Warning! Whispers of Love by Okuyama Puku

Rating: 5
Juné 2011 - Taiyo Tosho 2010
1 volume
Translation: Sachiko Sato

Warning! Whispers of Love is a collection of romantic comedy stories, where the emphasis is on the comedy over the romance. The title story takes up half the volume and a bunch of one-shots fill up the rest of the book. Okuyama has a cute lively style to her artwork and story telling, the stories are fairly amusing and I found all of them quite entertaining. However, I also found every story rather unsatisfying; there's a definite lack of depth to the characters and an unwillingness throughout the volume to shift gears into a more serious tone, with the result that this collection is never more than lightweight fluff.

The title story has a very simple premise that's wrung for all its comedic worth: a guy with a fetish for cleaning ears... Hajime is excited to start high school life but he immediately catches the eye of Nagura-senpai, the ear-cleaning obsessive who chases him around campus everyday with an ear-cleaner. It's funnier than it probably sounds. Although not laugh-out-loud funny, the characters are still cute enough and quirky enough to amuse. The story zips along easily and you look forward to the couple blundering towards a happy ending. Except that the story zips right through that happy ending as well. Not enough time is spent on those important romantic moments, as soon as the story gets a whiff of the mood turning the slightest bit serious it immediately skips back into lighthearted mode. There's not enough emotional substance to the story, which is a shame because otherwise the writing is quite solid.

My favourite story in the volume is a one-shot entitled 'My Room' about an introvert guy who meets a cheerful stranger one night who asks if he can crash at the introvert's place for two weeks. The story spends more time on the falling-in-love side of things and though it's only one chapter long, is consequently more satisfying than the main story.

Although this collection of stories was rather average, there's still a charm to Okuyama's work which would impel me to check out more of her stuff and hope to find better in another title, something I believe she is capable of.