Author: Kazurou Inoue
Volumes: 12
Released: 2003-2008 (however, it has been republished and continuing since July 2008)
When preparing your “Love & Collage” recipe be sure to keep knives and other sharp objects away from children, thank you. First thing you do is you find a copy of Love Hina and a blender. Put Love Hina in said blender and leave it on medium speed for about 30 seconds. Take the now finely blended Love Hina mix and apply glue to the setting of the Manga you would like to create. Now carefully sprinkle the Love Hina and spread evenly around the surface of the setting. Congratulations, you now have the setting for Love & Collage.
While my little recipe for Love & Collage did go on for longer than necessary, I'd say it's pretty damn accurate. Now don't get me wrong, it certainly has the same setting. One lone young boy living with the usual people, a tsundere who punches him 100 feet into the air, a timid girl who “secretly” falls in love with him and a martial arts (in L&C she's a ninja) straight and serious girl, in an all-girls dorm. There are “oh hey I'm going to the bathroom oh look there's the tsundere undressing and LOL Naru punch!” moments and the main character is also quite the loser who defied his parents and went to Tokyo, sure he's a high school student rather than someone applying for University but he was just as defiant, nonetheless. However while the setting is nigh-on identical, the Manga itself is completely different and sets itself apart from the Love Hina stereotype quite well.
The main character, Maeda Hachibei, is a pursuer of “girl's parts”. He has the picture of a perfect girl painted in his head; straight legs, a husky voice, cat-shaped and clear blue eyes, and bullet-train breasts (bullet train being a reference to the shape of the front carriage of a bullet train in Japan). He has more wants and if you're interested they can be found on Wikipedia, but will be revealed eventually in the Manga anyway. With this beautiful girl's image strong in his mind he sets off to a high school in Tokyo, hoping to meet with said girl.
In all fairness, he does indeed find his perfect parts, but at the same time they're on four different women. Ameyagi Tsubame is the landlord of the dorm and a teacher at Hachibei's school with perfectly straight legs the same size from hips to feet. Tenmaku Sakurako is the man-hating tsundere with his perfect clear-blue, cat-like eyes. Tsukino Yukari is the timid middle-school student with the perfect breasts. And Ootori Kirino is the stoic Ninja descendent with the perfect strong bass voice.
Hachibei's dorm was burnt down by a vengeful arsonist and, having nowhere to sleep, is invited to stay in the shed next to the girl's dormitory. The next few chapters are the typical relationship-building chapters which have him realising and sorting out the problems of his neighbours (while I have yet to read one where he helps out the teacher, it wouldn't surprise me if there was one). While Hachibei turns into a killing machine whenever one of these parts are threatened in some way, most of the time he is your average shameless fetishist. If the part isn't to his liking then he pays no attention, and so you don't get the usual spurting of blood when he sees someone in their underwear, simply because he has no desire for what he is looking at.
Some of you may know the name Kazurou Inoue from his popular series “Midori Days,” and you can certainly see it in the style of drawing. He tends to stick to the usual style for this genre of Manga, but certain details can be seen here and there that give it an original feel (like Ootori's eyes, for example).
Love & Collage is basically a Manga depicting the growing strength and value of the relationships the various characters have with each other. As it goes on and on, more and more characters are introduced, and will no doubt end with everyone being one big happy family, and I like that.
Can someone tell me where i can read the republished manga of this??
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