A shojo series from the creator of Happy Hustle High, Punch! stars 15-year-old Elle Nagahara, whose love life is impossible.
It's not just that she hails from a family of martial artists. Dad was a boxing champion, Mom was a wrestling champion, and her grandfather, who she affectionately refers to as Gigi, was the first Japanese world champion of Muay Thai kickboxing, and he now runs a gym where he trains young fighters.
No, it's that her grandfather and his one-time rival and best friend long ago promised each other that their grandchildren would marry, which means Elle is kinda sorta promised to 17-year-old professional fighter Ruo. He's quite dreamy, as evidenced by the fact that Elle's best friend and much of the female student body seem to have crushes on him, but, since they grew up together, Elle can't help but think of him as anything other than an older brother.
That's not how he feels, though, and so whenever Elle finds a boy she likes, Ruo's friends from the gym threaten the guy in question, tell them Elle is spoken for and scare him away. As the first volume opens, Elle is reading a letter from her latest totally-normal, not-at-all-involved-in-fighting crush, the handsome but book-ish Yuichi, who has apparently just had a visit from the boys from the gym: "Please leave me alone," it reads. "I'm begging you!"
Still, she's determined not to marry Ruo, and find romance with a normal guy. Or, as she puts it, "I will escape this martial arts hell!!"
That's not quite what happens though.
A chance meeting at a store with a boy leads to an unlikely fight scene. She sees him hustled into the restroom by a trio of thugs, and when she goes to get the manager to help him, she finds that the boy has beaten up all his attackers, despite the three-on-one odds. One of the guys on the ground then recognizes the boy: "You're... Shindo! Kazuki Shindo from Seisho High..."
Later, when Elle ties to tell Ruo that she doesn't want to marry him, he assumes that she has another crush again, and, under pressure, she blurts out Kazuki's name. At least in this case, when Ruo's friends go to threaten him to back off, Kazuki isn't scared away...in fact, even though he doesn't even know who Elle is at that point, he fights back.
Kazuki then gradually gets pulled closer and closer into Elle's orbit. When he shows up at the gym to fight Ruo, Gigi intervenes, offering to train Kazuki and making the boys promise not to fight one another outside of the ring (Why is Gigi interested? Well, in part, he thinks Ruo needs a true rival to improve his skills and sees the potential in Kazuki to become that rival).
In fact, by the end of the book, not only are Kazuki and Elle pretending to be a couple (largely in attempt to help break off her engagement, although they obviously and predictably do find themselves falling for one another, too), but Kazuki has transferred to Elle and Ruo's school...and is now living with Elle...!
The art, storytelling and character designs are all typical of shojo, with all of the boys being drawn very tall (sometimes even unnaturally so, as they look overly elongated) and with pretty features, particularly the long, light-haired Ruo and dark-haired Kazuki, who is apparently so pretty that he wears a hoodie all the time to disguise his face...! (That's Kazuki on the cover above, by the way.)
Elle is, by contrast, quite short and round-faced...but not nearly as short and round as Gigi, who Takada gives the stature of a Sanrio character, seemingly half the size of Elle and seems to always be drawn in chibi style (He reminded me quite a bit of Happosai from Rumiko Takahashi's Ranma 1/2). Somewhat oddly, near the end of the book, when there's a fairly dramatic scene, he reverts to a normal size and style and is only recognizable as the same guy by his bald head and eyepatch.
The book seems to pile cliches on top of one another pretty quickly, but, as they say, cliches are cliches for a reason, and the characters and book itself seems self-aware regarding aspects of the melodrama. It also seems a little more heavily American-ized than I think we might expect from a more recent manga. For example, Elle is said to be a freshman rather than a first-year, and there's at least one exchange where it seems the translator was trying to convert something pertaining to Japanese names into something that makes sense in English.
The first volume of Punch! was, nevertheless, mostly rather light and breezy (Save for a scene in a hotel where Ruo seems intent on forcing himself on Elle, despite her protestations, until she accidentally hurts herself fighting him off and he belatedly comes to his senses). Given how short the series is, I plan to read the rest of it.
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