Dark and creepy.

This is a weird one to describe. Yoh is a college freshman who has been basically abandoned by her mother and left to fend for herself. She’s got a lot going on but she’s managing, up until she needs Haruma. Haruma claims to be a childhood friend who lived next door growing up and steps in during a public fight Yoh is having with her boyfriend. Accusations are thrown around and Haruma ends up saying he ran into Yoh’s mother, and she told him he could stay at the house with Yoh since they grew up together. Yoh isn’t too sure about this, but her mother has a history of forgetting her and forgetting to tell her things, so she allows it, although one of her friends brings up the point that Haruma’s family died years ago by suicide, and this left him an orphan.

This manga absolutely tries its best to be a horror/thriller style, with multiple creepy things going around. Someone is stalking Yoh, someone is watching her and her friends, and Haruma is a creep in general, full of red flags. Yoh isn’t nearly as passive as I expected her to be, but it’s obvious she yearns to be noticed and protected since her mother never gave a shit. Haruma on the other hand, even if he is a red herring and not a creep, REALLY comes off as being obsessed with Yoh and is possibly a sexual deviant because yikes, some of the things he says and does are fucked up.

I feel like Haruma’s behavior is too obviously creepy for the story to be that transparent and a lot of this must be a swerve, but I’m not entirely sure. If it becomes a romcom I am going to stop reading because even if taken wrongly Haruma is still creepy as fuck. This is a weird one that I don’t know exactly how I feel about it. I think reading a second volume will make it clearer, but this is the kind of manga I’d have to be in the mood for in order to want to read.

Title: Love and Heart Vol. 1
Author:  Chitose Kaido
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781975320423

Three Descriptors: Creepy, Odd, Off putting