A person's experience is pretty much defined by how a manga is presented to them, and this is basically the case of either bland translation or just straight up shallow interpretation. Either the translating doesn't communicate the cultural differences very efficiently, or some people didnt fully understand Maria at all, and honestly it looks like a lot of both.
At first Maria seems like the ultimate heroine taking no bullshit from anyone. She's able to stand her ground so strongly against otherwise nauseatingly mean and bigotted classmates, an angel among a slothy pit of hell that is a peer-pressure-filled high school.
Akuma to Love Song is a refreshing change of pace for any shoujo reader, and it has a deliciously ambient tone illustrating the darkness and insanity high school IS, remeniscent of Life to be specific.
But c'mon, how can it be that hard to relate to this manga when the majority religion in almost every English speaking country is Catholic. Devil Maria, an unfitting nickname? Did no one understand how these Japanese student bullies used a Catholic reference against her to triple the blow or has no one seen a bully apply meaningful religious vocabulary to their social life these days and couldn't believe it could happen? Need i mention the irony of it all (referring to my angel comment).
Sure, if you're looking for a manga that surprises you and 'breaks cliche', try it out to see why we all say "the beginning was good." But you'll drop it like a brick like the rest of them being so seduced by that honestly pathetic idea. If you're so 'great' that nearly nothing surprises you, good luck trying to find decent stories that 'satisfy' you, because decent stories are gunna pass right over you and you won't even know it. Every story out there has a trope, you can't avoid them completely, and you'll have better luck finding the manga you're looking for by making the manga yourself, if you're so revolutionary. Needless to say, if you're the type of person who would dismiss Maria crying her heart out as 'cliche', Maria actually smiling because she was genuinely happy as 'predictable shoujo', you don't understand how REAL people develop at all and your manga is probably gunna suck.
That said, I've been reading the scanlation and the translation is pretty redundant and stiff sometimes. Maybe that has something to do with it and you should try the Viz version in your local library. (I haven't done it but I'm going to). But I focus on the story when i read and try to forgive the mishaps, and if the story can shine through so clearly among all the bad translating, well, that says at least something.
Let me talk about how i felt about this series for a second. The execution of this manga for a shoujo genre is nearly flawless. There are so many great elements incorporated here, like self-image (worrying about what others see in you), beliefs (personal religion or method of socializing), conformity (following the crowd instead of developing individuality)... but my favorite is the reoccuring play on sheer irony. How no one is who they make themselves out to be and (what became of) the real them is damn right UGLY. Akuma to Love Song unapologetically explores this.
They even make it ACCEPTABLE somehow.
This manga will make you angry at people. Embarrassed for people. Question why they're even friends with Maria in the first place yet don't we all know people we don't like but who are friends with those we do like?
In a word, the series is raw. Maria can attract readers for being an ideal feminist-appealing trope, but underneath that, the series is about Maria finding how to live WITH pretenders and liars, not against them. She helps show people who they really are and in doing so, she makes true friends, each one of them flawed and fake, which is pretty damn realistic from my experience (cliches stem from truth, but don't get them mixed up.) This is how leaders are born and rise above the rest, and Maria proves that not all leaders have to be men.
Admittedly i stopped reading the series for a while, but i found myself pick it up every ten chapters, and whenever i finished what was out so far, I'd totally want the rest. Maybe it was Anna's arc that drove me to stop following it so closely (i remember how embarrassed i felt for Anna, nothing was going nicely (cough like how i expect a story to go cough)) but that has PASSED in my book and I'm eagerly awaiting Maria to overcome her character flaw, have her love requited, and lead an actual healthy life.
AtLS could totally start a cult following because not everyone can "get" it ("it's not for everyone") but for the people who do, they'd probably love it as well as i do and more. It completely deserved the thirteen volume run it got.
(-14)
