Otakuism

Unbalance X Unbalance is a pretty interesting ecchi romance/drama manwha. Manwha are basically Korea’s form of manga, to the point where their mostly indistinguishable, except manwha is read left to right like english and I can’t pronounce the names.

UX2 is about Jin-Ho, a somewhat delinquent highschooler and his problems with the girls around him. Mainly this is focused on Hae-Young, his homeroom teacher, and their back and forth romantic struggles. You can see where that can cause a lot of problems. They both hate eachother in the beginning, but they gradually begin to like eachother, and that’s where things get complicated, what with the whole teacher/student thing. It doesn’t help that there are a ton of other girls in his life to screw him up, like Ha Ji-soo, the class president who everyone but Jin-Ho know she’s in love with him, Jae-Kyung, his flirty senior who’s know in college, and Ami, the shy girl in the class who’s deliciously evil. There’s also Young-Gi, Jing-Ho’s gar pal.

You would think all these girls would be in love with Jin-Ho, but the only one that really likes him is Ji-Soo. Hae-Young can’t get around the fact that she might like a student, leaving their relationship at kind of a standstill for awhile. Jae-Kyung seems more interested in helping Jin-Ho, but it seems pretty clear she liked him in the past. Ami meanwhile has completely different motives. Also, for all the girls being incredibly hawt, there’s not a lot of fanservice, at least not of the Negima or Oh Great! kind. They’ve only been in a swimsuit once so far. And by the later chapters there’s so much drama there’s no time for fanservice. Characters lie to eachother, keep secrets, betray, all that good stuff. There’s something like a big revelation every chapter. Very soap opera-ish.

The art is very good, a requirement for this kind of series, and all the characters are great. Jin-Ho is a surprisingly gar lead, taking responsibility for his actions and beating down anyone who hurts the girls. He’s still pretty dense, though, and has a tendency to shout a lot, which gets him in big trouble later. My favorite girls are probably Ami and Ji-Soo. Ami’s pretty shy and moe in the beginning, secretly reading yaoi manwha and being quiet, but she does some things later that make her just downright sexy. Ji-Soo has pigtails with a ton of ribbons, always nice, and reminds me a lot of Satsuki from Tsukihime, both of them being brown-haired, pigtailed girls who you know aren’t going to get their man. Ji-Soo also has the saddest story of the girls, much like Satsuki.

It’s hard to say what I exactly like about UX2. It’s not the greatest romance around, but the characters are great, the girls are hawt, and the story is pretty interesting. I’d say give it a try if your bored, or want to see more of these incredibly sexy girls. If you don’t like romance’s where there’s a ton of girls, you should probably stay away, though. The first volume is out in english right now by Infinity Studios. If you want scanlations, their not too hard to find.