Power / Girl Got Game

I haven't had such strong a dislike for any manga since Fruitsbasket, or maybe disappointment might be a more appropriate word to use.

I've been reading scanlations for the past couple of weeks whenever I've the time. I'd browse through titles, then look up interesting ones in Wikipedia and look through the gist of the story before deciding to read a particular manga. I thought Power sounded interesting, a bit like Hana Kimi.

Summary
"Kyo Aizawa is very excited about getting to attend Seisyu Academy, which is famous for its adorable girls' uniforms. Her spirits are crushed, however, when she opens the package containing her school uniform to find a boy's uniform.
Her father explains to her that, as Seisyu Academy is also famous for its boys' basketball program, he enrolled her as a boy so she can fulfill his own dream of becoming an NBA basketball star. To make matters worse, she has to stay in the boys' dorms, and her roommate is the same boy she came to hate at tryouts."

Sounds cool right?

But urgh, it was much too much of a poor ripoff off Hana Kimi. And with a plot like this, there's bound to be much comparison with Hana Kimi.

First, the main characters have nothing appealing compared to Hana Kimi's characters. Aizawa is too dumb and bimbotic that she doesn't get my sympathy. Eniwa is dumber and immature, and the artwork done for him wasn't too good looking, so he totally doesn't have the X-factor. And that is when I haven't even tried comparing him to Sano. Sano is in a class of his own, the perfect man class, no fictional character can even come close, not to mention Eniwa. Even Edward Cullen has to bow down to Sano Izumi!

And yea, the artwork isn't good. Hana Kimi's artwork was really impressive, even for the first few chapters. Usually I've noticed that in long running series, the first few chapters don't have good artwork, but as the series prgresses, the art gets nicer. But Hana Kimi's art was all along very beautiful. Power just sucked, even the last few chapters weren't any improvement.

The breaking point of urgh-ness is the plot. The romantic development between the main characters for Power wasn't convincing. There wasn't much explanation for their falling in love other than, ooh he looks so cool when he plays basketball. Erm, erm... Erm... And for Eniwa, I still have no idea how he fell in love with Aizawa when he so clearly stated that he loves basketball more than women, and he thought of Aizawa as a bother.

The plot progression is also a big muddle. There was this totally senseless plot twist in Power that left me with a big huh. The whole part about Yura was totally unnecessary. It didn't help further the romantic development, it didn't cause any lasting impression that changed the characters lives, it didn't anything. Hamaya and his nudity also served no purpose in the plot. And it wasn't comedic, it was totally lame.

The finale, was the ultimate lame fest though, nonewithstanding the lameness of the earlier chapters.