#04 – Koukou Debut by Kawahara Kazune

Koukou Debut by Kawahara Kazune
Published by Shueisha
Serialized in Bessatsu Comic Margaret

High school’s not easy. For a girl who spent her life in junior high school as a certified jock, the mission to snag a boyfriend in high school is quite a tall task. But Haruna Nagashima is not the girl who gives up. She’ll do anything and everything to make her High School debut! Even if it meant getting a snobby yet handsome high school senior as her coach.

This is a completely hilarious romance about a boy and a girl who’s just starting to figure out what love is all about. Having studied all the formulas in shoujo romance, how can Haruna Nagashima’s go wrong? Well, Kazune Kawahara tells you that a romantic life ain’t no shoujo manga. But Kawahara also depicts a romance quite true to most girls out there. Koukou Debut serves a fresh tale on what it’s like to fall in love the first time.

It takes two to tango

Reading Koukou Debut is like falling in love for the first time. The story takes you through the experience of Haruna Nagashima and the steps that she has taken to find love during her high school life. As the story’s heroine, she’s quite a personality as she is both admirable and a little naive on the social department. She’s great in sports, and somehow makes it in her academics. However, in her high school, she swore to devote all her energies in finding true love. You can blame her naivete to her admiration for shoujo romances. This is a fact that some girls would have to come to someday: shoujo story romances only happen in shoujo mangas. The irony of Koukou Debut is it’s a shoujo manga that depicts how shoujo manga romances aren’t all true. In the end, it always relies on the two people involved in falling in love. And boy, do we have an interesting pair with Koukou Debut.

The other half of the pair is Yoh Komiyami, a smug handsome guy who turned out to be a year higher in Haruna’s school. Having heard his opinions on what a guy looks for in a girl, Haruna runs to him for his help, asking him to be her coach in love. At first he was hesitant, but he took the task later on. The guy’s got a soft heart after all. However, there was one rule that Haruna should follow. She shouldn’t fall in love with him at all. Haruna takes the rule seriously however, things slip as the two know more about each other and eventually fall in love to each other.

Yoh and Haruna play the perfect pair to create this funny romance. Haruna’s very straightforward about things and it always catches Yoh off-guard. More often than not, these encounters turn out to be hilarious and not stupid. There is a thin line between stupidity and innocence. Haruna seems to trudge this line safely without looking too stupid. She’s just like any hopeful persevering romantic girl… without the drama. Sometimes, part of the comedy is Yoh himself whose subtle reactions and sly remarks often keeps the humor of the series going.

As some say, love is like peeling an onion skin. True enough, Haruna’s actions around Yoh always opens up his emotions and often breaks his cold demeanor. Little by little, you see Yoh’s warm personality. He’s not entirely that cold guy we first met. At the same time, Yoh has the ability to make Haruna considerate of other people’s emotions, particularly her boyfriend’s feeling. Haruna’s naivete often causes trouble in their relationship, but she often takes this as a learning experience and strive harder to make the relationship work. This growing aspect of their romance makes the tale more real than it is merely just another shoujo tale. Love, after all, is about breaking personal barriers and making efforts. More so, it does take two to tango.

I’ll do my best!!
What strikes me the most about Koukou Debut is how strangely real Haruna is when it comes to her naivety. Even I, in love, become as naive as she is. What have I done wrong? Was it the clothes I wore? The perfume I used? Or is my makeup too light? Questions that bothers us in dating also pops out in Haruna as well. And it’s hilarious to see this part of yourself through Haruna. For all we know, if we were also drawn as manga characaters, we could look just as hilarious as Haruna. However, there is something more admirable to Haruna that we could learn from. And that is doing our best.

Despite all the hardships that Haruna has gone through to fulfill her mission for true love, she still tries her best to make it work. In this way, not only Yoh is moved by her actions, but us as well. The value of Koukou Debut in the world of shoujo mangas today is how it allows us to completely relate to the story without being overly dramatic. Our parents need not be millionaires, nor the guys we are dating be someone who is completely perfect. Falling in love really stays as a personal effort. At the same time, the story gives us inspiration to do our best as relationships do take an effort for it to work.

Koukou Debut‘s strength falls on the careful pacing of the story in order to properly flesh out a believable and heartfelt tale about falling in love. It is believeable because the main pair doesn’t exactly act flamboyant or too emotional for us to even consider them as someone from a comic book. Haruna acts like any other girl. Yoh is much like any other guy out there. Both of them have the same insecurities and trouble as we do.

Their story is heartfelt because of how it’s grounded in reality. Emotionally, the story doesn’t make us feel anything too drastic that it separates our experience with them. It’s different when you live with the story, and when you live through the story. In Koukou Debut, you walk the same road as Haruna and Yoh, living (or reliving) a feeling that we encounter once in a while with that special someone that struck our heart. In my experience, a feeling like that makes me say ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(????????????)????????????????????????????????????.

Okay. What a fangirlish scream, but Koukou Debut deserves it. I suck at life. o(*^?????^*)o???????????!