System of romance

Love is patience, friendship, kindness, understanding… but it is not unbelief!

Name: System of romance

Author: Mako Takaha

Year: 2000

Status: Completed

Volumes: --- (1 Chapter)

Genre: Drama, Psychological, Seinen

Synopsis:

A young woman has sex with a man she met on a chat. Later, she discovers a dark secret about the man, only to meet him again under less favorable circumstances. This is a one-shot that will leave you confused and craving for more.

Review

System of romance is a one-shot, which means it's a sample of a story that may or may not turn into a manga. It’s 21 pages that quickly shock you, not only for the graphics but, mostly, for the story they tell.

The narrative is quite short and frighteningly straightforward. It is impossible to not give spoilers, so my apologies!

We never know the protagonist’s name, only that he is a young girl that, at 16 years-old, has intercourse with a stranger she met on a dating website. She never sees him again, but he got engraved in her mind. After about a year, she finds out who he is and the terrible secret that follows him. As she considers what to do, she meets him again, and this time what happens is not consensual. If the story is not unsettling so far, it gets worse when time passes and we find out that the protagonist seems to have fallen in love.

As it is a one-shot, it’s understandable that there is no background or an evolution in the character’s personality. We only have an adolescent girl that doesn’t seem to quite know what she is doing in the world and that goes through a traumatic experience, coming out of it even more lost than she was. Sadly, that was all that I was able to see from this character. As for the man and his secret, very little we know about him, but it is enough to be shocked as we read the rest of the story.

Regarding the graphics, they are not very polished and I couldn’t consider them to be beautiful. Yet, you can understand the narrative and what happens clearly.

After I finished the few pages, I just stared into nothingness without really knowing what I had just read. The ending is absolutely surreal and it definitely didn’t make me crave for more.

Whisper of the Heart

I haven’t read anything that shocked me as much as this one-shot. It’s certainly a psychological story that confuses us and makes us question if we really want to read more, or if it’s best if we leave it there.

In my opinion, as much as I try, I cannot understand the protagonist. I can understand her actions, but not her feelings. I believe that, deep down, this narrative is nothing more than a case of Stockholm Syndrome. And this mustn’t be the first, or the last, manga to talk about it, but it must definitely be the first that approaches it like this.

What shocked me the most in this story was that it touched a concept that terrorrises every women: the possibility of being victims of rape. We know that not only women can be targets. Sadly, we have a lot of pedophilia cases that attest to it. I confess that, when I picked up this one-shot, I wasn’t expecting a story like this. ever since I read it, I haven’t been able to forget about it, and I don’t know if that will ever happen.

To sum it up, System of romance is a short story that rocks the reader's world to the core and reminds him that Love can be something incomprehensible. I chose it for the topic “Your favorite one-shot” for the Ecletic Heart 30 Post Challenge. It’s not essentially my favorite, but it was the one that definitely had the biggest impact on me.

Rating - 🟉🟉🟉🟉🟉 (5)