APADFTMOM Day 27: Hadi Girl, and Directness In Romance

It’s been a hell of a week going over thirty years’ worth of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. To be honest I felt like taking a day off after that because we went in so hard on parts of that series, but I promised a post a day for the month of May. That’s actually not the worst idea for this challenge name. May 27th will be the day when we decided on a name, and that name is “A Post A Day For The Month Of May.” Let’s get right back into our regularly scheduled content with a nice short series. Today’s topic is Hadi Girl, a 30-chapter romance series by Akino Miyabi.






Hadi Girl is the story of a shy high school student named Sae Kagura who dreams of falling in love. One night while watching a romantic movie, Sae is visited by a fairy by the name of Love Angel Raburin No. 100 who makes a contract with her. Sae is given a bracelet, an egg, paper, and a mission: Complete the tasks as they appear on the paper in order to help nurture the egg. If all of the tasks are completed, the egg will hatch and Sae will be rewarded with the romance she seeks. However, if Sae fails even one task then the egg will die and she will be cursed to never find love. Sections of the bracelet will light up as Sae completes her task to help her monitor her progress, and her mission will be complete when the whole bracelet lights up. Sae is then given her first task to embrace a classmate within 24 hours, and her journey begins.




Sae’s character is that of the unapproachable cool beauty who does a very good job of hiding her contradicting personality. This is a very popular character archetype, especially recently thanks to this contradiction being taken to the extreme by Shouko Komi in Komi-san wa, Komyushou desu. Sae is a romantic at heart who has imagined being in love but has never imagined acting on those desires. To Sae, love is a fantasy and not something that could really happen, especially to her. She finds her tasks to be absurd impossibilities being requested of her but still puts all of her effort into completing them out of fear of being cursed to never experience love.




Hadi Girl is an interesting mix of fantasy and slice of life. The story is built with key supernatural elements at the beginning, but they serve more to start and guide the plot rather than to define it. Sae’s motivation stems from the egg at the beginning of the series, but it comes more from a selfish place as she concerns herself over what will happen if the egg dies as opposed to wanting to see the egg hatch. Over time, Sae begins to focus less on the egg and more on herself as her tasks begin reshaping her social life.




The plot structure of Hadi Girl is fairly straightforward with the beginning of the story focusing on Sae’s internal conflicts as she attempts to complete each of her challenges. As Sae begins gaining friends and spending more time with people, the narrative shifts from explicitly focusing on the tasks to focusing more on the interpersonal problems that begin appearing with Sae’s friends. These problems are nothing serious but pose large hurdles for Sae, who has never had to deal with these types of situations due to never really having many friends. Hadi Girl’s story transitions from bringing Sae out of her shell to showing her that the social life she wants is more difficult than she expected but is also very rewarding.




Even while Sae is focusing on her friends and love interest, she continues to receive tasks to complete in order to help the egg hatch. These tasks are what defines the series, and very early on it becomes apparent that the promised romance is not a miracle granted by the egg but the natural result of Sae’s actions. Sae very quickly develops a crush on one of her classmates and he becomes the focal point of her tasks. Initially this is just to complete the tasks but as time goes on Sae begins to find herself only wanting to share these experiences with him.




Directness in romance manga is a lot rarer than it seems. A lot of romance series are established on the grounds of flirtationships where the two romantic leads are stuck in a void where they have feelings for each other but are too afraid to act on them so they just hang out together and occasionally have somewhat intimate moments. This ends up giving the series horrible pacing as the bulk of the chapters are filler with the sporadic scene that feels like a development but is soon brushed aside for more filler. This also often leads to the appearances of powerful love rivals who have valid points in attempting to date one of the characters and showing the courage that the other character lacks.




Hadi Girl is a very direct series. The plot of Hadi Girl is built on directness by outright stating each romantic development as a goal with a time limit. The audience can rest assured that each goal will at least be attempted instead of beginning each chapter wondering if there will be any meaningful interaction between the romantic leads. Hadi Girl has a rapid pace that takes the time to make each milestone feel important by having the focus not being on whether Sae will accomplish it but on how she will. Hadi Girl is the story of Sae’s growing resolve as she finds out that love is not an instant bond like in the movies she enjoys but is a goal that requires hard work to reach and maintain.




That is not to say that there is no merit in series based on flirtationships; Watching two characters grow to be together of their own accord is is an entirely valid form of storytelling. Hadi Girl just separates itself from that and plants itself as a series for people who are fed up with that sort of structure. Hadi Girl is a series for people whose patience has been worn thin by long romance series with minimal development seemingly for the sake of making the series longer. At only 30 chapters, Hadi Girl is not that much of a time investment to enjoy. Each chapter builds on the last as Sae continues finding love and working to make it be the experience she always dreamed of.




Hadi Girl is a good short series that we may explore more after the month of May is over. Personally, I enjoy more direct romance series because they tend to explore the aspects of a relationship that flirtationship series never get to. In the end it’s all romance manga and romance manga will damage your mind more than porn ever could. Hadi Girl does not have a western release but we stan most fan translators.