Fall in Love, You False Angels
The two-faced shoujo romcom for people who want a little kick with their romance
If you think all shoujo manga is sweet and innocent… well this one will might have you reconsidering your preconceived thoughts about shoujo. In Fall in Love, You False Angels by Coco Uzuki we have a perfect goody two-shoes female lead, that behind close doors can cuss like a sailor and stands up to male bullies. We also have an angelic looking nice boy, who is hiding his sneaky and very flirtatious personality. What can go wrong when the two most perfect people at school are anything but perfect outside of school?
Genre: Romantic Comedy, Slice of life
Age Rating: Teens 13+
Publisher: Kodansha
Synopsis:
Class president Otogi has built a reputation as the school’s “heartthrob angel,” while vice president Toki Ninomae looks and acts like a literal angel. It takes just one look from Otogi for your heart to be completely stolen by her- she’s that powerful and beautiful! And Toki is seemingly so perfect and caring- literally the picture-perfect boy. Well that’s what they’d like you to think because they know exactly what to give the people. While they both think they have perfected their act, one faithful day Otogi’s potty mouth exposes her real life ruthless personality in front of Toki who she has a massive crush on.
Instead of scaring Toki away, he becomes immediately intrigued by Otogi’s bad ass persona and wants to be her partner in crime. Our angel boy isn’t as aloof and innocent as he leads people to think because after noticing how much Otogi stares at him, he begins to enjoy teasing our little heartthrob. These two fake angels have to learn to balance their perfect school persona, with the real them which they are both intrigued by but constantly have to hide from others. Just two high schoolers balancing two polar opposite personas… what could possibly go wrong?
Favorite Things:
Otogi: She is so damn feisty and funny! I loved her real personalities so much- both her harsh and potty mouth personality, as well as her lovesick personalty when her thoughts are over-consumed by Toki or “Ikkoku” as she’s nicknamed him in her head. She is just so expressive and her inner dialogue was so relatable for someone who goes from one extreme to another.
Toki: I also loved our male lead so much. I found him very interesting and he’s just so charming. His personality reminded me quite a bit of a shoujo male lead from the past, Tomoe from Kamisama Kiss. He is so sly and sneaky, but I can tell he’s a sweetheart as well although he’s still not ready to show that side of him.
Comedy: I thought that the comedy was very adult friendly due to how dry it was at times, but in the best way possible. It almost reminded me a bit of Lovesick Ellie meets a bit of the dryness of Life Lessons with Uramichi Oniisan. I just personally really vibed with the sense of humor in this first volume.
Lettering: Kyle Ziolko’s lettering was incredible! I found it to be so dynamic and it added so much to the dialogue, especially when it came to conveying how Otogi really felt.
Notable Things:
Sexual Harassment Chapter: Trigger warning but this volume does feature a chapter with a teacher who was sexually harassing and getting handsy with female students at school. I felt like that whole situation was handled well from the student coming forward to ask for help and being taken seriously by the class president and vice president, to actually catching the creep on the act. I felt uncomfortable reading that chapter but seeing the resolution of the teacher facing consequences for his actions felt good. I didn’t feel like this chapter was sugar coated or watered down in any way, and the two leads definitely made sure he knew how much of a disgusting creep he was.
Rating: ★★★★ / 5
This was a great start to this shoujo series and one I can see myself falling in love with. I love the duality between the sweet moments, clashingh with more dry humor with a bit of cussing. I do have to mention that there was a character that pops in the last chapter which lost me just a little bit (not sure how relevant he’ll be in the story), but once we were left with our two leads I was able to get back into loving their dynamic. Looking forward to seeing more of our two-faced angels!
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I'm so glad you enjoyed volume one as well! I also think it's a great start to a new series