I've only started to get much deeper into the shojo community, and they have been giving me a ton of recommendations for series I likely would have never heard of otherwise. One of the series I see recommended the most is Queen's Quality by Kyousuke Motomi, whose prequel QQ Sweeper I have read and highly enjoyed. I have also seen a few people recommend the subject of today's review, Dengeki Daisy. I'll admit that I was a bit hesitant going into this for reasons I'll get into in a minute, but I ultimately ended up loving it to the point where I can say it's one of my favorite shojos.

Teru Kurebayashi is an impoverished high school student whose genius programmer older brother Soichirou passed away from illness. Before he died, he gave her a cellphone with the email address of "Daisy", who he tells her will always listen to her and protect her and who she can freely confide in. In the present day, Teru is now super close to Daisy and communicates with him every day, seeing him as her hero. One day, she ends up breaking a window in her school, which worries her as she is broke. When she goes back to her classroom, she confesses her misdeed to Tasuku Kurosaki, the school's brash and crude janitor. He makes her become his servant of sorts to pay off her debt, and the two have a rather antagonistic relationship. Little does Teru know, this rude man is actually her hero Daisy, which is also his codename as an infamous hacker. And that's just the tip of the iceberg in regards to the secrets her brother has left behind.

Before I can gush about this series, I have to get the elephant in the room out of the way: This is an age-gap manga. Age gaps are a subset of the romance genre that is highly divisive for very understandable reasons. I'll admit that there is fair number of age gap series I actually enjoy, although I do have my limits (If one party raised the other it is a hard pass from me). With Dengeki Daisy, I feel like the series's positive aspects outweigh this stipulation, although I do feel they could have just easily set it in college instead of high school and very little would change. It would also eliminate some of the more uncomfy jokes/moments that I didn't particularly enjoy.

Much of this manga centers around the two leads, so it's fortunate that they are both very interesting to follow. Teru is a very sweet and upbeat person who cares very deeply, but she also doesn't want people to know when she's hurting and pretends that she's fine. She starts to open up more about her feelings as the series goes on and gets a bigger support network (Expanding from just Daisy and her friends at school to include her brother's previous friends from his job). Kurosaki himself starts off as quite a bit of an ass, to the point where I wouldn't blame people for being turned off by the series. However, it quickly becomes clear that his behavior largely stems from guilt over various actions in his past, as well as a desire to prevent Teru from learning that he is Daisy. As he and Teru grow closer, he genuinely starts treating her better and their relationship becomes less antagonistic and more sweet. They have their fair share of sweet romantic moments throughout the whole series, although it's not quite as prominent compared to several other shojo romances.

DD has a great supporting cast as well. My favorite is probably student council president Rena Ichinose, who starts off as a somewhat classist mean girl, but it quickly becomes clear there's quite a bit more to her. She is lonely and desperately wants to be loved, which often leads to her dating guys who aren't the best for her. She befriends Teru and her friends, which helps her find the support she needs. I also enjoy Soichirou's previous coworkers/Kurosaki's current friends; Masuda, Riko, and Ando. The moments where they just get to hang out with our two leads are honestly some of my favorite moments in the series, and it's clear that despite the occasional bickering they clearly consider themselves as close as family.

"Dengeki" roughly translates to "electric", which in the case of this series refers to hacking, where the crime-thriller aspect of this series kicks in. I'm not entirely sure how accurate this series's portrayal of hacking is since I'm not super familiar with real life hacking, but it's something I don't see in shojo manga super often and I think it really helps set it apart. There's quite a few tense moments involving hacking and Kurosaki using his abilities, and I'll admit that the crime aspect wasn't something I was expecting coming in but it was something I highly enjoyed reading. We quickly learn that Daisy is not just Teru's protector but also his alias as a highly feared hacker, and he was not exactly the best person prior to meeting Soichirou. Atoning for past actions and forgiveness are prominent aspects of this series. While Kurosaki's friends clearly value him, and while it largely relevant to Kurosaki reckoning with his past actions there are some other times it pops up as well, although it is very spoilery.

This smack dab in between Beast Master and QQ Sweeper, and the quality of Kyousuke Motomi's art reflects this. The art improves remarkably as it goes on, with the character's hair and faces especially seeing improvement. It's not my favorite art style but it more than does it's job.

Dengeki Daisy is a unique series with an interesting and eventful overarching story and a great cast of characters. The whole age gap thing makes me reluctant to heartily recommend it (Especially since I feel it could have easily been avoided). If you can look past that though, it is more than worth it. I'm more than excited to dive into Queen's Quality in the future, to see if it will rival this for me, as QQ Sweeper already shows that it has the potential to.