I Don’t Know Which is Love Volume 2 Review
In high school, Mei Soraike failed to confess to her best friend that she was in love with her and was crushed when her friend went out with a boy. Now in college, Mei is determined to get a girlfriend and confess her love, but the problem is there’s five lovely ladies that all have the hots for her, but which one is true love?! As Mei tries to figure it out, each girl make an effort to spend time with Mei and take the first step towards a potential relationship.
The first volume of I Don’t Know Which is Love was a very fast-paced introduction to both our love-struck heroine and her multiple love interests. Volume 2 is all about growing each potential relationship at a similar pace, rushing through different scenarios where Mei spends time with each girl. In some cases, she spends time with several girls at once, like a double-booked sleepover in which Mei squeezes herself in-between two of the girls she has fallen for. The chapters where the separate love interests interact with Mei are probably the strongest in this book, as the characters get to bounce off each other, and not just in a love-rivals way, but in how we get to see each personality shine and our heroine interact with them both fighting for attention (whether it’s subconscious or not). It also makes sense that the two love interests who are passionate about the performance arts would interact and know each other outside of Mei – and this makes the college world they inhabit feel richer. When it comes to the chapters with Mei on her own with each girl in turn, they’re very similar to the chapters in Volume 1, which means they’re very pacey and heavy on fan service, presenting outrageous scenarios like Mei pretending to be on a date with one of the girls to practise for a play she’s in, and so on.
Whilst these sound like fine situations for a harem series, the characters lack emotional development. Having Mei being obsessed with one girl’s massive boobs isn’t a replacement for chemistry, and relationships don’t really develop in this series, as much as the plot forces Mei into various situations where she must react too.
I think there’s two main problems: one is Mei herself; I did really like her in the first volume, with her feisty attitude and goal of getting a girlfriend, while finding herself in a bit over her head. But in this volume there’s cracks forming in the shape of Mei’s lack of personality traits and goals. For example, she’s pushed into being the lead actress in a play within the college that two of her potential girlfriends want her in and she just accepts it, and said girlfriends push her into prepping for the role from acting out scenes to voice coaching. But nothing about Mei herself explores whether she wants to do it; did she do any acting in high school? Did she enjoy it or find it embarrassing? None of it is addressed. We get no clue about what Mei actually likes or wants from life or even what she wants out of a potential partner (just that she wants one) and her placid nature to just go with the flow will be her undoing in keeping her interesting. I get that she’s meant to be a self-insert for the reader, but I personally found her more interesting when she had her own spark at the beginning of the story.
The other issue is the girls themselves. As the author says in the notes for Volume 1, each one is meant to represent the different senses that they fall for in Mei (like Riri being obsessed with Mei’s touch, etc). But they mostly serve to put both the girls and Mei in wacky situations like Mei randomly doing ASMR voice for Minato. We’ve yet to see why each girl actually likes Mei, because Mei has so far not shown much of her own personality, and therefore the mangaka has written herself into a corner that she really needs to write out of it in order to keep this series afloat. This is compounded by an issue carried over from the first volume where most of the potential girlfriends left a bad first impression due to their aggressive natures, such as smelling, kissing, and touching Mei without her consent. Sadly, this continues in this volume; it isn’t AS aggressive but the fast-paced nature of each chapter and feeling like each moment we get with them is a whirlwind we can’t catch up with, it’s hard to root for any of the girls here. It doesn’t really help that Mei and two of her love interests (Kaoru and Karin) have very similar hair styles and face design. On the colour page at the beginning of the book, they’re very distinct, but in black and white they get lost on the page. It would help more if the hair styles were more diverse or varied fashion choices, but neither are at play here.
Translation for Yen Press by Leighann Harvey continues to be an easy read, with translation notes as the back as well as author notes.
I wanted to like this harem yuri series but the lack of chemistry, the trimming down of the heroine’s personality and lack of agency make this a frustrating read. The art still looks lovely but plot-wise it’s starting to feel more like frustration, rather than love.
Our review copy from Yen Press was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
