‘Shortcake Cake’ Is A Sweet Shoujo Manga Surprise

I haven’t read any shoujo manga in a really long time, partly because I’ve been waxing poetically about Josei manga. I read the preview of Shortcake Cake on the Viz website a spell ago and thought I’d give it a go. Authors and creators of past faves titles like Hibi Chouchou, Suu Morishita is a two person team of Makiro who handles the story, and Nachiyan who handles the illustration whose latest body of work was picked up by Shojo Beat for an English translation. I got super hyped and bought a physical copy and nearly waited at the mailbox for the mail carrier to come so I could take it with me to campus to read in between classes. After reading this volume, I was sure that this was the series to end my unintentional shoujo fast. Starting high school means Ten Serizawa has a two-hour commute through the mountains to school every day, and she bears it well in stride. This means that she can’t be around to socialize with the girls her age or hang out with a friend or anything fun that teen girls get to do together, because she’s always having to be mindful about her commute home. At first, this doesn’t bother her but a chance trip with some girls to gab and gossip at the local cafe and laughing over a slice of cake she realizes what she’s been missing out on and she linger on the big decision. A chance encounter visiting the boarding house that her best friend Ageha lives at sparks a big decision to cut her commute from two hours to seven minutes, yet it opens up the possibil…