Title: Love and Heart Vol. 10
Author: Chitose Kaidou
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Genre: Romance, Thriller
Publication Date: March 19, 2024
Final Thoughts
We have arrived at the final volume of Love and Heart. It picks up where we left off with Yoh in front of Haruma’s mother’s grave and Haruma catching up to her. The thing about this final volume is that there are only three real chapters in this so the conclusion and/or the answer we are looking for literally hits you within the first three pages of the book. From there, we see how everything plays out and get into ten… yes. TEN epilogues to finish out this series.
As with any final volume, I like to reflect back on the whole of the story and offer up my thoughts. Love and Heart started off as a psychological thriller romance. Haruma was that classic creepy, borderline psychotic boy from Yoh’s past who wanted to do anything and everything to make her his and his alone. Whether it was sabotaging her friendships, straight up lying to her, even forbidding her from going to school, and holding her prisoner in her very home, Haruma did it all.
Of course, the series attempted to justify this psychotic behavior by giving Yoh and Haruma a shared traumatic past surrounding the death of Haruma’s mother. Of course, Haruma’s mother wasn’t exactly the picturesque mother that some women aspire to be; however, her death had a massive impact on Yoh and that was the catalyst for Haruma’s behavior.
It’s a weird situation because I can understand where Haruma’s coming from but, at the same time, don’t understand it at all. Even if the end goal was to protect Yoh and give her a peaceful life, there are many other ways to do this. Going completely psycho and overboard like that is akin to a supervillain wanting to exterminate all life on Earth because a greater cosmic force was coming to do it anyway so by killing everyone first, it would spare the planet further destruction. Something chaotic noble like that.
What this does; however, creates a situation where no matter how good Haruma’s intentions are, his actions don’t allow us to feel any sympathy with him as a character. The correct ending here would be for him to disappear and for Yoh to move on with her life. An even better end would be for Haruma to go away and Yoh to end up with the one person who did truly care about her… Touya; however, we all know in these types of stories, the side character NEVER ends up with the main character and, sadly, that’s what happens here.
Sure, through the epilogues, we kind of see what happens with Touya and I’ll leave that up for all of you to discover but, I can’t discuss my disdain for the ending without spoiling it so… here goes…
Yoh and Haruma ending up together on the third page of this book caused me to be done with this series right then and there. Yes, I read on and tried to see their justification for this but stating that you accept and good and the bad with someone is not the right explanation here. When you talk about accepting the good and bad with people, you’re talking about minor faults or at least tolerable traits. Things such as, “I hate it when prioritizes watching football with his friends instead of doing stuff with me when he knows I hate having people over, but I love him so I let it go,” or “I don’t like it when she always complains about the color of the house but it’s my house and I like these colors but I still love her because there are so many great things about her.” Stuff like that is what is meant by the good and the bad. Sometimes the bad happens after you get together, too, such as your loved one falling ill and you end up being their caretaker.
Kidnapping, sabotaging friendships, deceit, psychotic behavior. This is not the bad you’re supposed to accept in another person. Since he went as far as to, essentially, kidnap her, this is pretty much a prime example of Stockholm Syndrome winning out in the end. Sorry, but that doesn’t fly with me.
The ending is paramount to a series. It has to hit in a satisfying way and for me, there was nothing but disappointment. It was non-sensical, and to forgive nine full volumes of content… of horrible things, he did to and for her, all for the sake of “you made me feel protected and you have to accept both the good and bad with people”
No.
Sorry, that’s just unbelievable. Even in a world of fiction.
The manga even had a panel where Haruma said: “Why don’t you just leave me? All I did was oppress you and take your freedom away. If you still love me after that, there’s something wrong with you.”
And I couldn’t agree more.
Perhaps there are those out there who enjoy this type of love story and if you’re one of them then kudos to you, this manga will be a massive hit with you and you will enjoy the hell out of it… and if you check it out, I truly hope you do enjoy it.
To me, this ending wasted 10 volumes of time and it’s a great example that an ending can make or break a series. Before this ending, it was a 3.5 / 5. Now, it’s a 1.5 / 5.
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
