Aoki Shouta is in love with Hashimoto Mio, the girl seated next to him in class. During a quiz, he doesn’t have an eraser, but she’s an angel and lends him one. Problem is, he finds it says “IDA❤️” on it and his crush inevitably breaks his heart. What’s even worse, though, is that Ida Kousuke is seated right in front of him and picks up the eraser when Aoki drops it. Unable to say it’s Hashimoto’s eraser after his initial denial of ownership, Aoki’s forced to admit it’s his.
Thoughts
I started subscribing to Viz Manga last month (and I’ll share my thoughts on that on a different date) and picked a few titles at random when I was going to read something. One of them was My Love Mix-Up, written by Hinekure Wataru and drawn by Aruko, and as Pride Month is about to end, I decided to hurriedly post this review.
The series was originally published in the shoujo magazine Bessatsu Margaret and is a BL series — which I actually had no idea it would be when I started reading it. Perhaps I should start reading blurbs before I start reading a series instead of a volume in? But it spoils some of the fun!
And this series is very much that — fun. It’s a little silly in a good way with misunderstandings that are both ridiculous and plausible with a main character you can relate to. My Love Mix-Up tells us about the heart-warming friendships that we may create in our youth while with Aoki and Ida learning how to love and what it means to love someone of their own gender.
We see this in the plot from early on. Hashimoto is Aoki’s first crush and he likes how kind she is, like lending an eraser when he forgot to bring one! But after realising his crush has someone else she likes, he wants to support her to his best ability, trying to get Ida and Hashimoto to have some time together, because clearly, they’re perfect for each other! That Ida has the mistaken perception Aoki likes him isn’t much of an issue. Except… it’s just that our heartbroken Cupid realises there’s another problem — now that he actually interacts with Ida more, he himself is falling for him! That was not the plan!
But it turns out that the first misunderstanding was in fact with Aoki — because that eraser didn’t originally say Ida… Meaning Aoki’s free to be in love with Ida without holding back! If only his friend Aida wasn’t so tactless that Ida now think Aoki doesn’t like him that way at all. What is a high school boy supposed to do?!
Only 7 out of 9 volumes have yet been published in English of these silly, yet very good, kids who make mistakes and misunderstand each other, but it leaves you with a good feeling so far. It’s clear Aoki and Ida love each other a lot, despite their different personalities, worries and ways of communicating. Volume 8 is scheduled for release in a few days while the release date for the finale is in October.
Aruko’s art doesn’t necessarily stand out in comparison to other shoujo manga — it has the very typical aesthetics and vibes of other series in the same magazine. While that means it might not be the most memorable, it means it doesn’t stand out in a bad way, which is in fact good too! While it may not seem like a distinct style overall, it does though have a very special “funny” style for the more comedic reactions of Aoki’s dramatic overreactions. It very much suits the story’s lightheartedness and comedic undertone adding to the fun, without taking away the themes of love and friendship that are common in stories for the school-girl demographic.
The series is very clearly targeted to Betsuma’s target audience, meaning teenage girls, and has things in common with other series that were published in the same magazine, which includes well-known titles such as Lovely Complex, Ao Haru Ride and Kimi ni Todoke: Reaching You. The twist for this series is that it’s BL, which at the very least wasn’t something you’d see in Betsuma when I regularly read the magazine in the past. That doesn’t mean it has not been well-received though. In 2022, My Love Mix-Up receive the 67th Shogakukan Manga Award for shoujo manga. It was also adapted to a 10-episode J-drama that aired in autumn 2021.
Overall, it’s been a pleasant read! I was really just randomly picking out primarily shoujo romances because I have been leaning toward hetero romances recently, but I could appreciate the combination of BL and shoujo romance, even if I was not prepared. It was a surprise, that’s for sure, but an excellent one! That Ida can be read as an aro-spec/ace-spec character isn’t out of bounds either, and I appreciate that.
This series bridges the fluff of shoujo romance and the issues of maturity often found in BL these days, making it suitable for a range of readers, and could act as a gateway to either for the curious. I do recommend it in particular for teens though, and not just girls, because it does feature a protagonist who crushes both on a girl and on a boy, and it there can never be enough positive representation that teens get exposed to in media especially for them.
