You Love Me-kun

An upscaled scan of the Mushi Comics volume cover

**You Love Me-kun** (ﾕｰ・ﾗﾌﾞ・ﾐｰ君) is a gag manga by Fujio Akatsuka and Fujio Pro. It was a year-long serial that ran in the Monthly Heibon magazine from July 1965 to August 1966.

## Overview

Santaro is a young man who's obsessed with cute girls and winning them over. He sets his sights on a girl named Chiyoko, and aims to be her boyfriend by driving away whatever competition he has.

The series is an episodic love comedy, with the situations of Santaro and Chiyoko being played with depending on the plot. Eventually, a rival known as Mr. Kyouyou enters the picture as a rival for Santaro, shaking up the formula some.

When looking back on the series for its first reprint in 1968, Akatsuka remarked that it was the only manga he had done (at the time) exclusively for a teenage and seinen demographic. As he had spent all his youth on trying to become a manga-ka, he relied on his memories on the simplistic dreams that teenagers would have held in such times.

## Characters

### Santaro

The protagonist, whose exact age is not stated though it may be figured he's in his later high school years. He abides by his idea of sending one love letter a day, and wants to be the only guy for Chiyoko (or whatever other girl that may catch his interest). Love never leaves his head.

Santaro's design is an evolution of the Mr. Ken character, though his hair is now inked in black.

### Chiyoko

The cool, seemingly distant popular girl that is the subject of Santaro and other guys' affection.

As time goes on, it is shown that she's actually a rather innocent, average type of teenage girl, though she is not opposed to pulling her own trickery to get out of situations (such as pretending to be pregnant with a watermelon up her dress, to ward off another guy).

### Nanako

Santaro's younger sister, who strongly resembles Jajako-chan (if not simply being her under another different name and cheek decorations for a different role). She helps in sending the love letters and his schemes to win over Chiyoko.

Early on in the series, Nanako is pursued by a young boy that tags along with her, but this character is phased out as the formula changes. Nanako and the nameless boy are also shown with other friends in the first frontispiece, but the other children never show up in the series and may have merely been for decoration.

### Mr. Kyouyou

lit: "Mr. Culture"

A pompous college student who lives in the neighborhood. He resembles a younger Iyami from Osomatsu-kun, and also loves Chiyoko which makes him the perfect rival for our protagonist. He is in fact an imported character from Akatsuka's discontinued Radical 7th Years, although his roommates do not tag along.

No matter how Kyouyou may try to best Santaro, he will be foiled or both men will be made to look like fools.

## Serialization

*Because of the difference in both reprint editions drastically re-ordering several chapters, what follows below is an attempt to reconstruct the original intended order of the series:*

1. **Love Letter** (ラブ・レター, July 1965)
2. **Aim for a Younger Brother** (弟をねらえ, August 1965)
3. **Lovers Only** (おしかけ恋人, September 1965)
4. **Aim for Chiyoko** (千代子をねらえ, October 1965)
5. **The Cutie at the Greengrocer** (八百屋のかわい子ちゃん, November 1965)
6. **I'm Broke!** (絶交だわさっ!, December 1965)
7. **One Love per Day** (一日一ラブ, January 1966)
8. **A Woman is Too Strong** (女は強すぎる, February 1966)
9. **It's a Misunderstanding!** (誤解だよっ!, March 1966)
10. **Mr. Kyouyou** (ミスター教養, April 1966)
11. **Hiking!?** (バイキング！？, May 1966)
12. **The Awakening of Spring** (春のめざめ, June 1966)
13. **Tickle the Maternal Instincts** (母性本能をくすぐれ, July 1966)
14. **Bikini and Watermelon** (ビキニとスイカ, August 1966)

## Reprints

* Mushi Pro: 1 volume (1968). Contains all chapters of "Jinx-kun", 3 chapters of "Junior High 1st Year Kosuke", the COM version of "Rakugaki", "Keiji and Goemon", and "The Monkey's Foolish Guardman".
* Futabasha: "Power Comics", 1 volume (1975). Contains all chapters of "Jinx-kun", "Keiji and Goemon", and "The Monkey's Foolish Guardman".
* Shogakukan: "Fujio Akatsuka Complete Works" DVD-ROM set (2002), digitized version of the Futabasha reprint.

There is no current digital or physical reprint of the series, and the chapters between both editions are subject to being ordered much differently (eg: in the Mushi reprint, "A Woman is Too Strong" is the ending. In the Futabasha reprint, "Aim for Chiyoko" is the ending and several other chapters are out of order).

The dialogue in chapters was originally hand-written, but became substituted with typed serifs in reprints; this is particularly noticeable in the Power Comics edition which also had attempted to update celebrity references in "One Love per Day" with Momoe Yamaguchi being a jarring inclusion; while she was definitely a well-known celebrity by 1975, this creates some confusion with readers that may wonder of the title's original publishing dates or what the intended dialogue was meant to be.

## External Links

* "You Love Me-kun" write-up at the Akatsuka Preservation Society (Japanese)- Lists the different reprint orders for the series.