Ive 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 Queens 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 todays review Dengeki Daisy. Ill admit that I was a bit hesitant going into this for reasons Ill get into in a minute but I ultimately ended up loving it to the point where I can say its 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 schools 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 thats 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 agegap manga. Age gaps are a subset of the romance genre that is highly divisive for very understandable reasons. Ill 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 seriess 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 didnt particularly enjoy. Much of this manga centers around the two leads so its fortunate that they are both very interesting to follow. Teru is a very sweet and upbeat person who cares very deeply but she also doesnt want people to know when shes hurting and pretends that shes 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 brothers previous friends from his job. Kurosaki himself starts off as quite a bit of an ass to the point where I wouldnt 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 its 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 theres quite a bit more to her. She is lonely and desperately wants to be loved which often leads to her dating guys who arent the best for her. She befriends Teru and her friends which helps her find the support she needs. I also enjoy Soichirous previous coworkers/Kurosakis 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 its 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 crimethriller aspect of this series kicks in. Im not entirely sure how accurate this seriess portrayal of hacking is since Im not super familiar with real life hacking but its something I dont see in shojo manga super often and I think it really helps set it apart. Theres quite a few tense moments involving hacking and Kurosaki using his abilities and Ill admit that the crime aspect wasnt something I was expecting coming in but it was something I highly enjoyed reading. We quickly learn that Daisy is not just Terus 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 Kurosakis 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 Motomis art reflects this. The art improves remarkably as it goes on with the characters hair and faces especially seeing improvement. Its not my favorite art style but it more than does its 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. Im more than excited to dive into Queens Quality in the future to see if it will rival this for me as QQ Sweeper already shows that it has the potential to.