New Series "Seiten Kickoff" ("Sunny Day Kickoff") by Kota

It's been a long time since we debuted a new series. The second chapter of this series caught my attention with its bold color pages. I went back to find the first chapter and was delighted even more. This is a sports shoujo where the female protagonist actually does the sport, which is unusual to find these days. Most of the shoujos involving sports now are about girls having relationships with sporty boys.

Kota is newish to me. I've read a couple of Kota's oneshots (not scanlated yet, but we will), and they deal with challenging gender stereotypes and roles. This series is no different. The sport in this series is soccer. American are gonna think it's weird that soccer is characterized as manly, since in the US soccer is okay for boys until a certain age, but ultimately soccer ends up being dominated by females after elementary school. If I'm not mistaken, the US is unique in this view of soccer. Just as an aside, sporty boys in the US usually go on to play American Football, Basketball, or Baseball in Junior High rather than continuing in soccer. I imagine girls continue on in soccer because it's one of the few team sports they can be in.

As usual, I posted my thoughts on this chapter on Lovely Manga Blog (LINK). However, as long as you don't spoil, please leave some feedback on the series in the comments here.

"Seiten Kickoff" runs in The Hana to Yume which is quarterly publication, in other words new chapters come out every three months. I have the second chapter, which we are currently working on. After that, the next chapter won't come out in Japan until the end of October.

And now, onto the release!
Links to "Seiten Kickoff": (PDF) (Zip)

Next up will be "Kanojo ni Naru Hi -- Another" Chapter 11 and "Sabaku no Harem" Chapter 9.