Title: Mint Chocolate Vol. 1
Author: Mami Orikasa
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Genre: Slice of Life, Romance, Comedy
Publication Date: January 19, 2021
The Story
The manga kicks off with the premise of the book on the very first page! Nanami’s mother remarries and her new husband has a son named Kyouhei… who happens to be… her… crush?
*Stares off into space as flashbacks of the war appear in front of his eyes. Suddenly, he cannot hold back*
RUI WAS BEST GIRL, DAMMIT! WHY DID COMA-KUN HAVE TO RUIN EVERYTHING!!?
Wait… Kyouhei is actually a complete and total jerk!? The love is only one-sided!!? Okay… Okay… we’re safe from any DOMESTIC storytelling here. Nanami does have feelings for Kyouhei but he doesn’t see himself ever getting into a romantic relationship due to an event that happened in his past which the manga will touch upon later. This is simply a manga about a boy and a girl becoming step-siblings and how they can tolerate one another. There’s absolutely nothing to be worried about here!
Oh. Kyouhei actually does have feelings for Nanami… and they can’t find the right time to actually express them… and they’re keeping their feelings hidden from their parents… and from each other as best as possible despite the fact that it’s clearly obvious that the two of them love each other…
Well… at least it’s only between those two and there’s no third person to get in the way!
Oh, hi Mizuki-kun. You’re Kyouhei’s best friend and you decided to move to the town and go to the same school huh? Well, that’s fine just as long as you don’t… oh, you’re getting feelings for Nanami, too, eh? Well then… I guess I’ll just go sit over here and take some more of my medication to suppress some troublesome feelings! Everything will be okay! It’s not like one of you is going to get hit by a car or anyth—
Oh. So that’s how the first volume ends, huh? Okay!
Satire aside, the first volume was pretty interesting. Yes, there’s a lot of Domestic na Kanojo references to be had here; however, the love/hate relationship between Nanami and Kyouhei is a lot different than the relationship between Natsuo and Rui. The series tends to lean more towards comedy; however, just from reading it… I can tell what kind of comedy this will end up being if this ever gets adapted into anime. It’s going to have a lot of that high-pitched, high-energy screaming comedy and, typically, that is comedy that I just cannot stand. When it’s silent and in written form, it’s much more tolerable but I don’t know if I could handle it if this were ever adapted.
Characters
First off, we have Kyouhei. After becoming Nanami’s stepbrother, he has to wrestle with his feeling for her along with the events that happened in his past. I’ll spare you the spoilers but there is a reason as to why he cannot bring himself to fall in love with another girl… even if Nanami is really testing his convictions. Of course, Mizuki knows the reasons why and wastes no time in telling Nanami everything which makes her understand Kyouhei’s situation a lot better.
Kyouhei himself is very cold and off-putting. He’s very sharp with his tongue and does not hesitate to sling an insult in Nanami’s direction. The two of them continuously fight and argue every step of the way which lays out that brand of comedy that I talked about earlier. Outside of that, there isn’t really much to Kyouhei just yet.
Nanami, on the other hand, has even less going for her. She’s your typical run-of-the-mill high school girl with no real special redeeming qualities about her. She’s just a girl in love with Kyouhei and now has to deal with her crush living under the same roof as her. There were hints that there was something more to her but nothing was ever really explored. I’m sure she will be given more time to develop as the series goes on but, right now, she’s about as vanilla as a main character can get.
Mizuki is Kyouhei’s childhood friend. He moves to the same town and ends up in their class. He’s a sweet and thoughtful boy but he has a bit of sass to him at times. He begins to realize that he has feelings for Nanami and makes them very clear to Kyouhei due to them not only being best friends but also because he knows that he and Nanami like each other. They don’t exactly make an effort to hide it from the world and Mizuki picks up on it almost immediately.
The only problem I have with Mizuki is that he seems to concede almost immediately in favor of letting Kyouhei have his shot at Nanami… but then there are points where he thinks that he still has a shot? I don’t know if I’m misunderstanding the way it’s written but it seemed like he changed his mind after making it up but never really made it clear. Either that or that wasn’t truly him conceding? I mean, he did flat out tell Kyouhei that he knew he never had a shot from the beginning… but then he wonders if he actually does? It’s a bit of an oddball way of developing a love triangle but we do need something to keep the series interesting. We can’t have Kyouhei and Nanami just yelling at each other for X amount of volumes.
Final Word
I won’t lie. The first volume was good but a lot of things just felt rushed for me. It might be my personal taste in having slow burn stories when it comes to romance but a LOT happened here in this volume. We established the story plot and the characters, we already introduced the third wheel… had him concede and withdraw his concession, explained the whole reason by Kyouhei’s persona and his reasons for not wanting love, saw him change his mind and fall for Nanami, to the two of them realizing their feelings for one another to Kyouhei getting isekai’d by Truck-kun.
That’s some pretty big development for a debut volume. Either this is poised to be an extremely short series, or there’s a lot more that we’re just not seeing as of yet. I just felt like the number of plot points we received here could have been built up over the course of many volumes. That’s the only thing that’s worrying me is that Orikasa is revealing too much and there won’t be much left to look forward to in the coming books unless each and every one of them is going to have a major cliffhanger as we received here in Volume 1.
I will say that the series does seem interesting and I do want to see more of it. I really did enjoy the first volume but after I just witnessed nearly the entire Domestic na Kanojo plotline in the span of six chapters… don’t blame me if I decide to play it cautious with this one.
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**This item was provided for review by Yen Press
