Customer Reviews

Short-Tempered Melancholic and Other Stories (Shojo Beat Manga)

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Short-Tempered Melancholic is a collection of four short stories from the early years of Arina Tanemura. By far the best work is the title work.

In Short-Tempered, the reader get a nicely packaged story of a female ninja, Kajika, determined to protect her family's secret weapon. The story moves quickly and maintains the reader's interest. In fact, I would have loved to see a series with Kajika in it. She is an addictive character.

Two of the stories have their hit and miss moments. Rainy Afternoons is a sweet story, but the main female, Minori, is so clueless that it detracts from the story quite a bit. It is similar to This Love is Nonficiton. The characters are enjoyable, but something is lacking. The story fails to be engrossing (and is somewhat contrived) and is easily forgotten.

The last work, The Style of the Second Love is the oldest work, but shines. The love triangle in the story is played out nicely and you actually want the characters to get together in specific pairs. Moreover, Nakamura has to be one of the most enjoyable male leads I've seen. He funny, determined, and clingy enough to be cute.

The art is beautiful and standard Tanemura. However, the panels are less crowded and less screentone is use. (A plus for some).

Overall, this is a collection of works that has a few flaws but still a good read. Plus fans of Tanemura will deem this a must have.

I like this book because the first stories of Arina tanemura in 1990's. all of them are very good. I especially like The style of the second love.

Being a fan of Arina Tanemura's other works, I quickly snapped this volume up. Rather than have one volume devoted to one story, this manga collects several of her short stories. I'll review each one individually below:

Short-Tempered Melancholic: A story in two parts, the tale follows a modern day ninja by the name of Kajika. She's well known around her town for being valiant, but when her crush tells her to be more ladylike she tries to stop her ninja ways. Of course nothing is as it seems, especially when her childhood friend is trying to warn her about her crush & there's a rival group of ninja that is trying to steal her family's valuable secret weapon! The second part of the story is more of an "after" story that mostly surrounds Kajika's childhood friend & his attempts to woo her.

This Love is Nonfiction: This story is about a young girl named Yuri who sends her penpal a picture of her friend Karin, believing that she herself isn't attractive enough. Trouble ensues when her penpal wants to meet her & she has to have Karin stand in for her... only for it to seem that the pair are actually falling for each other!

Rainy Afternoons are for Romantic Heroines: Minori loves Takato but can't properly express herself other than asking him to share his umbrella on rainy days. However Takato has been rumored to be someone who is completely against the idea of falling in love...

The Style of the Second Love: Mana has a problem. She's completely infatuated with her best friend's boyfriend. She also has the problem of a hot younger guy that's competing for her attention. All of life's problems should be so terrible, shouldn't they?


Overall, I really loved this volume. Sure some of the stories were a little simplistic, but that's usually what comes of a one chapter story. All of the characters are incredibly likable, even the characters that are supposed to be "bad". For the most part I think that these single servings are just right & that too much would ruin the great flow that these stories have.

4.9/5