LDK Manga Explores Unexpected Romance

Danica Davidson February 10, 2016

LDKmanga Shusei is the most popular boy in school, but Aoi still thinks he’s scum. That’s because he coldly rejected Aoi’s best friend Moe when she tried to ask him out.

Aoi is so close to Moe that she lives in an apartment on her own rather than move with her parents and go to a school without her best friend. This independent living has taught Aoi responsibility, and she’s shocked when she learns that none other than Shusei lives next door to her in the apartment building. Shusei, not knowing Aoi is his neighbor, first knocks on her door to give her a welcome present. Hmm, maybe he isn’t all bad then.

From there the two find themselves hanging out more and more, and when an accident makes one of their apartments inhospitable until it’s fixed, the two end up sharing the same apartment for convenience’s sake.

Except it might not actually be that convenient. Aoi doesn’t want anyone to know she’s living under the same roof as Shusei, because she doesn’t want to hurt Moe’s feelings and she doesn’t want to get harassed by all the Shusei fangirls from school. Before long, Aoi finds herself hiding naked with Shusei in the bathtub (don’t ask – the manga explains) and then going shopping for a bikini while handcuffed to Shusei (she doesn’t have a key). Cohabitation can be difficult, but in the romantic manga world where anything goes, Aoi and Shusei’s cohabitation is fantastically insane.

As Aoi starts to get to know Shusei better, she begins to understand some of his thoughts and realizes he’s not a total jerk. Still, in this first volume he’s no Prince Charming. He still does and says some off-putting things (um, handcuffs for shopping?), so we’ll have to wait and see how the whole series decides to work with that. There are definitely some over-the-top things happening here (see above), so if you like your romantic manga with some manga style craziness, then you definitely ought to check this out. At the same time the manga tries to find a balance in real issues, like getting a crush on someone your friend likes. By the end of the first volume, Shusei is still mostly a mystery and the last page ends with a cliffhanger.

As an added bonus, the end of the volume has mangaka Ayu Watanabe explain her process for creating manga. It might not be specifically about LDK, but it’s interesting to see how she goes from drafting a plot for her editors to finishing the final manga.

Publisher: Kodansha Comics
Story & Art: Ayu Watanabe

For Minecraft fans, the young-at-heart and people who know young Minecraft fans, Danica Davidson’s middle grade Minecraft novels Escape from the Overworld and its sequel, Attack on the Overworld are now available. You can also listen to the audio book, which is narrated by anime voice actor Dan Woren of Robotech and Bleach.