Manga Series Review: “Love! Love! Fighting” Vol. 1-3 by Sharean Morishita

“Love! Love! Fighting” Vol. 1-3 by Sharean Morishita

Genre: Manga, Graphic Novel, Contemporary, Romance

Synopsis: Oriana is a young woman who currently has no money, no job and her father won’t return her phone calls. Stressed and in sore need of a good break, Oriana finds herself in a difficult position when her bossy little cousin tricks her back to their home country, South Korea. Come and join Oriana as she learns how to handle her troublesome family members and strange new friends, who all bring new and unwanted stress to her life.

Review:

I have been eyeing this series for the longest time and decided to buy it earlier this year! I adore Morishita’s art style and the plot really stood out to me.

Though Oriana is originally from South Korea when she returns she has a hard time adjusting to life there. People constantly pick on her looks because she is curvier. Though she stands up for her herself, she still deals with many body image issues and we she how she grows on this journey throughout the series. Oriana has a very good heart and is always looking out for others which I admired. At times her character is a bit over-the-top at time, but tries she keep herself well grounded.Her sassiness and the crazy antics she gets into during the story, made me laugh out loud many times.

Oriana meets a pop superstar, Jae, and even though they initially get off too a rough start they eventually form a strong bond. There is a strong language barrier between the two (Jae doesn’t speak English and Oriana can’t speak Korean), but they still hold many conversations throughout the book. The romance blossoms between them slowly as they both help each other to work out their own issues. I really appreciated this since most romance manga has the two love interests jump into the relationship within the first volume.

The thing that stood out most to me about this series is that it’s not only focused on romance, but mainly self-love. It has an incredibly powerful and uplifting message on body image, finding yourself,and family; which was really refreshing to see. I love the art style and character detail, they looked so animated in some scenes I thought the drawings would leap off of the page.

My only complaints about this series is that I felt it was missing some plot points where things where never fully explained and that the romance was never tied up at the end of the story. Towards the end of the last volume, I really felt like Jae and Oriana were getting somewhere with their relationship, but it got cut off at the ending. Hopefully they’ll be a one-shot story in the future with the two.

All in all, Love! Love! Fighting is such a fun series full of comedy, positivity, and romance. 🙂

Final Verdict: