Marmalade Boy: Collector's Edition 4

Marmalade Boy #4

by Wataru Yoshizumi

EMOTIONAL ROLLERCOASTER

Miki is ecstatic over her plans to take a trip with Yuu! In order to save up money, she gets a job at an ice cream shop—but disaster strikes when she’s working there. What will she do when she loses the bracelet Yuu gave her?!

Genres: Manga, Shojo, Comics Manga

306 pages, Paperback

Published December 12, 2023

About the author

Wataru Yoshizumi (吉住渉) is a Japanese mangaka. She was born as Mari Nakai (中井 真里, Nakai Mari) on June 18, 1963 in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated with a degree in economics from Hitotsubashi University.

Yoshizumi started her career as a mangaka while working as an office lady. Her debut manga was a yomikiri (short story) called "Radical Romance" that was published in 1984, in the summer issue of Ribon Original. She is known as a social mangaka, and is a good friend of fellow mangakas Naoko Takeuchi, Ai Yazawa, Miho Obana, and Megumi Mizusawa.

Yoshizumi currently (as of 2007) has her works published in both Ribon and Chorus.

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gosh I hate Kei and Suzu for trying to break up Yuu and Meiko >:(
Anyway, love the friendships, and the developing romances amongst the side characters!!!

[Fake Gyllen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dramaaa

[Bobby Stringini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marmalade Boy continues to be one of the best low anxiety soap operas around. There is nothing truly over the top or shocking, but the sweet characters and pretty art make it a delight to read. The pacing is also spot on. Only one volume left!

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I absolutely did not care for Suzu. She was so annoying to read about and the whole drama in this one was had me rolling my eyes. Hopefully they end it with a bang in the final volume. This series started off strong for me but this volume really dipped low for me.

[-moonprismpower- · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love these collector’s editions!! All the color art pages from the art book/magazine…

Please make a collector’s edition of Boys Over Flowers next!!! We need more classic shojo in print!!!!!

[Korry · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Elle David · Rating 5 out of 5]

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was for your own good! I was thinking of your happiness! So why must you make it impossible to contain myself?!!

For a good long time, I thought Marmalade Boy had held up pretty well, but enough instances like this, and whoo, maybe not. I used to be into Ginta, but now he's kind of scary. He just comes up to a guy on the street and punches him in the face! He thought he was jumping in to Arimi's defense, but it's good to make some attempt to talk it out before the fists start flying, maybe?

Arina Tanemura's characters are even more emotion-crazed than the ones here, so there are more ridiculous shoujo out there, for sure.

We're definitely heading toward the endgame here. Miwa, Kei, and Suzu are minor speed bumps along the way to this or that couple's HEA, but there's no reason to take any of it seriously.

I realized a day or two ago that I can make a little reading list of Ribbon manga from the '90s with my own collection.

Marmalade Boy
Gals!
Neighborhood Story
Full Moon

Something like Hime-chan's Ribbon would be fun, but I wouldn't hold out much hope for that one, since there are only a couple of magical girl stories from that period that anyone remembers now.

[Brigid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume is full of dingbat interlopers! Suzu, Satoshi’s younger model cousin, and Kei, Miki’s coworker at the ice cream parlor, do nothing but cause problems for Miki and Yuu! After a series of nonsensical misunderstandings, Suzu decides that Miki and Yuu are unsuited for each other, and that Meiko is secretly in love with Yuu: “No way I’ll let a perfect couple go to waste!! I’ll get Yuu-sensei to break up with that girl…and help Meiko-san love happily ever after!!” Kei, meanwhile, finds Miki’s lost bracelet (a Christmas present from Yuu) but lies about it when Miki asks if he’s seen it. Later, when Yuu comes to pick up Miki from work, Kei shows Yuu the bracelet and then makes a bold power play himself: “She doesn’t like it. She wanted me to get rid of it. And after you bought it for her and everything. It seems like she doesn’t really like you anymore. Shouldn’t you just break up?”

Yuu and Miki are able to sort a lot of this confusion out pretty fast together, but this also causes a very unnecessary argument. Despite knowing there’s no truth in Kei’s outrageous claims, jealousy still gets the best of Yuu, and it is not terribly kind when he exclaims to Miki, “Stop attracting all these weird guys!!” Miki, in turn, tells Yuu that she does not want to go on their secret summer trip together any longer, and Yuu made me laugh out loud when he yells back, “Who would want to take you?!!”

Another humor highlight in this volume was Ginta finally working up the nerve to ask out Arimi, only for her to say she thought they already were going out: “I mean, we talk on the phone almost every day, we go out like this once a week…wouldn’t you usually call this dating?” The scene between them ends extremely sweetly but this moment was very funny. Meiko also wins the Asahi Literature Prize for her novel, which Satoshi encouraged her to write in the first place. Maybe Satoshi and Meiko aren’t a good love match, but it is tragic to me that Meiko doesn’t even consider anyone her own age and hitches her wagon to Shinichi Namura even though he is too old for her (and he was also her former teacher!).

Despite the continually awkward and sad Meiko/Shinichi Namura plotline in this manga series (Meiko decides to marry him in this volume…sigh…), I enjoyed the rest of this volume very much and rate it as four-out-of-five-stars.