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The Genre: romantic comedy

The Format: 6+ volumes of manga from Shonen Jump Advanced

The plot: Against all odds, Junpei starts dating the most gorgeous girl in school, Tsukasa, believing that she is the mysterious beauty he encountered one morning. But could his strawberry muse actually be a bookworm named Aya? Soon a tense love triangle forms between the beauty, the boy and the geek!

I've come across this problem before.

The problem in question is that Ichigo 100% (which translates to Strawberry 100% in English) fits very neatly into a particular "type". I hesitate to use the word genre, as it's not a genre in the sense that horror or comedy is, but it's a path so well trodden by manga that it is almost at that level.

The 'type' here is something called harem, and here in lies the crux of the issue - if you're into anime and manga already then you'll instantly know what I'm on about. If you're not, then I should really explain what it is. Trouble is, it can be a little boring doing that every time I write a review :/.

Okay, so the general gist of a harem series is pretty much spelt out by the title. A harem is a group of women (or, more likely, concubines or prostitutes) who are there to 'service' the master of the harem.

In the manga world, the harem master is effectively supposed to be the reader's surrogate. So, in other words, it's a gigantic fantasy, where every gorgeous woman our reader meets falls instantly in love with him - or, at the least, wants to bone him.

The last proper convention is that there has to be lots of fan-service. Fan-service in this case refers to a veritable smorgasbord of panty-shots, boob-fondlings, flashes of bra, walking in on the girl changing, onsen (hot-spring) encounters, days at the beach, or, indeed, anything else the author can think of.

On top of these there are generally some other common elements. For example, sometimes the hero lives with the girls, although he normally just goes to the same school as them.

Another is that lots of misunderstandings need to take place (although these can of course be part of any comedy/drama) - the path to his true love needs a few hurdles after all.

Generally, the hero will also be a complete loser (though he can equally be the total opposite - a right royal perv). This is perhaps the most annoying thing about harem series. Given that every gorgeous girl in a five mile radius apparently wants to jump his bones, the lead's total loser-dom status makes it rather puzzling why this is the case.

Now, normally it's explained by him "having a good heart". This, for anyone that's not actually ever been to school or, y'know, lived life is total and complete horseshit. It's just a ludicrous leap-of-faith that, if I'm honest, tends to spoil most harem comedies for me.

I just wish they'd work a bit harder on making the main guy a bit more appealing. It's okay that they're nerdy or whatever, but what often tends to happen is you get one single example of them being nice and then everywhere else they're either annoying or act like a total bell-end.

You may have noticed I've gone on a bit there, well there's a very good reason for that. I've been talking about the general rules, but the thing is, Ichigo 100% follows these rules as if it were writing them.

And perhaps it was - the manga is a few years old, but I kinda doubt it. My money's more on it being so firmly embedded in the genre it's ticking the clichés off like a check list or guide book.

I'll give you a run-down:

The main character, Junpei is a high school student (tick). He's almost totally uninterested in girls, being more interest in becoming a movie director (tick). Until, that is, one day he gets a flash of a beautiful girl's strawberry-printed panties (tick) on the roof of his school building. From this point on, he basically turns into a babe magnet (tick).

The girls so far up to volume 6 include Aya Tojo who is shy, a bit nerdy (but busty) and is a writer (tick); Tsukasa who is more of a classical beauty and sort of falls into a slightly aloof "school idol" position (tick); Yui who's a childhood friend of Junpei's and is basically a bit of loli (tick) and Satsuki whose athletic, slightly dumb (but busty) and virtually forces herself on Junpei (tick).

One of the girls forms the central love interest (Aya), but the other girls don't exactly hide their interests in him (tick).

Partly this is because of the total disregard he seems to have for their feelings. Quite why he kinda fails to be decisive and pick one is never even looked at in these first volumes and it really does come across as him simply wanting to get the "best" girl, like they're slabs of meat on a butcher's counter and he's picking one. And that didn't sit at all well with me.

I had other annoyances too - a lot of the characters talk to themselves out loud all the time. But when they need to say something important to each other then they seem to clam up. Also it does that really cheesy thing with Aya you get in Hollywood movies where all the other characters basically refer to her as being ugly, but then, simply be removing her glasses and letting hair down, they suddenly perceive her as drop-dead gorgeous.

I personally hate when they do that, as it's ridiculous. A truly hot girl looks truly hot no matter how her hair is or what glasses she has on.

I'm griping a lot, huh?

I guess what I'm saying overall is that the fan-service is good, but the plot of Ichigo 100% is very generic and the main character is very annoying. The girls are nice, though.

The Summary: If you like fan-service you'll be in your element, but otherwise it's kinda annoying.

The Score: 3/5

The Pictures:

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