Five years ago, some unexplainable event occurred that combined two schools. One school was full of elites and study kids, the other a bunch of laid-back and not so smart ones. We follow Asahi Suzumori, who’s part of the group of no-class students, getting yelled at by a high-class student. In this exchange, we see both these classes of students despise each other. But as long as they limit interaction, no problems are set to occur.
A dorm burning down is gonna affect that.
See, the oven at Sunflower House — the one with the no-class students — led to a fire. Now the dorm is shut down and those students will have to commute. Asahi’s problem is that her parents are overseas, and her aunt’s house is over two hours away from her school. Just when her options seem bleak, a seemingly unassuming student offers her a dorm room that just opened up. That dorm is Midnight Oil House, full of high-class students and rigid rules, and he’s also the RA there! She reluctantly takes his offer, which means she somehow needs to make sure none of the high-class students — and no-class ones — find out she’s there, or chaos will ensue.
Too bad for her, her secret’s discovered by a high-class student. But that high-class student has a secret that she knows of as well!
The Dorm of Love and Secrets is Nikki Asada’s third work officially available in English. We have Heart Break Club which Media Do finished up and the ongoing The Prince’s Romance Gambit from Kodansha Comics. That usually is a sign that something good might be up with this creator. In my case, the premise and art style was interesting so I was definitely up to giving it a shot. And in its first volume it does have some questions to answer, but it feels like a rock-solid read.
For example, Asahi finds herself in trouble in record time. Prior to the dorm burning down she ends up running into a cute boy on her way to the supermarket. That cute boy, Yokaze Takagi, ends up being the first to find out that she shouldn’t be in the high-class dorm in the first place. Why is she there in the first place with her poor grades? That’s due to whatever plan the RA of Midnight Oil (and also Student Council President) Tsukigase has concocted.
And yes, Tsukigase is concocting something. We learn early on that relations between the high-class and no-class students are contentious, and for someone who learned how awful Asahi’s grades are, he has to have something in mind for bringing her into the dorm aside from on a whim. And also bringing Yokaze into the dorm as well — we learn that first-year students normally don’t make it into Midnight Oil. Due to how those two interact with each other and one plot point that Asahi sees at the end of this volume, it’s clear Tsukigase has a plan, and I’m interested in seeing what it is.
The romance of course is the other big thing in this manga (it is a shoujo!). I’m not a big fan of how Tsukigase acts around Asahi (hopefully nothing romantic actually comes up there, but I’m counting on it), but the dynamic between Asahi and Yokaze seems fine, and them keeping each other’s secrets is somehow cute. Complement it with some nice artwork and numerous embarrassed faces from these two, the love aspect can carry this manga for a while.
Where it does falter in its first volume is developing everyone else — it has its subsection of students from each side that show up and one character, Sho, that Asahi talks to the most aside from the two male leads. After that? No one else really shows up. There might have been one more character teased on the high-class side that should show up in future volumes, but for all intents and purposes, the three leads carry this one. And if these attitudes don’t jive with you, then it’ll be tough to continue reading much further.
But The Dorm of Love and Secrets has enough story elements that I’m curious to see where it goes. After all, while it’s angling the romance aspects like most shoujo works, it certainly will have to address the high-class/no-class friction that’s developed over the years. Maybe we’ll even see if it’ll show a balance between chilling and studying for students. But will have to read more volumes to find out.