Reviews for Hatsukoi

You know, when I first came across this manga, I thought it looked familiar. The characters reminded me explicitly of Kageyama and Hinata from Haikyuu!!, and the art style resembled my favorite doujinka. It was only after I'd completed it and looked the author up on MAL that I discovered the creator was, in fact, Bubunhanten, underneath their real (?) name. Hatsukoi warrants nothing but praise. The art is crisp and smooth, and the characters have dynamic personalities that mesh well when they interact together. As the story revealed itself, I was deeply moved. It's a tragedy as well as a love story, with some signaturehumor blended in, making it the perfect combination of heart-pounding tension and fluffy, sweet romance.

It's an excellent debut. This short little manga is definitely worth the attention, and I'm excited to see what Kazuki releases next.

I have read yaoi mangas for seven years now and only a few times I have found a story that moved me to extent this one did. I might be biased because I have followed the works of the mangaka since she was a doujika but I can still say that this story was solid. The plot seemed to be like any other but as you read the story you realize that Kazuki sensei really put an effort to make the story stand out. It was sad and lovely. The characters' personalities were realistic if we think of the story as something that could happen in reallife plus their feelings were almost graspable, you could really feel the way they did.

As for the art, you can see a resemblance with her doujin works (which were about Haikyuu) but they're beautiful nonetheless.

So, if you like stories that make you cry and happy at the same time a.k.a fluff and angst, you should definitely give this a try!

PS: this story is shounen-ai not yaoi

"Hatsukoi" is a one volume yaoi, that could have easily used another two volumes to fully develop the various details of the setting it introduces. Because of it's blistering pace, it takes liberties in it's exposition, and as OmNom [reviewer on mangaupdates] points out, it can feel a bit like a dump truck. It's certainly not normal for people to get over deep seated issues and change their minds as rapidly as is portrayed in this manga. But it is obviously necessary in this instance due to the constrained length. Both MCs are quite well rounded, and do extend past the cliches that they appear toinhabit in the first chapter. The universally talented who is having effort issues, and the perpetually fired up midget who is as intellectually gifted as a rock. These are revealed to be products of the characters' circumstances (e.g. the midget is more so uneducated/ignorant- rather than simply being dumb- due to his upbringing), which adds dimensionality that can be missing from other characters in such short stories. They are immediately endearing, not requiring a wind-up period to become invested in. This lends the story immediacy in it's enjoyability, but also a rather shallow emotional profile. On the occasion the story does play with conflict between the MCs and their surroundings, it's usually resolved in less than a chapter. Readers need to stew a bit to really experience and come to know different tones!

So Hatsukoi is good, but it lacks the “oomph” and development to take it that bit further.

CUTE AS HELL! loved the story, the development, the characters, the art style, tho is short i loved the romance 10/10 truly AND THE PLOT WAAAAAAAAAAA AMAZING I have to write more words, but english is not my first language and im sleepy so there it is : Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remainingessentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.