Forbidden Dance 1

Forbidden Dance 1 by Hinako Ashihara, 2003. 192 pages. Published by Tokyopop. Source: Borrowed.

When a young girl loses her confidence to dance, she fears she'll never set foot on the stage again. But when she falls in lust with an all-guy avant-garde dance troupe and their leader, everything changes. Soon, her primary goal in life is to join the troupe and snag the guy. So what if she's missing a Y-chromosome? She's got spunk, skill, and passion--and, in the end, she hopes that love will conquer all.

First Sentence:

Good luck Aya!

Story:

I never actually thought that I'd enjoy a manga where the main focus being a dancer within the world of dancing. Let me just put it this way, I don't dance and think that dancing looks well, rather silly. So you can imagine how surprised I was at my enjoyment of Forbidden Dance. 

So why did I dis-liker of dancing enjoy Forbidden Dance, well, that's easy because there was some fierce competition in this manga. Like sabotage your opponent kind of competition, which was great.  

I thought it was an interesting concept to have the main character, Aya, trying to make a comeback into the world of dancing after she (either chocked or hurt herself). It definitely made her a little more interesting because she wasn't "perfect".
The absolute best scene in Forbidden Dance was the last two pages. Oh, my gosh can you say cliff-hanger ending! So Aya is slowly working on making a comeback into the world of dancing, and then a friend of hers goes missing...honestly, if I told you any more then that I would completely give away how the first volume ends.

The only thing I didn't really like about Forbidden Dance was that it was a little too easy to figure out who tried to sabotage Aya during a competition. Either it wasn't veiled to well or I just followed the right line of reasoning to figure it all out.  

Character(s):

The main character, Aya, was actually a pretty interesting character to read about. I liked how intense she was when dancing, and how driven she was to join Cool.

While I really liked Aya, my favorite character was Tetsuya the typical nice guy who probably won't get the girl because he's just more of a...friend type character. I liked him because he kept the story light, besides he seemed to be the only character with a sense of humor.

As for Akira, the leader of dance troupe Cool, I'm not all to sure how I feel about him at the moment. He seems a little cold, but I'm thinking he'll be one of those characters that you end up liking more as the story progresses.

Artwork:

My hopes weren't set to high for the art work on Forbidden Dance because I didn't much care for . I saw via the cover (this isn't sounding good). Well, I am here to assure you that the cover art is the worst you will see while reading this manga. It gets oh so much better on the inside.

While some of the characters seemed a little undefined in the way they were depicted (mainly what would amount to extras), I liked how it made the main cast of characters jump out of the page a little more. 

So my favorite thing about the art within Forbidden Dance was how graceful each of the dancers looked. I think Hinako Ashihara did an excellent job drawing the scenes with dancing. =)

Final Verdict: Forbidden Dance 1 won me over in the end.

Forbidden Dance 1 earned 4 out of 5 pineapples.