Love at Fourteen has been mostly about Kanata and Kazuki, but the series has featured other characters and their relationships. Most of those involve an adult, a bizarre and sometimes disturbing choice considering the manga stars middle schoolers.
Good news: there’s a new couple on the scene, and they’re both students!
Bad news: there’s still an age gap.
Kato, Kanata and the others’ classmate who is known for being short and loud, shows up to class with a problem. Well, technically, he doesn’t have a problem; he wants to help a girl he met at the park while she was upset. Turns out she lied about having an older boyfriend to her friends, and she doesn’t know what to do. Kato ends up begging Kazuki to play the part, which makes Kanata nervous. She shouldn’t be, as the girl (later named Toh) seems to glare a lot and barely says two words to Kazuki. Of course, the truth about this couple comes out. But that’s not the only thing that’s revealed: Toh and Kato each assumed the other was older/younger based on their appearance. Kato assumed Toh was in high school; Toh thought Kato was in elementary. Kato, of course, is in eight grade. Toh? Fifth grade.
Despite that, a new couple is born.
So, yeah, it’s slightly better than the thought of an adult preying on a child, but the three-to-four years separating these two are huge in terms of human development. Toh is tsundere, and while I do like those types of characters, there’s a difference between being sharp-tongued and angry out of youthful inexperience and just youth. Yes, Kato is pretty immature, but Toh isn’t overly mature for her age either. Love at Fourteen has never billed itself as a standard romance, but a couple of middle schoolers getting to know each other and then start dating wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Especially since, in terms of importance, it’s Aoi and the school nurse that gets the second biggest development after the new couple Kato and Toh. The volume opens and closes with the two of them as Aoi finds herself wanting to learn more about the nurse. The two obviously have a lot in common, as they both like girls who are interested in someone else. But the nurse has had unrequited love for years, and she’s watching as her coworker is developing an interest in someone much younger than her. While the age gap is still a problem, this is without a doubt the most moving couple (well, potential couple) in the series. The two could easily star in their own yuri manga, but maybe the melancholy is more moving when the manga isn’t drowning in it.
Meanwhile, Kanata and Kazuki’s relationship isn’t shown much at all, and what we see is pretty dumb. Kanata wants to find a reason for Kazuki to come visit her room like he used to, eventually coming up with the genius idea of catching a cold. The ending was cute, but it’s still rather lackluster. We check in with Nagai/Hinohara and Shota/Lady as well, but neither are particularly exciting.
So, the dullness of those three relationships lowered my enjoyment of Love at Fourteen volume 8. I was glad to see the author introduce another pair and make them students, but I still wish she would feature relationships that are less squimish. However, Mizutani does well in overcoming that hurdle to Aoi’s crush on the nurse, and that’s one couple I am looking forward to seeing again in volume 9.