This post about My Love Mix-Up! took 18 months lol

 

So this post has, somehow, been like 18 months in the making. I say somehow, I know exactly how. Before I go any further, I’m talking about My Love Mix-Up, the BL manga by Wataru Hinekure. Originally, I bought a few volumes of the manga after watching the original series, the Japanese version, but also at that point, the manga hadn’t actually finished. Now, don’t get me wrong, it finished a while ago, and I had about 800 words of messy notes on it, but since there’s now the Thai version of My Love Mix-Up airing that I am in fact watching, I figured now would be the perfect time to revive the post and clean it up.

And there isn’t any major blurb, but I’m just going to use the blurb that was on the Amazon listing of the first volume, because I feel like it’s a great introduction to the concept of the manga. It says that Aoki has a crush on Hashimoto, the girl in the seat next to him in class. But he despairs when he borrows her eraser and sees she’s written the name of another boy, Ida, on it. To make matters more confusing, Ida sees Aoki holding that very eraser and thinks Aoki has a crush on him. That is all the blurb gives you, but just to mention him now, Aoki’s friend, Akkun, turns up pretty early. And I mention him specifically because he’s the last of the four major characters in this manga.

Still, the manga opens up on the dolls and the divas taking a recap quiz and Aoki realising he’s forgetting his eraser, hence his need to get Hashimoto’s, or how he ends up with Hashimoto’s. We then get a cute little flashback to Valentine’s Day last year and how Hashimoto was the only person who gave Aoki chocolates. Granted, she only gave them to him because she had spares, but he loved it. And that’s when he ends up seeing that she’s written “Ida <3” on the eraser. He then drops it, and when Ida actually sees it, he lies, and says that it’s his, just to spare Hashimoto’s feelings and embarrassment, which then in turn sends Ida into a spiral, thinking he’s dumb for not noticing the way Aoki has been speaking to him in the past – when in reality, Aoki is just nice to everyone. Ida then tells Aoki that he’s never known what it’s like to actually like or hate anyone, so wants to start as friends with Aoki so that he can give him a proper answer to the feelings he thinks Aoki has for him. But then the gag of the season is that by the end of the first volume, Aoki realises he actually kind of likes Ida for real, and that Hashimoto doesn’t like Ida, but Akkun, who is also known as Aida.

Obviously, I had to re-read the entire manga so that I could best write this post. The first, main, thing I felt when I was reading was just how fun and light-hearted the whole thing was. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely have a part of me that enjoys darker and heavier things, but overall, I definitely do prefer lighter, airier stuff. That’s exactly what this was. It was basically a whole high school romance based on first love and an initial miscommunication that all resulted in the main characters all coming of age together. Big fan, personally. I will say, something that I do think is funny, especially in the art style of this manga, is that these characters are in high school and are about 16. I know in the second volume, you see that Ida is 16, but these kids do not look 16 in the slightest. Especially Ida, homeboy looks like he should have a full-time job in an office, I can’t lie. I don’t think the others look wild, but they also definitely don’t look 16. I suppose they all look university age to me, at the very least.

I’ll be 100% honest, and like I mentioned before, I did get inspired to finish this post – and to revisit the full manga – after the Thai drama adaptation started airing. Now I will say that the first two episodes of the show didn’t capture me like how I wanted them to, especially since I loved the original Japanese version so much, as well as this manga, but something about episode 3 really hit different, and I think it hit alongside the fact that I was reading this. I seem to remember the Japanese version being made before the manga actually finished, and so only covered part of what’s in the manga, whereas I think the Thai version is going for more of it – like how the Thai version of Cherry Magic did. This is all for me just to say, I’m so excited to see the things on screen that I’ve now read on page, because there were so many parts of the manga that I just loved. I can’t wait to see Aoki and Ida have so much more life and have so much more time on screen.

In terms of the characters, Aoki is very much the heart on your sleeve, every other emotion on your trouser leg kind of main character, whereas Ida, bless him, he’s essentially the opposite. Absolutely love that they decided to slop the opposites attract trope in this manga, even if Ida didn’t even know whether he liked Aoki in the first place and Aoki didn’t like Ida in the first place. But it was fun seeing the dynamic between the two. There’s some gif I’ve seen somewhere of one character just going feral and bounding around the space, and the other character is just there, completely still. That’s the best way that I can explain Aoki and Ida’s dynamic together.

I also really liked seeing Ida go through his journey of not knowing what it means to like someone in the first place. You get to see his feelings develop in real time almost. Obviously, not literal real time, but you get to see him realise that he actually does like Aoki and figure that out for himself. You get to see the first time he gets genuinely jealous over Aoki when Aoki gets his first part time job and immediately links up with his superior, Saionji so quickly. It's one of those things where Ida never really knows his feelings from the start, but he ends up getting his friends to go with him to eat at the restaurant that Aoki works at, and Ida can’t quite tell why he’s wanted to go.

In the original Japanese adaptation, I remember there not being all that much to Hashimoto and Akkun, again, the adaptation only had ten twenty-minute episodes I believe, so there wasn’t exactly the space. But the manga does them so much more justice as there are whole chunks and chapters dedicated to them, you get to see Akkun meeting Hashimoto’s parents for the first time, Akkun ends up getting a driver’s license, you get to see them gearing up for college. Also, Hashimoto have gorilla strength, you get to see where she actually gets it from, rather than her just having it.

Anyway, I’m glad I finally got to finish this post after it sitting, half done, for the best part of nearly two years, and I’m glad that I got to re-experience My Love Mix-Up in a more together format after reading all nine volumes close together. I’m a big fan of this and would definitely say look into it. Also, there are things from this manga that I’m so excited of maybe getting to see them in the Thai adaptation.

Okay, bye!