The Winter 2021 Manga Guide

Cheeky Brat

What's It About? 

Basketball club manager Yuki has a secret—she's in love with the team captain! But when Naruse, her cheeky kouhai, discovers her big secret, she's in a tight spot! Just how long is he going to keep teasing her about it!? Stupid pretty playboy…

Cheeky Brat is drawn and scripted by Miyuki Mitsubachi and Yen Press has released its first volume both digitally and physically for $6.99 and $13.00 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Naruse is a shoujo romance hero of the old school, which means that the first thing he does to heroine Yuki is be rude to her and then grab her breast. Later he kisses her against her will and ignores her when she tells him no. But he's totally into her and really sweet when she needs help, so it's all okay, right?

Yeah, no. Naruse himself is probably the biggest issue with Cheeky Brat, although at least his actions do fit the title. He does get better as the volume goes on, and there is a real sense that he truly does like Yuki, but he's a little hard to stomach if you've gotten out of the habit of reading old-school shoujo romance. On the other hand, if something like Defying Kurosaki-kun is one of your favorite shoujo titles, this is very likely to be right up your alley. And really, it isn't entirely bad. There are some interesting elements to the story, one of which is the fact that Yuki is the heroine. She's prickly and abrasive and heavily in denial about her feelings and the state of her life, but when you look at Rina, a secondary character, you realize that more typically we see Yuki as the side character and Rina as the protagonist – she's emotional and bouncy and eats roughly four times her body weight at every meal; she's the cute'n'clumsy girl who stumbles her way into romance in a majority of shoujo romances.

But it's Yuki who's the heroine here. Yuki's the oldest of six children and the only single birth – her brothers are triplets and her sisters are twins, and her apparently single mother (we never see a second parent) is frazzled beyond belief. Yuki's defense mechanism has been to be as practical as possible, going above and beyond as the basketball manager while keeping her emotions as repressed as she can. She convinces herself that her crush on the captain of the team isn't something she'll ever act on, even when Rina comes in and proves that a lie. She desperately doesn't want to like Naruse because that makes her vulnerable, and he's the kind of messy she tries to avoid. In fact, emotions are the kind of messy she'd like to avoid, and Naruse is very quickly shaking that up.

Cheeky Brat isn't what I'd call a good story, and there's nothing remarkable about the art, which is bog-standard Hana to Yume fare. But it's the kind of bad (or rather, not-good, because I don't think it quite veers into “bad” territory) that I could see myself getting sucked into. It's an “against my better judgement” manga, and even though I can't say that I liked it or would recommend it, I'll probably end up reading a second volume.

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Caitlin Moore

Rating:

I try to keep an open mind when it comes to media aimed at young women, because so much of the population is quick to write it off, but y'all, I struggled with Cheeky Brat, which started its run in Hana to Yume magazine in 2013 and is only just now getting released in English. While it's not the worst of the worst, it combines many of the qualities I dislike in shojo manga with very few redeeming features.

The main character, Yuki, became manager of the basketball club because her crush was on the team but a year later, their relationship remains strictly platonic. Now she has a first-year named Naruse relentlessly pursuing her, pushing both physical and verbal advances onto her despite her insistence that she's not interested. I disliked Naruse instantly, when his (enormous) hand accidentally ended up on Yuki's breast and instead of apologizing, he insulted her by calling it “hard,” which is a truly bizarre insult for a body part that is made almost entirely of fatty tissue, and my dislike only grew every time he insulted or forced a kiss on her.

I wanted to give Yuki more of a chance, since I tend to be drawn to female characters with no-nonsense personalities, but she disappointed me as well. She lacks any sense of internality or a life outside of her romantic endeavors. There are a couple mentions of her having a lot of younger siblings to explain her personality, but we never see her doing anything other than fretting about her love life. With such bland personalities, the romance is dead in the water, and there's nothing else to latch onto. Oh sure, it's nice that it moves faster than the glacial pace of many similar series, but it doesn't change the fact that I'm not interested in spending time with a single one of these characters.

Plus, it's just not nice to look at. The character art is ugly and awkwardly proportioned, with broad shoulders and huge hands but tiny heads. There's so much extraneous dialog that every page is crowded with word balloons jostling for the tiniest bit of space, making the paneling look crowded and busy. The basketball club setting is just set dressing, which becomes obvious the moment you see a character holding a ball.

Between the poor art, try-hard dialogue, unlikable characters, and cavalier attitude toward consent, I can't really recommend Cheeky Brat to anyone but the most diehard of shojo fans. I want to support shojo licenses, but I just can't get behind this one.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

Given how many shojo and romance manga there are that often paint the female lead as submissive and indecisive, Cheeky Brat, at first, appears like a breath of fresh air compared to most. I find myself very strongly resonating with the main lead right out the gate Given her predisposition to locking up her emotions and processing everything in a very rational way. She very much comes off as a character that doesn't think that she deserves a lot and therefore doesn't get her expectations too high. She tends to want to be in control rather than letting her emotions dictate her actions. I found it very relatable as someone who tries to focus more on efficiency rather than letting my emotions get the better of me, especially when it comes to my practical day-to-day work ethic. The problem with this mentality is that oftentimes you'll end up sacrificing more than you need to and letting opportunities for genuine happiness slip you by, which is exactly what happens here in this first volume.

The Cheeky Brat in question at first seems like a good counter to this worldview, as he very much comes off as a “no bullshit” type of personality, giving her very little room to run away and keep her true emotions hidden. I do think he served his purpose well and the banter between them is very snappy. For a manga that was originally written back in 2014, I found it extremely funny although much like other shojo, it does feel like the actions of the characters border on frustrating and problematic just for the sake of emotional development. I'm personally not the biggest fan of how ambiguously this series treats the matter of consent, Given how our love interest keeps crossing some very clear-set physical boundaries. I understand that it's all for the purpose of making sure the lead comes out of her shell, but stuff like this never really sits right with me personally or professionally, since it literally makes everything feel forced. I can see the connecting threads of this romance blossoming and I can't deny that I found it at least a little bit believable. However, just because I can see how we start at one place and end up at another doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge how messy that road seems to be. If you've read a lot of shojo and are familiar with some of the problematic tropes that come with it then I don't think you would do wrong with checking this out, but as a more general romance I worry that those bumps will end up defining the piece more than the destinations of the characters.