Webcomic / Not So Shoujo Love Story

Not So Shoujo Love Story is a comedy-romance comic by Curryuku.

It revolves around protagonist Rei trying to win the affection of her crush Hansum - while simultaneously warding off the love-struck shenanigans of her rival-turned-admirer Hanna.

The comic is available for free on Webtoon. The original Webtoon Canvas version can be found here.

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Not So Shoujou Love Story contains examples of:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Hanna's courting of Rei comes off as harassment the majority of the time because she has zero flirting-skills. It's why Rei initally mistakes her for an Alpha Bitch rival for plotting to bully her to prevent her being with Hansum.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Hanna delivers two in a row when she asks Rei why exactly she's in love with Hansum and after that if she actually knows anything about him, aside from his name. Rei can't give a satisfying answer to either question. A few chapters later, Susan asks Rei if she likes Hanna
• Accidental Misnaming: Hansum can't get Rei's name right to save his life.
• The Ace:
  • Played for laughs with Hansum, who is inhumanly perfect. He's a top student, a talented athlete and incredibly popular. Probably because he isn't human.
  • Played straight with Hanna: Just like Hansum, she’s a grade-A student with many admirers and even does surprisingly well in sports.
• Action Girl:
  • Rei is a tough-as-nails teenager with a knack for fighting and sports.
  • Susan is the school's track-star and an incredibly muscular Brawn Hilda.
• Adults Are Useless:
  • Played straight with the the teachers at Koko Charter School. They are primarily interested in their school's reputation and do little to nothing to protect their students. When Rei goes to them to report Hanna's stalking, they dismiss her claims solely because of Rei's bad reputation and assume Rei is the one who's actually causing trouble. When Hanna ends up the target of bullying due to Four-Am spreading rumors about her and Rei her teacher not only completely fails to notice but even admonishes her for not concentrating during class.
  • Averted with Rei's father. He's kind, understanding and wants the best for his daughter.
  • Also averted with Hanna’s mom. As a member of the agency tracking Hansum, she’s the only person other than Rei to outright remember the original world after the world becomes a literal shoujo story. When she meets Rei, she quickly helps her.
• Affectionate Parody: Of the shoujo-genre in general. Barely an episode goes by without the comic lampooning the various clichés, plot contrivances and character archetypes that are often prevalent in romance-mangas.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Gertrude is in love with Susan, who is in love with Hanna, who’s in love with Rei, who’s in love with Hansum.
• Always Second Best: Hanna is a high-achieving student but always comes in second place next to Hansum and has the second largest school fanclub after him, she doesn't actually mind that much until she realises her crush, Rei, likes him more. After that she gets a lot more competitive and standoffish with him.
• Ambiguously Human: The comic implies several times that Hansum is an alien or a robot or both. His manner of speech is weirdly stilted and overly formal. He also seems very fascinated with just about every aspect of nature. Down to gravity, which he claims he isn't "used to" yet in Rei's flashback of their first meeting. In that same flashback his eyes suddenly point into different directions. When Hansum notices he apologises to Rei, claims it's because of the rain and says he'll have to "restart" them. He’s confirmed to be an alien during the Mid-Season Twist.
• Art Shift: After Rei interrupts Hansum’s attempt to reset the world, overtaking it with her desire to be the protagonist of a shoujo romance story, the “new world” quickly shifts to a grayscale, more manga-like style.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Played for laughs. Hanna manages to block Rei's strike in P.E. by analyzing her hand and eye movements. Her explanation of this is followed by a disclaimer that the science she describes has not been approved by a peer reviewed journal.
• Bad Liar: Both Hanna and Hansum can't lie to save their lives. When they try to it often has hilarious results.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In episode 1, Hansum leans down to Rei after she got thrown to the ground by his gaggle of fans, extends his hands and asks "Are you okay?" Rei, still unable to believe her luck, reaches to take it - only for Hansum to lower his hand further and reveal that he was worried about the butterfly she accidentally crushed with her butt, not her.
  • During Rei's race against the school's track star Susan in episode 24, there's a small moment in which it looks like Hanna's cheering has given Rei the confidence-boost she needed to overtake Susan and win. The very next episode reveals Susan won by a wide margin. Power of Love or no, someone screaming really loudly from the sidelines isn't gonna be enough for you to beat an experienced athlete.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: After Rei accidentally hijacks Hansum’s attempt to take control of the world, the world responds to her deepest desire: it becomes a cliche shoujo romance story where Rei is the protagonist. This leads to almost everyone Rei has known forgetting she was anyone other than “Mary Sue,” including Hanna (who is now actually the cliche rival), among several other negative changes.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Rei developed a crush on Hansum after he shielded her from the rain and complimented her hair.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Four-Am pretend to be long lost sisters to keep Hanna from ratting them out to the teachers after she overhears them talking about having created the rumors about Rei and her. After Hanna leaves, two of them break into laughter, expressing disbelief that anyone would buy such an obvious lie. The other two share a confused look, with one of them asking "Wait, we're not sisters?"
• Big Man on Campus: Hansum. He's worshipped by male and female students alike. Expect to hear more than a few love confessions when he's around.
• Bishie Sparkle: Hansum is almost always surrounded by sparkles.
• Bland-Name Product: In episode 2 we get a look at Rei's locker. The three manga on the top row are named One Peace, Maruto and Beach. Later on, at least a few return at a convention.
• Boyish Short Hair: Rei's hair is cut very short. Hansum complimenting it was one of the things that made her fall for him.
• Brawn Hilda: Susan is a massive woman with a quadrangular face and very masculine features.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: When asked by Rei if she even knows what "like" means, Hanna proudly answers that she learned it 28 panels ago.
• Brick Joke: During the convention arc, Hansum knocked out some agents and drew on their faces for payback. In the bonus segment of episode 102, they wake up, confused and with drawn on glasses and mustaches.
• The Bully:
  • Four-Am, consisting of Pam, Bam, Jam and Ham (the first time, anyway). They regularly seek fights with Rei (that they lose every time) in order to keep her from getting close to Hansum. They go so far as to start rumors that Rei is a Psycho Lesbian.
  • After the Mid-Season Twist, Hanna’s role in the new world is cast as a mix of this and The Rival.
• Butch Lesbian: Rei fits just about every quality of this "trope." Curryuku noted on Twitter (as well as implied throughout the story multiple times) that Rei is a lesbian dealing with compulsory heterosexuality.
  • Zizagged with Susan. She physically appears quite masculine, is very muscular, and has a big crush on Hanna. However, her actual personality is quite feminine.
• Can't Act Perverted Toward a Love Interest: Averted hard by Hanna who is a self-proclaimed pervert, has shown masochistic tendencies, and openly expresses enthusiasm for anything remotely dirty with Rei. Eventually invoked by Rei when she feels embarassed about having her own lewd thoughts about Hanna and starts pushing her away because of it.
• Can't Spit It Out:
  • Hanna. Though in her case it's more like: "Tries to spit it out but ends up driving her crush away in her enthusiasm and lack of social skill".
  • Gertrude has social anxiety issues that make it difficult for her to confess she like Susan.
• Cloudcuckoolander: For a world with no fantastical elements except where Hansum is concerned, there sure are a lot of people with fantastical mindsets:
  • Deconstructed with Rei. She's obsessed with manga and anime and extremely anti-social. As a result she has no friends due to the other students being put off by her odd behavior and violent attitude.
  • Played straight with Hansum. He’s just quirky enough for readers (and Susan) to notice, but also so attractive and popular that nobody around him seems to mind.
• Comically Missing the Point: In episode 1, Rei presses Hanna against the wall and threatens her to back off lest she get "her pretty little face punched in". Hanna, who fell into a flustered daze the moment Rei got close, only gathers that Rei called her pretty and is immediately overjoyed.
• Delinquents:
  • Rei is foul-mouthed, very easy to anger and constantly gets into fights.
  • After the Mid-Season Twist, Susan is cast as an exaggerated version of this in the new world, even wearing an oni mask and wielding a baseball bat with nails stuck in it.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Koko High School. Kōkō is the Japanese word for "high school", so the name translates to "High School High School."
  • Teachers are often addressed with "Teacher-sensei" or, for extra redundancy, "Mr./Ms. Teacher-sensei."
• Deuteragonist: Rei and Hanna both get scenes and sometimes chapters from their perspectives. Though Hanna comes in later in the story, roughly half of the chapters go into detail about her daily struggles and her feelings for Rei.
• Entitled to Have You: Four-Am are of the opinion that Hansum belongs to every girl at school and that no one girl should claim him for herself.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Hansum is just as popular with the gents as he is with the ladies.
• Face of a Thug: Susan is a sweetheart and actually quite girly, but because of her height and build most people are afraid of her and mistake her for a bully.
• Forgotten First Meeting:
  • Rei and Hanna actually met before their confrontation in episode 1 but Rei has no memory of it.
  • Rei and Hansum had something of a Meet Cute long before the start of the comic. Too bad Hansum doesn't remember.
• Friendless Background: Rei never used to have friends before meeting Hanna.
• The Gadfly: Hanna enjoys teasing Rei, because she finds Rei's reactions very cute.
• Gratuitous German: Hanna's last name is "Schulerin". Which is the German word for "female student".
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Hanna is intensely jealous of Hansum for being Rei's crush and tries to sabotage or butt into their interactions whenever she can.
  • Four-Am consider Hansum their property and will go to great lengths to drive off his other admirers. Especially Rei.
• Gonk: When the comic goes all out with facial expressions, it goes all out.
• Hate Sink:
  • Four-Am. They're shallow, cowardly bullies who think they are entitled to Hansum.
  • The students at Koko Charter School in general are pretty unlikable. Most of them are shallow gossips and bullies, who only seem concerned with their own social standing. The majority of them are also shown to be incredibly homophobic. After Four-Am start the rumor that Rei is a Psycho Lesbian, many students jump at the opportunity to pick on both Rei and Hanna for their sexuality.
  • Rei’s mom was abusive and left her when she was younger, with Rei’s shoujo manga obsession starting as a coping mechanism.
• Huge Schoolgirl: Susan is simply massive.
• Informed Attractiveness: Played for laughs. Hansum is frequently described as the most beautiful boy in school and everyone lusts after him accordingly. You'll have to wonder what kinds of drugs everyone at that school is on. Because Hansum with his way too small eyes and impossibly long, pointy chin could be called a lot of things, but "beautiful" is not one of them. In fact, Susan seems to be the only student who notices these things. The first time she sees Hansum she’s put off by his appearance and questions why so many girls are swooning over him.
• Innocently Insensitive: Hansum's ruder moments towards Rei come across this way. He genuinely doesn't mean to hurt her, he's just so caught up in his own world and so devoid of actual social skills that he ends up leaving her emotionally devastated.
• Is This Thing Still On?: When Hanna's father calls her to the office to talk about how she started dating Rei, her response to his attempt to jump out his office's window leads to her suplexing him onto his desk, which inadvertently activates the intercom. His next words end up revealing to the school that she is dating someone, though a teacher interrupts before he spills specifically who.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rei may be a rude loud-mouth, but she's not actually a bad person.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Rei can't go two sentences without saying a swear-word.
• Let Me at Him!: Susan has to hold back a furious Rei and Hanna when the girl they tried to warn about her two-timing boyfriend talks smack about them and Susan herself. Then said girl makes the mistake of questioning Hanna and Rei's motives for hanging out with Susan…which leads to the latter beating her up for trash-talking her friends.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Hanna looks and acts stereotypically feminine and is in love with Rei. Hanna says herself that she's never been attracted to any man; her eyes are only for Rei.
• Loving a Shadow: Rei is eventually forced to confront the fact that she's not in love with Hansum himself, but with the idea of him: A popular pretty boy who only has eyes for her. When pressed to name one thing about him that she likes, she can't think of anything but how he's similar to the shoujou-manga love interests she likes so much.
• Love at First Sight: Subverted. When Rei saw Hansum for the first time, she thought he looked weird and couldn't understand why all the girls in her school were in love with him. What made her fall for him weren't his alleged good looks, but his warm personality and friendliness towards her.
• Love Epiphany: Rei finally realizes her feelings for Hanna in the Season 1 finale.
• Love Triangle: Rei has the hots for Hansum and believes Hanna does too. Hanna meanwhile is head over heels for Rei. Hansum doesn't seem attracted to anyone.
  • Later on expended with Susan, who has an unrequited crush on Hanna. She eventually finds love with Gertrude instead.
• The Men in Black: Hanna's mom is usually the Only Sane Man among the cast, but after several Unusually Uninteresting Sight moments (such as cleaning a blood-stained handgun) it is confirmed she's a government agent charged with hunting down Hansum. How much her husband and Hanna are aware of the details of her profession is unclear but they seem to consider her casually keeping her weapons around the house normal.
• Mid-Season Twist: After Rei accidentally interferes with Hansum’s attempt to reset the world in order to conquer it, her strong desire to live in a shoujo fantasy causes the world to literally become one, complete with an Art Shift to black and white. The result is a Role Swap Plot—instead of Rei being a girl who Thinks Like a Romance Novel being courted by the girl she thinks is her rival, she’s the Only Sane Woman in a cliche shoujo romance story, trying to get Hanna (who is now actually cast as the rival) to remember their love.
• Nice Guy: Hansum is an accommodating, polite boy. He really needs to work on his people skills though; it's clear he would never be willingly mean to someone who didn't deserve it, but his sheer weirdness means he can often devastate others unintentionally. Might be related to him being an alien, or whatever is going on with him.
• Otaku: Rei is obsessed with manga, especially shoujo-mangas. To the point she believes she can turn her life into one if she re-enacts the classic tropes.
• Oblivious to Love:
  • Hansum doesn't seem to notice that the majority of his classmates are madly in love with him.
  • Despite Hanna being anything but subtle about her feelings for Rei, it takes her spelling it out to Rei that she's in love with her in episode 27 for Rei to finally get the point.
• Psycho Lesbian: Four-Am use a picture they took out of context to frame Rei as a violent lesbian who won't take 'no' for an answer.
• Reality Warper: When his power is properly gathered, Hansum is capable of doing this in order to Take Over the World. This can be hijacked by someone whose desire and vision are stronger than Hansum’s—such as Rei’s desire to become the protagonist of a shoujo romance story. It’s implied that it’s up to Rei to find a way to change the world back.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Hansum, Rei, and Hanna’s mom are the only three people to remember the world as it was before Hansum’s interrupted reset to reality. Hanna, Susan, and a few others don’t consciously remember, but they do subconsciously resist the roles they’ve been cast into.
• Running Gag:
  • Hansum's chin being too big to fit into the panel.
  • Four-Am's names changing every time they appear.
  • Rei attempting to re-enact classic shoujo clichés, but getting nipped in the butt by reality.
  • Hansum misremembering Rei's name and calling her by some other name starting with R.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Most of the student body agrees that Hanna and Hansum would make the perfect couple. Rei's not into it. Neither is Hanna.
  • Hilariously, Hansum becomes an ardent supporter of Hanna and Rei as the comic goes on.
• Stepford Smiler: Hanna's backstory. She was So Beautiful, It's a Curse, having people constantly approach her to try and be her friend for popularity, then turn around and badmouth her when she can't give them what they want. She went along with the flow and let herself be pushed into roles she didn't want or understand. It is Rei's disruptive nature, complete disregard for the opinions of others, and the fact Hanna has to leave her comfort zone and be the one pursuing her for a change that she finds so attractive initially.
• Toast of Tardiness: Parodied and deconstructed. Rei tries to pull this off in episode 11. Only two panels later, the toast breaks in half and falls out of her mouth. Rei is devastated and questions why the heroines in her manga even do this in the first place, since most of the time their hands are free anyway. And toast is so soft that what happened to her should happen every time anyone in a manga tries this. She then attempts to pull it off again, this time with a Dagwood Sandwich. It doesn't go any better.
• Thinks Like a Romance Novel: Rei, with her manga specifically; a huge part of Hanna's trouble in getting through to Rei is that Rei thinks Hanna is the classic untouchable rival to the everywoman heroine. Rei hasn't noticed that she herself is far from the average female protagonist of these things, save for her bad luck, that Hanna is more of a goofball totally in love with her who is trying various ridiculous things in an attempt to get Rei to notice and/or fall in love with her, and Hansum is way weirder than he should be for the standard male romantic lead. Her reluctance to acknowledge her real circumstances boils down entirely to a romantic ideal from manga that she adores, meaning she tries to force reality into that framework. When Rei and Hansum accidentally cause the world to turn into an actual cliche shoujo manga story, the trope is inverted: everyone except Rei and Hanna’s mom act like exaggerated manga tropes, while Rei tries to find a way to return the world to normal or at least get her friends to remember who they are.
• Toilet Humor: Farts, turds, actual smelly toilets - there's really nothing the comic won't use for a joke.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Rei is boyish, gruff and rude. But she also reads shoujo-manga and longs for a hearts-and-flowers romance with a boy who will understand and protect her.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Hansum really loves Chinritos corn chips. He ends up becoming an Ascended Fanboy when the company's people choose him to model on the packages.
• Unknown Rival:
  • Hansum is this to Hanna, as Rei's current crush.
  • Rei is one to Susan for Hanna's affection.
  • Gertrude is one to Hanna for Susan’s affection.
• Uptight Loves Wild: Model student Hanna falls in love with the rambunctious outcast Rei. Precisely because Rei is so unpredictable and unconventional.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: After being confronted about it by Susan, it turns out Rei doesn't actually know how it feels to be in love, and she only likes Hansum because she thinks he can give her the shoujo love story she so badly wants.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Rei's savvyness in the romance-genre leads her to believe she's in a real-life romance-manga. With her as the protagonist, Hansum as the love interest and Hanna as the rival. She's half-right: Hanna is the actual love interest, while Hansum is her rival. Albeit unknowingly. When the world is recast as a cliche shoujo romance manga and Rei is trying to go back, it becomes actual Genre Savvy.

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