Back in September we took a look at volume 1 of KimiKiss from Tokyopop, a manga that is a dating simulation game, but without the game. Essentially the perspective of the stories, encounters, and nervousness of characters is all pulled from the very popular genre of dating simulation, and it’s pulled off quite well. Now Tokyopop has release volume 2 of KimiKiss and while the story and players are different the results are almost the same. Why almost, well there are a few areas volume 2 comes up short in compared to volume 1, mainly the naughtiness department, so let’s take a look.
Asuka is a soccer prodigy, a girl who practices her butt off and even competes with the boy’s team to train. While working out with the boys is helpful most of her time is spent alone trying to improve her skill. A chance meeting, a ball hitting head encounter with Kouichi leads to a training partner for Asuka as well as an unforeseen romantic interest. As the two train together they grow closer and eventually must share their feelings or continue to move along awkwardly with each other. The training moves off the pitch as Asuka and Kouichi take on one of life’s most challenging games; the game of love.
The story is very, very straight forward. Asuka and Kouichi start as friends and through a shared task, soccer and also studying, they fall for each other. This is young romance at its most basic and this is one of the shortcomings from volume 1. The encounters are very vanilla compared to the ‘love teacher’ found in volume 1. This is not a bad thing, but readers will not feel as guilty with this volume. The story gets to the point and does not muck up the water with additional characters so it works well overall. The art is good and characters well drawn, environments very, very normal and emotions captured well enough. Again, even with the same artist, the concept does not feel as fresh as volume 1 and the interesting encounters lack a bit. The cover art is poster worthy, very well drawn and should draw many readers to it on store shelves.
Overall volume 2 of KimiKiss is more of the same but a tad lighter than volume 1. The romantic encounters don’t hold up to volume 1 but they do represent well. A nice story, a good angle on a gaming genre that is not as well covered here in the states.
Asuka is a soccer prodigy, a girl who practices her butt off and even competes with the boy’s team to train. While working out with the boys is helpful most of her time is spent alone trying to improve her skill. A chance meeting, a ball hitting head encounter with Kouichi leads to a training partner for Asuka as well as an unforeseen romantic interest. As the two train together they grow closer and eventually must share their feelings or continue to move along awkwardly with each other. The training moves off the pitch as Asuka and Kouichi take on one of life’s most challenging games; the game of love.
The story is very, very straight forward. Asuka and Kouichi start as friends and through a shared task, soccer and also studying, they fall for each other. This is young romance at its most basic and this is one of the shortcomings from volume 1. The encounters are very vanilla compared to the ‘love teacher’ found in volume 1. This is not a bad thing, but readers will not feel as guilty with this volume. The story gets to the point and does not muck up the water with additional characters so it works well overall. The art is good and characters well drawn, environments very, very normal and emotions captured well enough. Again, even with the same artist, the concept does not feel as fresh as volume 1 and the interesting encounters lack a bit. The cover art is poster worthy, very well drawn and should draw many readers to it on store shelves.
Overall volume 2 of KimiKiss is more of the same but a tad lighter than volume 1. The romantic encounters don’t hold up to volume 1 but they do represent well. A nice story, a good angle on a gaming genre that is not as well covered here in the states.
