Manga Monday: Dengeki Daisy

Dengeki Daisy (Volume 1)
Kyousuke Motomi

I'm really tired of seeing completely clueless heroines in shojo manga.  Even worse than Haruna in High School Debut is Teru in Dengeki Daisy.  At least Haruna is a strong person who tries to fix her own problems.  Whenever Teru gets into trouble, she just texts a guy to help her.  Let me start at the beginning...  Teru Kurebayashi is a high school girl who lost her brother, who was always there for her.  Before his death, he let Teru know that someone would always be there watching out for her, and that person was Daisy, who she began to text on her cell phone.  Whenever she was blue, he would encourage her.  Whenever she had a problem, he would help her work it out.  He's the one person she can trust in the world.  If it's not bad enough that Teru has to rely on a man to feel good about herself and solve her problems, she's also picked on because she's a poor girl in a school full of rich kids.  When she accidentally breaks a window, she's coerced into working off the damage by helping the school janitor, who happens to be a hot guy around her age named Kurosaki, out with his duties.  Well, it's more like Teru does his job for him, because he sits around and supervises her while she works.  So to add to the anti-feminist themes of the book, Teru now does whatever this guy tells her to do, in the nice womanly role of cleaning.  Sigh.  It turns out that Kurosaki is her mysterious savior Daisy (shocking, since he's the only other guy in the book), and when Daisy is unable to come to her aid, Kurosaki does.  It's quite obvious from the goings-on in this title who Daisy is, yet Teru continues oblivious to what's around her.  She's such a passive protagonist that it's embarrassing.  Unless you like your heroines to talk to strange men on the phone and generally let the men in her life walk all over her, you should steer well clear of this train wreck of a title.