Dengeki Daisy Volume 7 by Kyousuke Motomi
The cover design of this volume perfectly represents the odd combination of plot lines that end up getting featured in Dengeki Daisy. Kurosaki is tenderly kissing a tearful Teru’s hand on the front cover, and the back cover features the deranged Akira with a maniacal grin and a creepy red eye. The warm and fluffy part of this volume occurs when Teru and Kurosaki A mysterious man keeps popping up near Teru and she and Kurosaki gradually realize that it is the elusive and dangerous attacker Akira.
The first part of the book shows Teru and Kurosaki fighting off a manageable foe – one of the teachers at the school has decided that Kurosaki is a bad influence on Teru and is determined to separate them. Teru vows to prove that her grades won’t suffer because of the time she spends helping out with janitorial tasks and makes an impulsive bet involving her class standings and Kurosaki’s hair, only to abruptly fall ill the night before the exam. A boy Teru saw at the bus stop and was curious about because he reminded her of her brother abruptly kisses her, and she’s devastated. Kurosaki as Daisy sends her an emotional text, then quickly backs away. It is fairly typical of the dance that these characters do, as they grow closer but still maintain the polite fiction that separates them. The kissing bandit is of course Akira, and he engineers a situation that results in Teru learning a new piece in the puzzle about her brother’s death.
Despite the fact that the central mystery behind Teru’s brother hasn’t been fully explained and the series is now up to volume seven, I’m still interested in seeing what happens next in this manga. The relationship between Teru and Kurosaki is one of the more original pairings in shoujo manga, and despite the gulf in their ages and personalities I can’t help but hope they get together in the end. I’m perfectly happy reading an almost indefinite number of volumes before that ending appears.
Review copy provided by the publisher
