Nosatsu Junkie, Vol. 1 (2025)

i'm so normal about gender bender manga. like soo normal................ ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;)

See full review @ Katie's Corner

This time, the manga is already completed, I am not sure if it was licensed in English but you can find it either on Mangafox or Mangatown completely translated and scanned.

Well, I can’t say that I was feeling the same strengths from this manga as I felt from Unmasked Noise, but then again, this was the author’s first work. However, the drawing style is still the same, which is amazing and fits the characters 100%. The story is focusing a lot on the character development and their feelings. There are many moments where you just shout at the character as to why they don’t get each other. Especially Umi and Naka (the main characters). Their relationship is progressing fast and at the same time very slow. I was getting frustrated with both of them for not saying their feelings out loud. It was as if they were in a one sided mutual love. Doesn’t make sense? Well, neither did it to me.

Naka is a really amazing character. Her development as a person as well as a model is really interesting to read about. Her scary faces cracked me up and I just couldn’t get over her depression periods when she would sit in the corner of the room with the dark aura around her. Umi was the character that quite often frustrated me, bit I still loved him a lot. Let’s say a bit about Umi. He is a male, who works as a female model. No, no, he is not a cross dresser, and he likes Naka a lot, that’s to say about his orientation. You will understand why he does what he does, when you read the manga. But I just can’t bitch about it. I was frustrated with him, because he was jealous of a certain male model, but come on dude, you chose to be a female model, don’t go around getting jealous about that guy.

There are many great characters, which have their own dreams and aspirations. There is the thread of heartbreak, however it doesn’t really apply to Naka and Umi, I don’t get it, but they managed to survive. I hope you will find some time to read Charming Junkie. It has a lot of funny moments and they will crack you up a lot. But they are also life matters as well, which will make you think about what to do. Enjoy it to its fullest

Ok, definitely silly but promising. A girl wants to model to get back at the boy who rejected her. I get that, especially since he's all caught up in wanting to be with a girl who is a model. (Talk about shallow!) But I kept wanting to shout, "If she's so beautiful, then why not do pictures without her smiling????" Seriously. It makes me wonder how much fashion magazines might be different in Japan. I see a lot of models with stern expression and no smiles in European and American ads. I can't see why a beautiful smile has to be necessary for anything.

Hopefully this manga will address this at some point. I'm willing to give this another chance.

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It reminded me a bit of Skip Beat!, with the main character trying to become a model for revenge (Skip Beat!'s main wants to become a star for very similar reasons).

Enjoyable junk food for your brain.

Zum Inhalt:
Naka »Gamble« Kaburagi hat ein Ziel: Sie will süßer als Zuckerwatte werden, die Cover aller Magazine schmücken und ihrem Schwarm beweisen, dass sie alles andere als Furcht erregend ist. Doch wie soll ein Model mit dem Lächeln eines Schwerverbrechers das nur schaffen?

Cover:
Das Cover hat mir persönlich nicht wirklich zugesagt, da ich es sehr überkitscht finde. Irgendwie passt das nicht wirklich für mich zum Inhalt und den anderen Zeichnungen. Hier habe ich eher wegen des Inhalts zum Manga gegriffen.

Eigener Eindruck:
Als Naka ihrem Schwarm ihre Liebe gestehen will, verschmäht dieser sie mit der aussage, dass sie ihm zu böse guckt. Allgemein hat ihr Umfeld ein ganz großes Problem mit ihrem Gesicht, denn alle halten sie für dauerhaft aggressiv und halten sie bisweilen sogar für eine Mörderin. Als ihr Schwarm ihr dann auch noch sagt, dass sie viel lieber so sein sollte wie das berühmte Model Umi steht für Naka fest, dass sie es allen zeigen wird. Sie schafft es an einer Modelagentur genommen zu werden, doch die erfolgreichen Jobs bleiben aus, nicht zuletzt wegen ihrem bösen Blick. Sogar Wetten werden schon in ihrer Agentur abgeschlossen, wenn sie wieder einmal zu einem Casting geht. Dabei trifft sie auch auf das Model Umi, welche sie selbst als ihre persönliche Konkurrentin auserkoren hat. Als die beiden sich durch Zufall allein unterhalten und Umi eine Arztkarte aus der Tasche rutscht, glaubt Naka kaum ihren Augen zu trauen, denn auf der Karte steht eindeutig, dass Umi männlich ist! Und noch viel schlimmer, Umi ist in Wirklichkeit der Schulsprecher ihrer Schule. Damit sie das Geheimnis um die Figur "Umi" wahrt, nimmt sich der Schulsprecher fortan ihrer an und verspricht ihr, ihr lukrative Modeljobs zu verschaffen. Doch das ist gar nicht so einfach, denn da ist noch immer das Problem mit dem Mördergesicht von Naka... Da ist das Chaos regelrecht vorprogrammiert.

Der Manga "Charming Junkie" ist sehr angenehm zu lesen. Er hat eine recht gradlinige Storyline und ist rein logisch sehr gut zu verfolgen. Die Charaktere sind sehr gut ausgearbeitet und es wird versucht Details in der Story zu verarbeiten. Was mir jedoch in diesem ersten Band absolut fehlt, sind die wirklichen Emotionen. Man hätte viel mehr in Hinsicht auf die Verzweiflung von Naka aufbauen können. Das kam für mich nicht wirklich gut rüber. Aber dafür gibt es in diesem ersten Band jede Menge humorvolle Szenen die auch Spaß machen und die auch jeder versteht. Was mir dann wiederum gefehlt hat, waren die romantischen Elemente - die wurden zwar zaghaft angedeutet, hätten aber besser ausgearbeitet werden können. So wären manche Szenen für mich glaubhafter gewesen.
Das klassische Thema "Mädchen gibt sich als Junge aus" oder "Junge gibt sich als Mädchen aus", wird ja in vielen Mangas verarbeitet, aber ich finde, dass das hier seinen ganz eigenen humorvollen Charme hat. Diese verzwickte Situation verleitet natürlich zu Vermutungen, wie die Geschichte effektiv weiter geht und das macht wirklich Spaß. Man wird regelrecht gezwungen seine Fantasie mit einzuschalten und ich denke, das ist das, was einen wirklich lesenswerten Manga ausmacht.

Empfehlen möchte ich "Charming Junkie" allen Freunden der humorvollen und romantischen Mangaliteratur, ganz ohne phantastische Elemente. Dieser Manga hier kommt ganz gut ohne Übertreibungen aus und gerade das macht ihn für mich absolut charmant.

Idee: 4/5
Charaktere: 4/5
Zeichnungen: 4/5
Emotionen: 3/5
Details: 4/5

Gesamt: 4/5

Daten:
Taschenbuch: 192 Seiten
Verlag: Carlsen; Auflage: 2., Auflage (22. September 2006)
Sprache: Deutsch
ISBN-10: 3551783217
ISBN-13: 978-3551783219
Vom Hersteller empfohlenes Alter: 10 - 15 Jahre
Größe und/oder Gewicht: 11,6 x 2 x 17,6 cm

idk..love the fashion and the concept is good but I don't really know about Umi and Naka's "relationship"(naka saying that he hits her, is a demon, and sexually harasses her but she can't help caring about him..they barely KNOW each other like ..ok, and plus these situations are shown as comedic in the manga and I couldn't really see when he did those things so I'm weirded out and confused).
Setting that aside, it's a very old school style manga, and I'm used to it, it's supposed to be silly and funny and with crazy situations. I will continue to read as I think it has potential and might get better.

I loved this series when it came out and was seriously bummed when it became one of the dropped Tokyopop series. I held onto the books for a LONG time hoping the series would get picked up by another publisher but no luck. Finally I sold my series but check scanlations to see if anyone finished. Someone actually has, and I've yet to read it. Shame on me!

I loved this volume very much. Umi-chan is so tsundere but when he was being sweet to Naka-chan it made my heartstrings flutter.😝

4 stars. Old school but fun shoujo manga.

Naka has a lovely figure, but is failing as a model because when she smiles, she looks like a serial killer (stay with me, this is manga!). She wishes she could be like the model Umi, who has a beautiful smile and is beloved by everyone. Then Naka accidentally discovers that Umi is, in fact, a boy--he fell into the gig accidentally, and has stuck with it because it's lucrative. Now he exerts his influence as Umi to forward Naka's modeling career, but along the way, may be developing more...interesting feelings for her.

This is a pretty typical manga, with silly situations abounding and indistinguishable characters (except for Naka). The Japanese seem much more comfortable with casual cartoon violence towards women from their supposed love interests than Americans do, which makes me think I probably won't read any more in this series. I'm not interested in bad boys (even if they dress as girls) if their form of badness involves smacking girls around and having the girls fall in love with them anyway. Ick.

Nosatsu Junkie was one of the first manga I read in its entirety back when I was in high school. Because of this, I knew that I’d be going into this read with fond memories attached to the story.

Even with that, I genuinely enjoyed rereading this manga. While I’ve never been a model myself – nor do I ever expect to be – I found it interesting to read about young models learning to balance their careers with their schooling.

This is a fun read, though I don’t know how realistic it is. I highly doubt that many people would succeed at or even try to keep the secret that Umi does in the real world. Also, in this day and age, I doubt that it’s something that many people would need to do. The world is more accepting of things now than they were even 10 years ago. Without going into spoilers, I think it’s possible for someone to model the way Umi does in this story without having to keep the same kind of secret.

Full series review here: https://phantomofthelibrarycom.wordpr...

This manga comedy is volume 2 and continues the story of Naka and Umi as superfashion models. Naka keeps Umi’s secret he is really a guy posing as a girl and Naka keeps getting Umi photo shoots. Annoying photographer, Tsutsumi will be photographing Naka in the U S. Both Umi and Tsutsumi fight to control Naka arguing constantly. This is a light, fast read with many silly goings on. Graphic Novel

this manga is just too adorable. its about a girl named naka who looks extremely scary when she smiles or gets nervous. Umi is actually a boy, but ended up as a girl model and naka finds out. Because she finds out his secret she kinda gets stuck with him as modeling and along the way they begin to have feelings for each other (as the book goes on) and she starts learning how to be a good model... still a little crazy though absolutely love this manga though it always makes me laugh!!

A typical shojo comedy involving models and cross-dressing (and how I love that that is typical of shojo manga) -- in the end, I'm not sure this is great, and I need to read volumes 2-3 to see if it develops anything that makes it better. Fun, but not innovative, and it does feel a bit one note after a while.

I really like this series it is cute. This is about a girl that is really cute and she is going to be a model. But when she get nervous her face screws up. She meets another model that she thinks is a girl but is actually a boy in disguise. She keeps his secret and he helps her loosen up her face. This had me cracking up the faces she makes.

TOTALLY LOVE IT!!!trying to find a complete set of the series from the same publisher....heard that Tokyopop droped it n i really really want the books.can anyone tell me of a publisher tat is contonuing the series???

Male lead crossdress for a modelling job and FL has a scary face, what's not to love.
Rereading this as an adult really makes a difference.
When i was younger, it was quite relatable.
As you get older, you'll see them all as high strung kids.
Barely any plot and they make decisions rashly.

When I was first exposed to this manga it was on an online comic website when I was in middle school. I have finally found them in the printed form and am so happy that I did. This series is so silly and it just brings back good memories.

I remember loving this series when I read it almost a decade ago. Now it's sort of... cringy. x.x

Loved it!

cute! modeling.

Finished reading this entire series. I enjoyed the end (a happy ending!) but I have to say I was bored with the supporting character storylines and would have preferred more of the main 2.

♥

vol. 1-3

I did read this until end chapter....so notonly vol.1.

There's not much to say about it -- it exists and it's neither awful nor good. It's another girl-discovers-other-girl-is-actually-a-crossdressing-guy shojo, with the guy crossdressing for career purposes. Very standard. The one quirk it has is that Naka, an aspiring model, has a terrible smile and can't get work because of it. But that gets old very fast; why would her agency keep her except to laugh at her? Seriously, they throw her a 100 rejections party.

It's bland, so I wouldn't recommend it, but if you're curious, it's not like it's bad. Just forgettable.