The Fall 2024 Manga Guide

Pink & Habanero

What's It About? 

She wants a boyfriend—anyone but him. He wants girls to buzz off. Sucks for them 'cos he's paid to please princesses! High school freshman Mugi can barely muster the confidence to talk to a boy, much less to take one on a date. Plus, the first time she meets Kei Kurose, the wrong sort of sparks fly—even if Kei is head-turningly hot, who could put up with the way he treats girls like trash? Mugi has no patience for his rude attitude, but when she just so happens to discover the scandalous secret of his part-time job, she might have to learn to keep his trust!

Pink & Habanero has a story and art by Mika Satonaka, with English translation by Alethea Nibley and Athena Nibley. This volume was lettered by Dietrich Premier. Published by Yen Press (September 17, 2024).

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Does a story have to be new to be good? I'd argue that it doesn't, and shoujo manga like Pink & Habanero serve as decent proof. This 2021 series from Mika Satonaka (who has more works in French translation than English) ticks a lot of classic shoujo school romance boxes: you've got an awkward heroine, a hero who looks like a jerk but secretly isn't, and a very contrived situation that throws them together. In this case, that situation is Kei's job: he works at a “knight café,” which is like a butler café, except all of the guys pretend to be knights and call the patrons “your highness.” Mugi stumbles on his work while looking for a different restaurant, and Kei immediately threatens her if she reveals his job, both because it's against school rules and because it's pretty embarrassing for a guy who's always turning girls down.

The story beats aren't anything new: Mugi and Kei slowly start to get to know each other and he begins to trust her, even going so far as to save her from a too-pushy blind date and bringing her back to his house to clean up. He's got the requisite precocious younger sibling, two goofy friends, and Mugi's the plain Jane pal of the local hot girl, who is also the nicest human being on the planet. You could probably substitute almost any other high school romance from the last thirty years and get the same book, although it must be said that Satonaka has a deft hand with goofy faces.

So what makes this so enjoyable? Mugi is a large part of that. She's so refreshingly normal that she's simultaneously a reader placeholder and someone we can really root for. Mugi's not sure what she wants out of high school, although she's been told that the answer ought to be “a boyfriend.” Right now, she'd settle for not getting beat up by Kei's worshipful public and making a friend in her class, and the efforts she makes to have those things are down-to-earth and real. Someone mentions a song they like? Mugi will check it out. She gets a threatening note from a mysterious person telling her to stay away from Kei? Done, she'll avoid him like the plague. She's a real person of the sort who rarely gets to be the leading lady, someone exactly as ordinary as she seems, and that makes her more relatable than many other heroines in the genre. Don't get me wrong, I love a heroine like Tohru or Tsukushi, but they're just that – characters. Mugi isn't perfect in very real ways, and seeing her plopped down in the middle of a typical shoujo fluff piece gives Pink & Habanero a little something different to make it more than yet another in a long line of similar stories.

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Jean-Karlo Lemus
Rating:

There's just something about shoujo manga with odd couples. Mugi is a gloomy misfit desperate to make friends. Kurose is a blunt jerk with a lot going on under the surface. Is it realistic for a guy who will just as quickly compliment your lipgloss as he will compare you to a boar to be so appealing? Probably not. But it's weirdly cute to see him torment Mugi in between moments of him pushing her to break out of her shell—especially since it's not like he's doing any lasting harm to the poor girl. It helps that we get to see Mugi make other friends besides Kurose, including Kurose's pack of buddies, thanks to Kurose's efforts.

Mugi herself is also a sweet girl. She's not quite at Sawako Kuronuma's level of goofy faces, but she's getting there. She acknowledges when she's wrong, even if it means enduring Kurose and his hazing, and above all else: it's nice to see her win. I am charmed by Pink & Habanero. I have to wonder if the rest of the series can follow through, but for now, I recommend it.

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MrAJCosplay
Rating:

Sometimes you come across a romance series that feels like it's just checking off all the boxes. That is unfortunately one of the downsides to being a connoisseur of romantic comedies such as myself. They can't all be winners and they all can't reinvent the wheel. I wasn't expecting a lot from Pink and Habanero, but it really did outdo itself with how underwhelming it was at the end of the day. The typical story of the quiet girl who gets overshadowed by everybody and yet still somehow finds herself in a circumstance that puts her in direct relation to one of the hottest guys in school is a tale as old as time. I'm not gonna sit here and say I'm sick of it or anything, but for the love of God, at least get creative about it.

This book's idea of being creative is by making the loving interest work as a charming prince at a café that he doesn't want anyone to know about whereas his real personality is someone who is a lot more direct and mean. I can feel the butterflies in my stomach as I type this all out. Our protagonist isn't even someone who comes off as engaging or interesting. She's just sort of there to react to everything and that's it. At best, she stumbles into situations without much agency.

I'm sorry if this particular review is dripping with a bit more sarcasm than the other ones but I have to do something to make things sound more interesting than they actually are. Pink and Habanero isn't that remarkable visually either with occasional playful expressions that heighten the humor and there are one or two creative moments where the series will make use of sound as a plot point. But outside of that? I can think of a dozen other romances to recommend to people before I would recommend this one. It's not bad as it accomplishes everything that it sets out to do but when it doesn't try to do anything beyond that, what you're left with is something that is unfortunately far worse than bad and that's boring.

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Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. Yen Press, BookWalker Global, and J-Novel Club are subsidiaries of KWE.