The cat who reincarnated into a FANGIRL: J-Wednesdays 水曜日だ！: Strobe Edge.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

J-Wednesdays 水曜日だ！: Strobe Edge.

English translated volume 1 of Strobe Edge.

Strobe Edge is a shoujo manga by Io Sakisaka. It's set in high school, like most shoujo mangas are, and is about a teenage girl who falls in love for the first time. Ninako is a 15-year old girl who falls in love with a popular guy in his grade, Ren. Everyone loves Ren because he's charismatic and so many girls have already been rejected by him. One thing about Ren though is that he already has a long-time girlfriend who is older than he is and is really pretty. His girlfriend, Mayuka, is a college student and is a model. Mayuka is Daiki's older sister. Now who the hell is Daiki? Daiki, during the first few chapters, is shown as Ninako's best friend and apparently had a crush on Ninako for quite a while. He was into Ninako until she rejected him because of her love for Ren. Now Daiki will have a new love interest, and I'll leave it at that.

There are other characters that will pop up in later chapters of this manga who are all quite important to the story. Since it's a shoujo manga, expect a lot of cheesy and fun moments in the story. In this first volume that I have, the author mentioned that she wanted this manga to become something that everyone could relate with, and created it to contain such emotions that most of us had probably already felt. When I read that, it really stuck with me through my reading of this manga. To be honest, if I didn't read that statement by the mangaka, I wouldn't have continued to read this manga because of its cheesiness. However, the emotions being shown in this manga mostly by the main character, Ninako, is of an innocent love for Ren, and I quite understand that despite the excessive "shoujo manga cliché" that it shows the readers.

Anyway, I just finished this pure and cute story of Ninako and Ren, and I want the song that's stuck with me since it was mentioned that this song is the one Ninako was listening to in a certain chapter of this manga. For those who have already read Strobe Edge, may this song make you remember Ninako's pure and innocent love for Ren.