Strawberry 100% Vol. 4

The panty-fest continues...
By A.E. Sparrow

Written by:Mizuki Kawashita
Art by: Mizuki Kawashita

Manga and anime are infamous for many things, but perhaps nothing so much as the gratuitous panty shot. What we like to call fanservice often gets a bad name among those who don't read manga on a regular basis (and often times just as much of a bad name among those who do), but the presence of it doesn't eliminate the possibility of a good story. Strawberry 100%, for example, is treading dangerously close to actually developing a plot, one that might actually be worth following.

Junpei Manaka has problems – the type of problems that most straight males would love to have. He's got not one, not two, but three women vying for his affections. Now, if you've never read any manga for any length of time, you might imagine that Junpei is some kind of catch, gifted with good looks, wads of cash, or amazing talent that promises some level of success in the future. However, those who have picked up more than one harem manga in their pursuit of the hobby will automatically know that Junpei's just as sad-sack as any of us.

He wants to make films, and might have found a kindred soul in Aya, the girl whose strawberry-print panties started off the whole storyline (Junpei saw them and became a bit obessesed). Aya wants to write films, so she seems like a shoe-in as a potential romantic pairing for Junpei. However, popular high-school girl Tsukasa has also eyes on Junpei, despite his lower-class status. He's one of the few men who treats her like a person, and not some ideal to be put on a pedestal. Toss in wild-child Satsuki, who has eyes for Junpei simply because she's genuinely attracted to him, and you have a three-way battle for Junpei's affection that doesn't really make sense to those who don't normally read harem manga. As mentioned previously, there's a lot of fan service in this book, which will either repulse people or draw them in, depending on their predilection toward that kind of thing. However you might feel about it, Strawberry 100% offers what's shaping into a solid storyline to go with the all the panty-shots.

It also helps to have some of the finest artwork available, and Mizuki Kawashita certainly knows how to draw an attractive female form. Fortunately, that's not all there is to this book in terms of artistic style. All too often a book centered around good looking girls results in them appearing dollish, as if the artist can draw a particular type of female, but lacks the ability to provide emotions or anything that might make them appear to be more than just the comic book characters that they are. Kawashita's females convey emotion nicely, from the nervousness about approaching Junpei with their feelings to heady elation at the excitement of a club trip that might bring everyone together.

Strawberry 100% is written to attract a certain type of audience. You can insert your own joke here, but at the same time there's a definite story shaping up here. Junpei, initially someone I felt would be about as boring as the traditional hero of a harem manga is supposed to be, is shaping up to be a really well-developed character, considering the type of story he's found himself stuck in. It's difficult for most of us to identify with his kind of plight, given that most of us go through that kind of thing on a fairly regular basis (right guys?). Still, this book manages to at least give some humanity to its characters, which isn't a usual thing for this type of story.
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