Kimagure Orange Road

Kimagure Orange Road is the story of the Kasuga family, but mostly the oldest son, Kyosuke as they move to a new town after being found out to be a family of ESPers after one of his sisters uses her ability to run a inhumanly fast time in a gym class. Kyosuke meets a beautiful young girl as he counts the 100 steps where as the beautiful young girl counts 99 this leads to his new school and how he immediately falls in love with her. However, by the end of the first volume, the beautiful young girl, named Ayukawa Madoka has agreed to help her best friend Hiyama Hikaru who is a year younger win Kyosukes heart. This starts a love triangle that puts Kyosuke in some funny and difficult situations.

Kimagure Orange Road was is a famous series from the 80s and was published in the famous magazine Weekly Shounen Jump. It consists of 18 volumes that spanned from 1984 to 1987 in Weekly Shounen Jump. It was made into an anime and also had an ova and 2 movies:I Want to Return to the Day and Shin Kimagure Orange Road Summers Beginning. It was even made into a novel series in the 90s. It was written by the mangaka Izuma Matsumoto who has only written this series and has never published any more. This is because he has taken a hiatus because of a health problem of cerebrospinal fluid disease which was from a car accident at the age of 3. Interestingly enough he made a statement a few years ago stating that he has pledged to draw attention to his disease through a new manga. Back in 1999 it was announced by a manga magazine that they were going to publish his new series but this never happend. So for those of you who will read and enjoy this series and mangaka, this is all you have to read.

Well, I enjoyed this series somewhat with its funny characters and the odd situations that they are put in due to Kyosukes ability of being an ESPer. One of the high points of the series was the change in the characters as the series continued and how the was caused by Kyosukes actions which shows his great character. I really liked the character Ayukawa and her great personalitly and attitude that was under her bad girl personna, the same can be said for Hikaru too, as they were caught smoking in front of the school and Kyosuke tells them its is bad for there health. This comment suprisingly stops them from smoking, never would happen in real life but its backs up the characters personalitys especially Kyosukes. There was a very interesting chapter on how Ayukawa got the old red hat she gave Kyosuke, it was very interesting ( i won't give any spoilers) and was my favorite chapter. I really hated the chapter with the author writing about himself going on vacation and seeing the characters and he draws himself as a job which was a waste of space. I also rather disliked how it took until the last volume for Ayukawa to admit she loved Kyosuke and how all the events involving it only took less then 1 volume. It didnt bother me how Hikaru didnt notice or how Kyosuke couldnt choose because we all knew Hikaru was dense and it was repeated over and over Kyosuke was indecisive. I wish the ESPer element was a little more significant, I really think it had very little affect on the series and was more or less there to attract the sci fi audience to the series. This isnt a complaint but i wish i would have seen how Kyosuke would tell and show Ayukawa he was and ESPer and how she would react

Well this is a solid shounen romance and one of the old school series of the genre. Anyone who likes shounen manga with romance plots would enjoy this series. I think it loses a little of its spark over the years as how things have changed but that holds true with almost every old manga. It was able to hold my attention and kept me truly interested in the characters problems but it strayed to much from the core of the story and came up with a lot of usesless chapters towards the end which is a turn away. But all in all it was a good manga that deserves to be mentioned as one of the great romance stories published in Weekly Shounen Jump.

7/10