Sae Iwata is a first-year high schooler with one very big problem: herself. She’s always been on the tall side, even in elementary school. Now as a teen she stands head and shoulders above all the girls and many of the boys in her class, and she’s not happy about it. There’s nothing that she can do to get smaller physically, so she constantly minimizes herself emotionally. She avoids socializing and assumes people are just being nice when they do talk to her. She’s content to be a big clumsy wallflower, doing her best to blend in and keeping her lifelong crush on her childhood best friend Koki Kamishiro a secret.
Koki, on the other hand, was the runt of litter until middle school. Smaller even than kids younger than him, he was always fighting to keep up with his own age group. But he had a natural charm that made Sae fall for him immediately. Then puberty hit Koki like a Mack truck, and that charm became a weapon of mass heart destruction. He’s now even taller than Sae and very handsome, but otherwise hasn’t changed a bit. Unsurprisingly, he’s become quite popular in high school. He’s getting much more attention, especially from other girls, than Sae is used to. This shift in social dynamic has put some distance between them, but it’s clear that Koki is still very fond of Sae. There’s no way he thinks of her Like That, though. Right?
The Visuals
One of the strongest aspects of A Star Brighter Than the Sun is Kazune Kawahara’s art. The character designs themselves are solid but unremarkable. It’s the angles from which she draws the characters and the poses she puts them in that catch my eye. While Sae and Koki are high schoolers for most of the volume, much of the first chapter takes place during a middle school sports festival. These scenes, plus a brief fight later in the manga, give Kawahara the opportunity to flex a little with action shots, Dutch angles, flying limbs and the like that you don’t often see in shojo romance manga. Later chapters are less dynamic overall, but she makes use of unique viewpoints even for static scenes. A Star Brighter than the Sun is far from a sports or action manga, but I would be very interested in seeing Kawahara draw one.
The Writing
Kawahara immediately subverts two common tropes. The first of these is that the childhood friend rarely “wins” the game of love. They typically get relegated to being a side character, despite many being fan favorites. Here Kawahara sets the childhood friend up to win from page one, which is a nice change of pace. Obviously time and more volumes will tell how it all plays out, but it’s not hard to see where things are going.
The other fun choice Kawahara makes is with the stock “rival” character. A character appears to be set up as an antagonist who is also vying for Koki’s affection, but that gets turned on its head in a humorously anticlimactic way partway through the book. The story, after all, is mostly about Sae getting in her own way, so there’s no reason to have another person doing it too. These decisions keep the story from becoming too stale.
The Lack of Originality
Which is good, because unfortunately the main premise does feel a little played out. I don’t want anyone to think I’m discounting the very real body image issues teens, especially teen girls, deal with. There’s a reason this topic is so prevalent in shojo manga. And it does seem to be a pet theme for Kawahara – her previous series High School Debut and My Love Story! both deal with image and body type issues. But this specific plotline of “unusually tall girl falls for someone she thinks won’t like her back because she’s tall” was done fantastically by LoveCom/Lovely Complex over 20 years ago. A Star Brighter Than the Sun unfortunately exists in that shadow, and doesn’t feel particularly original as a result.
The Final Word
Luckily for fans of romance manga, things don’t have to be original to be good! I had a great time with this book despite its similarity to a shojo classic. It’s cute, the characters are well-written, the art is excellent, and this is only the first volume. It has plenty of time to distinguish itself. A Star Brighter than the Sun Volume 1 may not be my number one recommendation among currently running shojo romantic comedies. But if you like the genre or the author, you definitely can’t go wrong with it.
If you like A Star Brighter than the Sun, you might also like…
- My Love Story!
- High School Debut
- LoveCom
A Star Brighter than the Sun Volume 1 is available from Amazon, Bookshop, and Barnes And Noble.
A Star Brighter Than The Sun Credits:
Story and Art: Kazune Kawahara
Translation: Tesuichiro Miyaki
English Adaptation: Shaenon K. Garrity
Touch-Up Art and Lettering: Elena Diaz
Cover and Interior Design: Alice Lewis
Editor: Annette Roman
Thank you to Viz for providing us with an advance digital copy for review. Receiving a free copy did not impact the opinions presented in this review in any way.
The Good
- Surprisingly dynamic art
- Fun twists on standard romcom character tropes
- Touhes on topics that teens struggle with in real life
The Bad
- Two decades too late to beat Lovely Complex to the exact same basic premise
Big thank you to our supporters
From their continous support, we are able to pay our team for their time and hard work on the site.
We have a Thank-You page dedicated to those who help us continue the work that we’ve been doing.
See our thank you page
