Ai Ore! Love Me, Vol. 1

Read the description and didn't know what to expect but this was awesome and I'm totally hooked. I love the swap and the artwork is beautiful.

I could do without the tape scene, but it's romantic manga, and though it was threatened, it doesn't really happen.

Yes, this series is a little cookie-cutter, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun. The characters are lively and keep the story flowing. I was sad when it was over.

Addicting. It's fun and a goo mindless read. Yet very addicting. I'm going to have to get the rest of the books.

came in great coniditon and i love this manga alot nothing cuter then a man that looks like a girl and a girl that looks like a man romance hehe

It doesn't matter how cute the artwork is in this comic, the ending ruined the whole thing. Under no circumstances should the hero of the book offer to have sex with someone if they will revenge-rape someone else for them first. In what universe would any writer think that is an acceptable plot line, especially from the character we're all supposed to be rooting for?

Ok I'm going to be completely upfront: usually I don't like shoujo. Oftentimes I can't stand the airy girls and the overly dichotomous view of male/female relationships as men being so manly or princely and women being there to ultimately be saved or secretly being so amazingly wonderfully beautiful or sexy she can get away with anything. Most of the series feel really vapid to me. I actually get really irritated by all the shoujo I see on bookshelves and typically refuse to read any of it. I also don't usually go for gender benders because I typically feel like if you want to mess with gender roles just go all the way and instead of (for example) playing with the idea of m/m but being "safe" by having one of them actually be female, just straight up do slash. (It isn't to say I don't like gender benders; I like them when they're done well. I just don't like them when they're a cop out and I feel like the author just doesn't have the backbone to go all the way with the story they really want to tell, because hiding behind the norm of "oh but everything's okay because they're secretly heterosexual" feels insulting to the characters/story to me.)I mention all this so you know I'm not predisposed to like a manga series like this based solely on the topic or genre. And yet I am in LOVE with it! It's funny, it's cute, it makes me wonder what's going to happen next. The characters are well rounded because they are flawed, make mistakes, at times even do things that seem unlikable, but ultimately are still people I really like. In fact, I like them even more for those flaws. I am basing my review partially on more than just this one volume and I can tell you that I love this series and can't wait to keep reading more.There are some parts that are reminiscent of the things I mentioned. Akira tries very hard to be manly and wants to protect Mizuki. Typical of being a female in manga, Mizuki occasionally breaks down. Akira can be really pushy and manipulative and perverted at times. Mizuki doesn't really know what the hell she's doing or what she wants. It does ultimately come down to the age old story of guy wants girl and girl keeps pushing guy away because she's scared but secretly her heart is aflutter. But trust me, keep reading. As more and more information comes out, their actions make sense. Akira, for all that he's somewhat evil at times, I think has reasons for being the way he is and doing what he does. He's manipulative but keep in mind that this is a guy who's so pretty and cute that every other guy basically keeps trying to take advantage of him or looks down on him. He has no privacy and when you learn some other things about him, other quirks make more sense too.I love the side characters too. There's a yakuza's son and the police chief's son where Akira goes to school. The two of them are friends and work partially as Akira's bodyguards and partially as stalkers being pervy about how cute Akira is. I like the characters of the band as well. For me, Mizuki may be my least favorite character but that doesn't really say much since I still like her. I just don't think she's as fleshed out as everyone else. I will admit I was a little disappointed by how she seems closer to the normal heroine of shoujo stories than I was hoping she would be-- I wanted her to be tough and unrelenting. But her confusion makes sense for her as a character and she's actually pretty cute. One thing I really like about her is when she gets angry or upset she says stupid things and then runs away. I like that because it seems more realistic than someone always being in control and saying the right thing at the right time. I also like how she struggles with the idea of being manly or womanly. (By the way, one of the things that makes me laugh is how Ai is a fan of Akira and Akira merch but keeps denying it lol)This series doesn't rely on tenuous misunderstandings for major drama or plot. There are misunderstandings and occasionally they are a part of the plot but it somehow doesn't come off as half-assed or trite to me. I really like how it plays with the question of self identity as related to appearance. I'm a slash fan at heart so I will admit I like that it also plays on fanservice on a variety of levels-- m/f, f/f and m/m. I love reading manga that reverses roles and plays with the outcome, and I think that's something Shinjou Mayu does well in this series.Another thing that's done well is making me laugh. Seriously, I just suddenly start giggling or burst out laughing at different scenes. Yet I'm also intensely curious at other times about what this means, or why s/he is doing that. I also have to say that I think the art style is great. The drawings of the outfits are awesome (It reminds me a little of Paradise Kiss at times except not as intricate or consistent). Especially Akira's outfits are often done well with a nice mixture of tone to give it texture. I also like the chibi-type art that occasionally surfaces. Or the way Akira's features never change but he can look so vastly different between when he's being cutesy and when he's being dark Akira. There's an attention to expressions in this series that I like. It's not the most attention I've seen given to expressions in all the manga I've read but I think it's more than normal or at least done in a way that I think aids well in the telling of the story.One thing that has been mentioned in other reviews is something that I also thought of when reading the series -- there really isn't homophobia in this series. Although I think it's fair to say that probably in the real world an entire all boys school worth of men wouldn't necessarily fall for Akira, it's also probably fair to say an entire all girls school wouldn't necessarily fall for Mizuki. The things that may not match up entirely to reality don't bother me personally because the series is written in a way where I just accept things like that. They could live in a particularly open-minded area. The fact alone that there's such a popular band filled with women who look like men shows that androgyny, in the series' world, is something not only accepted but somewhat envied. And I personally love that about this series. It's really nice to read a series that treats homosexuality, gender identity, androgyny, and other related topics as normally and casually as heterosexuality is usually treated. It's often taken for granted that a man will automatically fall in love with a woman just because she's a woman. I don't agree with that premise of life (probably another reason I usually don't like shoujo) so whenever I see a series that challenges that I am likely to enjoy it more than usual.I wouldn't call this a serious series. So all the things that are not necessarily accurate to reality also seem less important to me because there's so much humor in this that I don't feel like I need to take it super seriously.For anyone who's uncertain about this series but thinks they may like it, I urge you to give it a chance-- in this volume and beyond. I only review series I really like and this is one where I couldn't stay silent. I'm definitely a fan and am excited to buy all the volumes so I can add it to my collection.

~3.5/5[Also available at my blog.]I haven't read anything else by Shinjo that I remember all that clearly; I think I read the first volume of Sensual Phrase several years ago, and I think I've glimpsed through another of her series. I never really had enough interest to invest in any of her manga, though. Mostly, they seemed dramatic and clichéd, but not something that I really wouldn't like, but I never got around to actually reading any of it. With VIZ releasing this recently, I decided to give it a shot, although I didn't have very high hopes for it.Saying that, I was actually a bit surprised with how much I enjoyed this volume. The premise didn't really get me too interested, what with gender-bender not being one of my favorite topics, and I hadn't heard too many great things about it.First of all, I'm going to talk about the whole gender-bender thing. I haven't read a lot of series with this topic, save for Hana-Kimi (a series that I really like), and this one sounded just alright. And, mostly, it is just alright. It's real point seems to be to cause all the students at their schools, an all-boys' and an all-girls' repectively, to fawn over them. There are fan clubs at both schools for the main characters, and it doesn't seem to matter to them that they're falling for someone of the same sex, which seems like a very large number of people at one place to be gay? But maybe they're not really, just for those specific people? Whatever.My biggest problem with this, was how the girls in the band looked. Akira, the boy that looks girly, actually looks like a small boy with feminine features, which didn't bother me. The five girls that look like boys', though, completely look like boys except for, maybe, one scene in the whole volume. The bath scene is the only time they really look like girls. The rest of the time, it just looked like Shinjo had drawn boys and claimed they were girls, which bothered me. Still bothers me.Aside from that, though, I actually enjoyed this volume. It was dramatic, maybe a little over the top, but I didn't mind that. Some people probably do, but I like the smutty, dramatic manga. Which is what this is. There isn't really any outright nudity, but there are several intense scenes. Mizuki, the main girl character, gets embarrassed much too easily and is pretty weak, but I can kind of accept that. Later that might change, though, if she doesn't get even a little more tough. Akira is a bit possessive and forceful, but I don't mind too much at this point.There was one scene, and maybe another one at the end of volume, that included some forcing into sex, maybe and I'm pretty sure what would be called rape, that I didn't like. I didn't like who was involved or how they could be so okay with doing it, like it was a perfectly okay thing, and I'm hoping something comes of that in the next volume. Because it doesn't matter what your reasoning is: rape is not okay.So while I did like this volume, it had its faults, and I hope the next one, which I am kind of looking forward to, is better.

Good reading