I think I need to cut back on the high school romance series for a bit. (Which is totally not happening because hi have you met me.) Not because I think that the plots are bad or too drawn out (most of the time), but the fact that they’ve all been so good that I have to look for more.
Say ‘I Love You’ keeps moving right along with Mei and Yamato’s worries about taking their relationship further and we finally pick up on Meg’s story from the last volume and we start seeing her becoming a better person. And although the pacing of the volume’s events can feel a little too slow at times, this is one of the reasons that I really like Say ‘I Love You’—it gives us enough character development entwined with the plot and Hazuki Kanae does really delve into her characters and their motivations for the things that they do.
Plus, they’re complicated. Unlike Kimi ni Todoke (which I kinda can’t help comparing these two series, bear with me), which is about a very sweet girl who meets very sweet people and makes ~*friends*~ (except for one or two people who are eventually swayed by the Power of Friendship), Say ‘I Love You’s characters act more like teenagers who do have flaws and mess up and do things for the wrong reasons. As I said in the last volume, I really liked that while Mei and Yamato do talk about having sex and are clearly thinking about it, they realize that they just can’t handle it emotionally at the moment and they’ll just work their way up to it for the time being. My experience with a lot of manga is more of the “OMG WE’RE IN THE ROOM TOGETHER! SLEEPING TOGETHER! What if I see his naked chest noooo!” Not to say that this specific reaction is invalid (and Mei does do this a bit), but after seeing it so many times, it is refreshing to just see high school students hashing things out.
As for Meg-tan’s story—I’ve really liked Meg, since she’s been taken off the list of “Girls who want Yamato and hate Mei.” And I was really interested in her backstory of using make-up and fashion to get back at her bullies and manipulating them, and that she really doesn’t think that she has anyone to call a real friend. I actually really liked that this also focuses on the perception of celebrities and people in the public eye and showing Meg’s private reactions to being hurt. The only thing that I really didn’t like is Meg’s coping by stress-eating and locking herself in her apartment—not that it’s not a valid reaction, but just how her gaining weight was handled and her reaction to it. (I’m a fat girl who does stress-eat—no, it’s not good for anyone, but there was just something about how Meg was talking to Kai that put me off a little.)
The other reason that I like about this series is that I really don’t know where the series is going to develop next. Yes, this hits a lot of typical shojo romance manga tropes, but I like how the characters react to those situations and that they don’t give a typical reaction to being in them. And even though the pacing of events has slowed down at this point, the characters are still completely engaging me. (I would love to go and watch the anime. Sadly, I am so behind on everything else.) Still really loving this series, and seriously can’t wait to see where the plot’s heading next.