Venus in Love, Vol. 01
by Yuki Nakaji
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The story of Suzuna, a young woman and her group of friends as they begin university & fall in love. This is a perfectly nice series, but I gave it such a low rating because the translation is horrendous! It could be that the directness of the story could have been difficult to translate. I have a hard time believing that it was intended to be so straight-forward. Japanese is NOT a language that works like that! I think it was probably supposed to be more subtle; but, the subtleties didn’t work in the English language. Why do we have to be so boorish?
Because of the translation, you don’t get drawn into the story; completely impedes the “flow”. However, I have read this a number of times. Why? It’s actually because it is so easy to put down. The illustrations are charming, and it seems that every few panels there is a scene and story change. It packs a great deal of story into 8 short easy-to-read volumes. [There are more volumes out there, but CMX closed before it released any more… that’s all we got!]
So, not one I’d recommend, because there are definitely better English translated manga out there. Plus, this one is out of print so…you know.
But definitely one I like to read when I need something light & airy that won’t stay with me when I go to sleep. Sometimes you just need to read “fluff”!
I think I’d like to read the Japanese version someday to see if I’m actually right about it though. I just can’t fathom that Nakaji-san would have gotten away with writing so many volumes had she been so intentionally direct in her story-telling…
manga hoarder 