatisfied with B.O.D.Y. on just about every level. A work of fiction, like any work of art, is supposed to do more than tell a story. It's supposed to rise above the "what?" and give us the "so what?" at the heart of it, the subtext that penetrates the superficial to reveal a greater truth—the answer to the question. At the center of every great love story are two people trying to forge a bond despite the forces great and small at work to keep them apart. There is no hint that Mimori-san intends to peel back any all-important layers to get at anything beyond whether Ryoko will stand by her man, sound in all weather. I'm mildly interested to see what crazy thing in Ryu's name Miss Izumi will do for an encore, but beyond that there are no characters here to care about. Oh, but if somebody knows what the acronym B.O.D.Y. stands for, shoot me an e-mail; that's really the last ounce of curiosity I have about this manga.
Rating
ComicsOnline gives B.O.D.Y. Volume #9 1 1/2 hosts out of 5.
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