GOOD MORNING CALL

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

OVA ComedyGood Morning Call
MANGA RomanceGood Morning Kiss

REVIEWS

• 

  RoseFaerie

  60/100
  While every page screams "Shoujo", Good Morning Call fails to treat sensitive topics with maturity.

  Good Morning Call screams 90's shoujo. Everything from the art to the tropes is something you would expect in an older shoujo manga. And that's far from a bad thing. Anyone who knows me or regularly reads my reviews knows that I love shoujo, and I honestly adore the good old fashioned high school romances, even if they are tropey. I don't get tired of it. I began Good Morning Call loving it, but the way it mishandled some serious topics left a bad taste in my mouth.

  Good Morning Call begins when Nao's parents are summoned to take care of their family farm. Nao has less than a semester left in middle school, so she's renting out an apartment to finish out her school year and graduate. She will be staying in the area for high school, but she will be living in the dorms. However, when she moves into her new apartment, she finds that there has been a mistake. Her classmate Hisashi, one of the most popular and good-looking guys at her school, also claims to be living there. Since they were scammed and couldn't afford the apartment independently, the two middle school students have no choice other than to accept their new life together.

  This manga is unabashedly silly, and you definitely need to hold a strong suspension of disbelief with the premise. Good Morning Call is aimed at a young audience, and so the tone is mostly lighthearted and comedic based on the characters' interactions. I loved watching the characters engage with each other, since they had great chemistry. The slice of life oriented romcom format works well for this series, and the situations the characters would get themselves into were always entertaining to me. Nothing is particularly serious in terms of drama, with the worst being some mild jealousy and misunderstandings.

  But with some of the subject matter, I think having a heavier tone would have helped. This manga has two major issues that kept me from giving this manga a higher score, and all of it revolves around how they treated serious issues with comedic levity.

  The first issue I have is with Yuri. She's Hisashi's first love and his brothers' wife. When the story starts, she's 21 and he and Nao are about 14-15. I have a ton of issues with Yuri. She's easily the worst character in this manga. I will offer some slight spoilers for one of the earlier volumes of Good Morning Call. Yuri thinks that her husband is cheating on her and goes to see Hisashi and Nao and stay with them. It sort of makes sense given the proximity, but at the same time she had to stay with her middle school aged brother-in-law? Seriously? It bothered me just how much she put on Hisashi's shoulders, emotionally burdening him with her adult problems when he hasn't even entered high school yet. She puts so much of a burden on these kids. And to make things worse, they discover that it wasn't an affair, just a misunderstanding. Yuri refuses to listen and continues relying on these kids to take care of her. She's so immature middle schoolers must look after her. And when she gets drunk, she "turns into a kissing monster" to quote the other characters and has aggressively kissed Hisashi on the lips multiple times before the story starts. He would have been 13-14 at the youngest, and she's significantly older than him. It's extremely creepy and weird. And then there's also the idea that she's super tall and skinny. She wears the smallest sizes because she's so thin, despite being the tallest woman in the cast. And I have to say, that's not how sizing works. My friends who are very thin, but also very tall wear bigger clothes than me despite their thinner body types. And I refuse to believe that Yuri, a tall grown woman, wears a smaller size than Nao, who's basically a freshman in high school. When I was 14, I was desperate to get rid of the kids clothes I'd had for years but somehow still fit. I refuse to believe that Yuri is the same size as someone who could probably wear children's clothes if she wanted. This is all treated comically.

  And that brings me to my second issue. The way Good Morning Call treats eating disorders is awful. It completely mishandles Nao's body image issues. Nao clearly has a lot of issues with her perception of her body and weight. She's constantly dieting, constantly obsessing over her weight, and constantly bemoaning how "fat" she is. She basically has the female version of Hisashi's body, and Hisashi is constantly described as super skinny. She is by no means an unhealthy weight. She looks like a normal, thin teenage girl. And the thing is, there is no one telling Nao not to starve herself or work out constantly. No one does anything about her obsession with her weight or her blossoming eating disorder. This bothers me so much since this was used as a comedic gag or subplot frequently without addressing the negative consequences. So many young girls have eating disorders or body image issues. This is a major issue, since eating disorders aren't healthy and cause long term effects on their bodies. I've always been thin, but I also have a curvier body type. I've always had wider legs because of genetics. And I hated the way I looked. I wasn't overweight in the slightest, but I perceived myself that way. I hated my legs because they weren't as thin as my classmates. I felt bigger and lumpier in my uniform than the other girls in my school, who were so tall and slender. Those were the girls who were viewed as pretty. I can actually remember being a little girl, maybe five or six and thinking I was fat. Girls that young already have negative perceptions of themselves. While I may have left most of my body image issues behind, I know many other girls aren't so lucky. I may have not developed an eating disorder, but many more girls have. And Good Morning Call ran in Ribon Magazine which aims the youngest of shoujo readers, girls in late elementary school and middle school. I can only imagine how damaging this would be. I can see my impressionable ten-year-old self looking at Nao, and thinking, "If she's fat than what am I?"

  I did like the characters other than Yuri, who is the worst. Nao is a sweet but stubborn girl, and Hisashi is a bit of a tsundere with a hard time escaping past feelings and emotions. The side characters are super engaging and fun to watch, even if I sometimes got them mixed up at the end. While none of them were super complex, they were entertaining, and that was all that was required from a manga like this. Another character I disliked was one girl's boyfriend who was a serial cheater, and a 21-year-old man dating a 15-year-old girl. At least there is the subtext that he's a bad person dating her only because of how easy she is to manipulate.

  The art has a strong retro feel to it. They have the huge eyes that were popular at that time, especially in the younger leaning shoujo magazines. They have textured hair and thick eyebrows, as well as a slightly different feel, which makes me sure I will be able to recognize this artist's work in the future. It's very charming and nostalgic, despite the fact that I am too young to be reading manga in the 90's or early 2000's. Maybe it's reminding me of my past Sailor Moon obsession for some reason. I did have a hard time at the end when more characters were being introduced, and there was nothing to differentiate them from existing ones, especially when they were in a chibi form.

  Anyways, despite running for most of the review, I did like most of Good Morning Call. Those issues were just so major for me I can't give it a score higher than a 6/10. It's cute and silly, but when the silliness extends to making light of serious topics, I have a hard time being able to recommend this. It's a shame because it was so cute and fun. I'm just hoping that the girls who read this back when it was being released weren't too negatively influenced.

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