Sleep Is For the Weak

PG-13, maybe?, for romantic hijinks and such; official series website

Wow…this manga is really, really terrible. It’s essentially a schoolgirl move-to-the-dorms story, only the schoolgirl is a schoolboy (and not in drag or anything - the main character just happens to be a dude). He likes flowers, his secret female crush likes flowers, and he finds out his new, cold bishounen roommate comes from a family of flower arrangers, and this will eventually be what brings them together in friendship…I think? I don’t really know what the point of this comic is, and I don’t care - it’s chock full of shoujo cliche, painfully boring “dramatic” moments, and crappy, scant narrative that serves to make the reader feel even further removed from all the proceedings. Let me make this clear for all shoujo, josei, or wannabe titles aimed at females - if you’re doing some sort of emotional character story, and you’re not AMAZING at what you do, you MUST have a strong internal narrative for the main character(s). Period. It’s what makes shoujo/josei character stories work - it helps smooth out the pace, it gives the mangaka a quick and easy way to fill in background information or unique perspectives, and it usually makes the main character at least a little sympathetic. If you think you can get most of your point across through dialogue, then you had better be Fumi Yoshinaga or your character story is going to suck.

Anyway, the art of Zig*Zag is its only real redeeming feature - it’s simple, but deceptively so, since it succeeds at being genuinely expressive and energetic in a way most schoolgirl shoujo stories fail at. When I heard this manga was in English, I thought it was Zig x Zag, which was a popular scanlation back in the day. I’d much rather read two volumes of bishounen baseball insanity than seven volumes of this complete waste of…argh, I can’t believe Zig*Zag is seven volumes!

Initial impression: Run far, far away. (Lianne)

Trackback URI | Comments RSS