Manga-ka: Hanae Sakazaki
Publisher: DMP/June
Rating: Mature (18+)
Released: April 2008

Synopsis: “Shirai is a math teacher with a problem… a handsome young problem, named Akagi. Akagi is an actor, but he’s still in school, and can’t always make it on time to class. As a result, Shirai has to give him individual instruction to ensure that his studies don’t suffer. The problem is, Akagi is in love with Shirai, and won’t give him a moment of peace.”

Love Lesson is a collection of short boys’ love stories by Hanae Sakazaki. Ranging from friends in school who become something more, to cousins who once exchanged quiet words now exchange quite a bit more.

The stories here are pretty varied, as were my thoughts of them. I enjoyed the chapters near the beginning but progressively found them less and less entertaining as I went. By the end, I couldn’t care less about what lay on the next page. The second story, about two friends from high school reconnecting, was my favourite but even it suffered from a sudden ‘now we’re in love’ ending that left me craving a story with some actual depth (which unfortunately was not delivered at anytime in this book).

I wasn’t very impressed by the artwork here, which varied from decent to downright avoidable. Facial profiles in particular bothered me and sometimes aspects of the artwork seemed sloppy more than just stylistically unappealing. There are attributes here that occasionally caught me eye, such a eyes or interesting ways of drawing mouths, but it’s the sort of thing that makes me curious to see Hanae Sakazaki’s work in a couple of years to see if it’s improved.

So unfortunately for this review, I really don’t have much else to say on this book. It was generally mediocre all the way around and while I didn’t strongly dislike it, I certainly didn’t like it. So overall I can’t recommend this easily passable collection of boys’ love stories to readers but I suppose it could be said that it’s better to have something completely unmemorable than hatable.

Review written July 1, 2008 by Lissa Pattillo. Originally written for MangaJouhou
Book provided by DMP for review purposes

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About the Author: Lissa Pattillo

Lissa Pattillo is the owner and editor of Kuriousity.ca. Residing in Halifax, Nova Scotia she takes great joy in collecting all manners of manga genres, regretting that there's never enough time in the day to review or share them all. Along with reviews, Lissa is responsible for all the news postings to the website and works full time as a web and graphic designer.