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Story
Review
Satan (who in demon form looks like a circus drag queen past his prime, and in human form needs to get a hair cut) is more of a problem than Miu. There are plenty of examples of overbearing boyfriends in shoujo manga, and while their validity as gentlemen in the eyes of the reader is always in question there is usually some personality trait that convinces the audience that his affection meets the minimum requires for being genuine. Not so with Satan. The traits that best describe his character are cruel, dominating, selfish, arrogant, lustful, menacing, possessive, jealous, and violent. He acts in ways that "show" that he loves Miu, such as invading Heaven to take her away from the archangel Michael and shielding her from attack. However, his positive actions are far out weighed by the number of hurtful and threatening things stemming from his personality that he says and does to Miu that wound, confuse, and scare her. When it comes time to take her virginity, for example, he refuses Miu's request that he erase her memories of the event because he wants her to think about it every time she's with another man. Satan is not a gentleman disguised as a dominating bastard. He's simply a dominating bastard. In contrast, Amamiya has the dynamism of a plank. As the opposite of Satan, he is supposed to be gentle and passive yet something of a hypocrite. Instead, his character is limp and uninteresting, almost irritating. He continues to pop up in the series after Miu switches her affections from her first love to her new one, stirring up weak trouble - save at the end, when he manages to accomplish something rather inconvenient for the two. Between Satan and Amamiya, the "girl’s fantasy" aspect Akuma na Eros is lost on me.
Because Shinjou is so popular in these parts, I wasn't expecting such a big disappointment. Manga readers can't say that they don't like puff reads (it's all puff), and I've read and enjoyed some pretty cheap, pointless puffs in my time. But I was expecting a love story, not a puzzle in which I had to assemble the pieces together to come up with the romance myself. There was honestly very little that I enjoyed about Akuma na Eros, except for maybe the short story about Malphas and a cute girl named Manami at the end of the fourth volume. They're a sweet pair; I would have liked a four volume series about them. Anyway, I haven't completely tuned out the possibility of reading another Shinjou work. She sounds like a cool chick in her free talk columns, and mentioned that this series was an experiment for her. But I can't really say that I'd recommend Akuma na Eros to a friend, especially if that friend was looking for a fun and easy love story. { shoujo reviews - reviews - main } |
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The issues with this series are all in the characters, starting with the heroine
Miu. As the female lead she is fairly formulaic, with the usual strengths and weaknesses, but uncommonly superficial. For instance, the last thought she thinks when she
believes that she is about to die is that she hasn't been kissed yet. She whines that a mark Satan puts on her shoulder will knock her out of the marriage market. She puts a lot
of time and energy into feeling insecure about how flat-chested she is, and throughout the series she keeps comparing herself to big-tittied humans and demons. In another
series the heroine might have some kind of secondary dimension – a sport she is passionate about, that mad Japanese obsession with excelling in high school, or a small
group
of chatty and colorful friends – that show a side of herself not immediately related to her Big Problem. Not Miu; her hobby is feeling sorry for herself and thinking up fast methods
for growing bigger boobies. Her insecurities grow out of her hopeless crush on Amamiya, the school darling who is surrounded by beautiful girls, and her belief that only a
womanly figure will grab his attention. It might have helped Miu's character indirectly if her mother or her short-haired friend (never named) had played a bigger role in Miu's
Amamiya blues, even if it was only to offer advice or help her out. (Malphas/Tsubasa, Satan's little helper, becomes Miu's friend but doesn't really make up for this lack.)
Miu's problems are transferred when she meets Satan, who becomes her chief love interest, although at this point she develops a whole new set of issues which flesh
out her increasing troubles, but not her.
This is not the kind of dynamic that Shinjou is trying to get across. The story
is supposed to be like a Regency romance novel, with Satan as the rogue full of dark machismo but with a loving heart somewhere inside that only Miu can discern beneath
his layers of asshole-ism and jerk-ery. While Satan is a bastard as a man, in his heart he really has Miu's best interests in mind. Amamiya, on the other hand, believes that he
has Miu's best interests in mind but is really not thinking about what she really wants. My foot. I can't help making a more critical reading of the story, because I don't feel that
Shinjou successfully wrote what she had in mind. Miu loves Satan because she interprets his jealousy and possessiveness as a sign of affection, and his lust as attraction to
her body. Satan may actually see genuine kindness and love in Miu, but they certainly aren't traits that he feels the need to embrace himself and only partly returns to her after
he has cowed and bullied her enough. (Why is it that the man can do no wrong in shoujo manga?) A hyper-pessimistic conclusion is that Miu is so insecure with
herself and so desperately wanting to be "loved" that she latches onto a possessive man and consciously or unconsciously misconstrues his jealous behavior as a sign
of love and his overbearing attitude as strength. This last part may be a bit extreme because Satan does "act" in a loving way towards her every now and then, but for me as a
reader the relationship isn't very satisfactory.