Dear George Asakura,

As you probably know, one of the best forms of expression is writing. It is because writing is one of the greatest forms of expression that people who love one another decide to express their love in the form of a love letter. Love letters are wonderful things. Kids will always joke about how their grandparents kissing each other is "gross," yet all they need to do is read the love letters of a grandparent’s early years to be truly touched by their feeling towards each other. Some of the most memorable writings of the century just happen to be love letters. But while love letters may be a popular form of expression, the fact that there are very few stories revolving around the writing of love letters is puzzling to say the least. This is why I was looking forward to reading your book "A Perfect Day For Love Letters," as the very concept just won me over.

I knew I had to read this book, and it was one of the books I was most looking forward to reviewing. After reading the book, I have to tell you: you got the part of writing letters down very good, yet you’ve still got a long way to go when it comes to the part of writing a good story and memorable characters to go along with those good letters. First off, let me compliment you on the letters in this book. The letters range from great to fabulous. You clearly know what a good love letter is and how to write one in a great way. I have no doubt that several people who read this book will eventually start copying some of the letters in this book to give to their own girlfriend/boyfriend. Many of the letters in your book are touching, tearful, funny, heartfelt, and sweet. The letters show how good writing can be, and how effective writing love letters can be in a relationship. The problem your book has is that I don't care for any of these characters. The characters are shallow, cheap, one-dimensional losers with no real redeeming qualities outside of the fact that they write good. Just because your characters can write good doesn't make them interesting people. In fact, you seem to love making some pretty odd choices for couples. You've got the tattoo guy getting together with the cute shy girl, the librarian together with the sports star, and the skin head with the obnoxious girl (just for the record, the letters in THIS particular story aren't very good or convincing).

The message you seem to be sending with this method of thinking is that regardless of how incompatible two people are with each other, a well-written love letter will save the day. Which is a nice thought, but it doesn't work as well as it should because most of the couples presented in your book simply have NOTHING IN COMMON WITH EACH OTHER!!! As good as the love letters are, many girls in real life are wooed by them until they discover who the sender is. Because regardless how good a letter may be, it only seals the deal if the sender is someone the receiver could learn to love in return. Save for a couple here and there, I don't get the feeling that most of your characters belong with one another. In fact, most of the characters follow a pattern of despising a person, getting a love letter, falling in love with the letter, finding out the person who sent it was someone said person hates, hating the letter, and falling in love with the person who sent the letter a couple pages later. This process may sound complicated on paper (or in HTML), but is rather simple in execution. Considering how good of a writer you seem to be, I'm a bit surprised you didn't catch this. I also have a problem with your artwork. While you can definitely write good love letters, you can't draw all that well. Your artwork is pretty bad on top of the fact that it's also just not very good or original.

Most of the characters look the same, the eyes look horrible, and you seem to use only the most minimum effort when drawing the backgrounds and settings. May I recommend you team up with a partner to take care of the artwork so that you can just focus on your writing next time? Might I also recommend sending a thank-you note to Del Rey for taking such good care with the release of this book? I don't know if you are aware of this or not, but pretty much all of Del Rey's books are of excellent quality. As such, your book, "A Perfect Day For Love Letters," also shows a great care to detail and perfection, with quality paper, a great translation, and a few extras (for only one dollar more than your standard manga). I may not like your taste in couples, but I think you have great taste in publishers. By now, you can probably figure out that I didn't care much for your book. I certainly had respect for certain aspects of the book, but I don't think any of it came together all that well. However, if there is one positive thing I got from this book, I think that it may inspire young readers (particularly girls) to get into real writing (instead of wasting their time writing such drivel as "Sailor Moon" rants and manga reviews). So here's to you and your writing; may it be used to better effect in some future (and hopefully better) project. Thank you for taking your time to read my letter.

Yours Sincerely,

Kevin T. Rodriguez
www.thecomicbookguy.com

P.S. If I may bother you, why is your name George when you are a woman? Because personally, when I think of the name "George," I think of Curious George and Hairy George who lives down the street and has hair coming out of the most unusual places. But the name George being used as a female’s name is rather...odd, to me.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -