Light spoilers are in my review below.
There’s a bit in a shoujo story where the plot either takes the turn to allowing the main characters to get together or the author decides to string the reader along for an unknown amount of time. We’ve reached Volume 4 of Fall in Love, You False Angels and we’ve entered stringing me along for no good reason territory. The basic plot of this series is that Otogi is the picture perfect, most popular girl in school, but this is an act that she puts on in order to maintain her social status and to get along. She finds out that the similarly perfect appearing most popular boy, Toki, also has a dark side and is putting his persona on as well. They both have crushes on each other but have decided to not date and now there’s also a potential love triangle interest, Rai, who likes our main character as well. But Rai knows that Otogi has a crush on Toki and seems to be being very understanding about it and in this volume basically gives up, so the tension of the love triangle doesn’t even happen. It’s just a plot contrivance to stress Toki out while giving Otogi someone to tell her feelings to.
The art in this book is so nice and I like the beginning two volumes of this a lot. The plot is one that’s probably been done before but it felt fresh and interesting, with a menacing edge that gave it a bit of bite. But at this point I feel like I’m going to be waiting who knows how many more volumes for them to actually move things along, and for no good reason. My old nemesis, weird miscommunication, is running rampant here — and honestly worse than that, no communication at all, or communication to random other people. I think that a lot of shoujo tropes are showing up here in ways that don’t work for me, like the main character being unbelievably perfect to the point where the boys are scared to even date her? Just date her! She likes you! Also, we return to the tried and true fireworks festival excursion, during which they will get separated and sit by themselves and have silent deep feelings. But I guess the pressures of the manga business mean that the story has to come out week by week and continue the tension, so who knows how much longer I must wait for this relationship to come to fruition. Honestly, this is why I’m leery about buying manga before it’s done, because now I have four volumes of this and I don’t know if I want to keep buying it.
Overall, the art is fantastic and I like the idea, but this felt like a filler volume and I’m hoping that the next one gets the plot moving along a bit. Not much happened here.
