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LDK vol. 1-7 by Ayu Watanabe

LDK is currently running in Betsufure, or Bessatsu Friend, a magazine published by Kodansha. It began publication in 2009 and is currently up to 21 tankobans in Japan.  In April 2014, it was nominated for the 38th Kodansha manga award for best shojo manga. We recently got word that it will be coming to a conclusion soon in Japan and is in its final arch as of December 2016.  It is licensed by Kodansha USA in English and the first volumes came out over a year ago now. I have been holding off on passing judgement on this series for a while and finally read far enough to make a fair review.

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The Gist:  LIVING, DINING, KITCHEN…LOVE? Aoi Nishimori is a high school girl who lives alone in her own apartment, but to her surprise, she discovers that the prince of her school, Shusei Kugayama, has moved in next door! To add to this, a series of crazy happenings result in the two living together under a single roof! Shusei is known to be a heartless guy and Aoi particularly hates him after he coldly rejected her best friend, so a life of cohabitation seems like a recipe for disaster. And yet, Aoi somehow can’t stop her heart from pounding when she’s with Shusei…

The Review: This is a series I was highly anticipating last year, since it’s a new high school drama. I love this genre of shoujo, and I really want it to do well in North America so that we continue to get more of it.  You can imagine my disappointment then, when I didn’t love it from the beginning. I really wanted to, but it has some stumbling blocks in the first few volumes that made me seriously doubt reading it any further. The story starts out with the main protagonist, Aoi, sticking up for her friend and being an out-spoken girl. But after interacting with Shusei in the apartment environment for a short amount of time, Aoi becomes what I like to call the “naive idiot” stereotype.  The girl lets others’ ideas control her and makes stupid decisions due to the boy she likes.  It happens in a lot of romances. It’s frustrating for me to want to read about a character like that. In the first 4 volumes she gets manipulated by Shusei several times and ends up in risqué situations, is manipulated by an underclassman trying to get her to like him, is manipulated by Shusei’s brother into a highly compromising situation, and is manipulated and embarrassed by Shusei’s female cousin.  The key word there is manipulated. Aoi is stupidly naive and ends up in these situations that she could have avoided if she would think for herself and not allow others to trick her into things – it’s painful to read. By the end of the 4th volume I was ready to ditch this series.

Some niggling “what if” kept me reading, however. There has to be some reason why LDK sells so well in Japan, right? By the fifth volume the relationship between Shusei and Aoi is genuine. Shusei is not manipulating her purposely anymore, and Aoi has figured out her feelings. It looks like the couple might be happy.  Of course, the mangaka can’t let that happen so soon. However, now that the series is strongly established, we start getting the deeper storyline.  The shallow, teasing episodes between Shusei and Aoi change to a more dramatic course of events because the characters’ feelings are more entwined. Shusei finally gets some much needed development in the later volumes I’ve read. No spoilers, of course. If you want to know, you’ll have to read it yourself.

Obviously the characters and the plot were frustrating to me at first, but after some time and development, there is a good story happening finally. If you love this series, that’s great. But if you start out like I did and want to give it up, don’t. Keep going. It gets better. It builds. It just needs a chance.

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One of the better scenes where Shusei is sincere in his actions towards Aoi.

The Art: There wasn’t anything especially striking about the art. Watanabe’s art is fairly simple. The colored pieces are pretty. The panels are clean and simple. It’s easy on the eyes and that makes it enjoyable to read.

The Audience: This is for fans of high school shoujo. So far up to volume 7 there is kissing and some petting, so it is more appropriate for older teen and up. If you like Say I Love You or Missions of Love, then this would be one for you to collect.

The Media: LDK is available in North America up to volume 7 with volume 8 coming out in December.  The total tankobans in Japan is up to 21 currently. There was a live action movie made of LDK in 2014.

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Heart of Manga Rating: ♥♥♥♥

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3 Comments

  • So grateful for this review. I did give this up at first, something I don’t usually do, but read this and bought up to vol. 7 and am starting to get into it, so thanks very much 🙂

    • Yay! So glad that it helped someone else.

  • I love KDK. to like this manga you have to stick to it since the mangaka get in this plot that I don’t think necessary and get stuck in there. But is a very nice and different manga specially to be considerate shoujo, which I don’t like because the latter one’s are full of unnecessary drama.

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