Crimson Hero, Vol. 1

All tomboy Nobara Sumiyoshi wants to do is play volleyball. All her mother wants her to do is take her responsibility as eldest daughter seriously and put her dedication into taking over the family ryotei (a high class Japanese dining establishment). When Nobara discovers that the high school she entered has eliminated the girl's volleyball team due to low participation, she is upset. When she learns it was her own mother who suggested the girl's volleyball team wouldn't be missed and urged the school to disband it, Nobara is furious. She runs away from home and with the help of her Aunt Momoko (the school nurse) she ends up working for her room and board as dorm mother for the dorm where the volleyball recruits live--and since the only volleyball team still around is for guys, the dorm is all-male. Although she must deal with rude dorm members such as the brash Yushin Kumagai and the lack of enthusiasm among her classmates when she tries to restart the girl's volleyball team, Nobara refuses to give up until she succeeds at her dream of playing volleyball. I have no real interest in volleyball in real life or on the page and I don't like sports manga in general (who wants to read five pages of a character hitting a ball?) so I was a bit wary of picking up CRIMSON HERO. I decided to try it because I have in general been satisfied with the Shoujo Beat line and I'm glad I decided to give this series a shot! While it is about volleyball--because that's what heroine Nobara is obsessed with--it's more about the typical shoujo manga theme of relationships (including not one but two romantic interests for Nobara). The art is also really good, although sometimes the guys look like girls (I honestly thought that Yushin was a girl the first time I saw him, and was wondering why he was in a guy's uniform). Nobara also has a habit of looking like a feminine guy with her short hair and often baggy clothes (refusing to wear her school's sailor uniform doesn't help). However, once I adjusted myself to the fact that it is often distinguish the males from the females it didn't bother me. I've read several subsequent volumes of this series and have remained quite satisfied. This is a good shoujo series and even those not interested in sports manga should enjoy it (because in the end it really is more shoujo than sports oriented).

This is such a good manga. I've only read the first volume but it's really good. There's actually not much volleyball in it but it's still good. It's about a girl named Nobara who loves volleyball but her mother gets rid of the girls' volleyball team.

I absolutly love this this manga. It is the best one that I have ever read. I first read it in the magazine ShojoBeat that a frind of mine ownes. Out of all the different types of manga's in the intire magazine, Crimson Hero is my absolute favorite one. I can't wait till I get the rest of the series. Thank you.

Okay, so the way I read this manga is I read it in Shojo Beat, a magazine of manga being published in America. At first I refused to read it because I thought, "Ew, volleyball? A sports story? No way, Jose!" But then I was bored one day and decided to check it out and it was actually good! (One of the main reasons I refused to read it was because I thought the main character was too guy-like. Turns out, the person I thought was too guy-like WAS a guy... Hmmm...) But no, the main character is actually a girl and despite it being about volleyball, this is still shojo and doesn't absolutely FOCUS on volleyball action like you'd expect it to if it were shonen. The characters are still nice and the only reason I'm only giving it four stars is because the artwork is a little dodgy when it comes to faces and three-quarter profiles. But it IS a good story!