Love Triangle in the Adventure of Dai
Or love pentagon? Feelings from a shojo lover. Spoilers ahead from every post on.
The Dai Adventure manga series has been around in my house as early as I’ve had memory as a kid, due to having older siblings who are manga nerds. I remember flipping through scattered volumes before I learned to read. I never actually completed the entire series. Later on, when my family uprooted our house and moved across the globe, all of our manga collections stayed behind, and I never thought of the series again.
Fast forward 20+ years, I am now a working adult and a shojo reader. One day, one of the manga images featuring Dai as a baby popped into my mind for no apparent reason. At that time, the only things I remembered about the series were: the title, all five characters in the main cast, and the characters named Popp and Maam had some kind of a relationship going on. Since I never actually read the whole series, I decided to revisit the series.
So I did, and the series blew me away. I found myself coming back to it at least two more times right after initially reading it from beginning to end.
I’m more of a shojo manga fan than a shonen one, as I don’t personally care for fights or battles, and I also happen to not be a male teenager. In order for a manga to be memorable, for me it usually comes down to a combination of the following: an interesting world, charismatic characters, character relationships, and character growth.
Dai Adventure, a shonen manga published in the shonen magazine Jump, captured my shojo heart with its seemingly cliche love triangle involving three of its main characters. While the ending never made it clear which pair ultimately ended up together, I love Maam x Hyunckel and rank them as one of my favorite pairs of all time in a manga/anime series.
Some people think the trio’s relationship drama is over the top, cheesy, akin to a soap opera, or a combination of; regardless, it is the reason I keep coming back to rereading the series🙃
To recap, the “trio” here refers to Maam, Popp, and Hyunckel. Here is my interpretation of the relationships of the involved:
Aimi → Hyunckel → Maam ← Popp ← Merle
The ending leaves the relationships as open ended. Here are my guesses as to why the authors did so:
- Choosing one pair will anger the fans of the other pair.
- One author favors one pair and the other favors the other pair, and they couldn’t agree.
- It’s part of the narrative.
In posts to follow, I’m interested in exploring the last point.
In short, I think that this series is ultimately about Popp’s growth, and the love triangle exists to highlight that. Since love doesn’t come easily, Popp doesn’t necessarily get Maam at the end of the series just because he has grown tremendously. Thus, readers aren’t shown determined pairings.