Temporary (or permanent) Break?

Hi all. It looks like I will be taking a long break from posting. Not sure if it will be forever or not. But don’t worry, it’s all for good things. 

I’m engaged!!!! And we just bought a house!!!!! And life is busy and wonderful. 

I’m still reading a lot of manga and watching a little bit of anime (can’t find many series I’m interested in without subscribing to a million services - blurg) but just don’t have time to post about them. 

As you probably noticed, the last time I came back from a break I really shortened the length of posting. Even that would be too much right now but I also really missed the longer form postings I used to do. So this is a break for now or forever. Not sure yet. Sorry and miss you all already. 

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Even Though We're Adults vol. 7 (manga review)

    Even Though We're Adults vol. 7 (Seven Seas) by Takako Shimura really moves the relationship between Ayano and Akari along. I won't give too many spoilers, but it's a volume filled with them getting to know each other and making commitments. It's nice to see after the previous 6 volumes that this relationship is going to take another step. Not that I'm complaining about the pace. I love that it's been a messy journey so far, it's one of the things that make Takako Shimura's manga so compelling.

    The volume focuses on Akari and Ayano taking next steps, but it also continues the story of the middle school student and her problems with her friends. Things escalate to the point where she stops going to school. Along the way, the parents also find out about Ayano's affair and divorce and she ultimately is forced to come out to all the parents and as a result decides to move on to a new school for the upcoming school year.

    The volume concludes with Ayano and Akari getting to know each other better and making a big decision. No spoilers on that!

    The art continues to be consistent with Takako Shimura's other series. The faces have a generally more "cartoony" than realistic look and there isn't a lot of detail in the panels. Sometimes there will be a background shot that makes me think an assistant did it, but who knows. It's the loose art she's known for, neither good nor bad, but just what she does. If you liked it (or didn't mind it) in her other series, then you'll have no trouble here. Not my favorite art by far, but passable. 

    I'm glad to see this series continuing to go places and explore this adult relationship. It's nice to get some josei yuri from one of the best mangaka's out there. 

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

My Cute Little Kitten volume 2 (manga review)

     My Cute Little Kitten volume 2 can best be summed up as relatively trashy but also at least attempting some level of introspection into the characters. Yuna is proving to be quite complex in her head and volume 2 spends it's time with her spinning over a variety of things, however, some progress is made by the end of the volume. Volume 3 isn't out yet, but volume 2 definitely isn't the end of the series either.

    It's very fast paced which doesn't give as much time to understand the somewhat drastic swings in mood of Yuna. It's relatively light overall. I wouldn't even call the internal drama really dramatic. The series has so much light comedy, sex, and fast pacing that it doesn't actually feel dramatic even when it should. 

    I'm not a huge fan of Milk Morinaga's art, but it's consistent across all their works. Something about the faces aren't quite right to me, but whatever. There's also lots of sex, I mean LOTS of sex. And just about everything is depicted (with just the most sensitive parts left ambiguous). This is not for children by any means.  

    Are you a fan of Milk Morinaga? If so, then you're probably already reading this series. If not, this wouldn't be my first recommendation into their oeuvre. My personal favorite (and I'm sure I'm in the minority) is their work "Secret of the Princess" but there are others considered more classics too if you want to start somewhere. However, if you're new to yuri or looking for high quality yuri, Milk Morinaga isn't probably the place to start. And certainly My Cute Little Kitten isn't either.

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Kageki Shojo!! Vol 9 and 10 (manga review)

    The girls are entering their second year at Kouka Theater School. These were two of the better volumes so far for a few reasons:

    1) We got to see how they've grown and how they process now being senpai to the incoming students of the 101st class.

    2) We get a bigger focus on Ai.

    So if you've been reading my reviews of Kageki Shojo!! so far, you may remember that I really liked the prelude volume "Curtain Rises" with its heavy focus on Ai and have been a bit underwhelmed by the main series with its focus on Sarasa. While Sarasa is an interesting and engaging character, I still feel she functions best as the friendly foil to push Ai along. With volume 9 and particularly 10, we get a bigger does of Ai and her interiority which I find more compelling, complex, and interesting.   

    Where much of where Sarasa's writing and her development occurs externally, Ai is a very internal character and so when the writing focuses on her, it feels like the story has more depth with both the outside objective world and what is going on inside.

    We also get to see some interesting growth and choices by Ai that signal how she is slowly healing in this new environment, away from her mother, and under Sarasa's influence. Volume 10 is a somewhat joyful volume for Ai, not that it's outwardly a festive volume, but mostly that the growth we see is moving Ai into a more complete and whole and ultimately well-adjusted person.

    There is also some time getting to see how the girls' acting class for second year will be different than the first year and how that will push all of them in some new directions. This is also intimately tied into one of the areas that Ai shows growth (the other main one being her attempts at being a good senpai and therefor coming out of her shell a bit). There is definitely a sense in these volumes of a trajectory for the series. Whether it will end with their initial auditions for the Kouka troupe, or maybe follow them beyond, is uncertain, but we do get the sense that this series and these characters are going somewhere and changing along the way.

    I hope the heavier dose of Ai continues through the rest of the series.

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Like a Butterfly volume 4 (manga review)

    Like a Butterfly vol. 4 by Suu Morishita (the duo behind Shortcake Cake) finally gets this story going. The firth three volumes had me a bit annoyed because I really felt like Suiren's character wasn't realistic. She was the perfect beauty who was too shy to talk other than answering questions in class, etc... I didn't so much mind Taichi's characters reservation around her since he did seem to talk to others and was just shy around her. 

    Thankfully, in this volume, they get past all the super awkward avoiding each other stuff and both put in effort to communicate with each other, spend time with each other, and actually move the burgeoning relationship along. That gives me hope that this series will spend some serious time with them as a couple and not linger on the will-they-won't-they (which has it's place, for sure) given that I didn't love the way her shyness was presented. 

    As always, the art is well done, and has plenty of screen tones and sparkles. For the most-part we don't get much in the way of detailed backgrounds and so the panel layouts are pretty simple, often headshots or shoulder up. But when they're doing realism, it's got a nice look to it. Certainly not my favorite manga art, but better than average.

    I'll definitely keep reading this series, especially now that it's actually going somewhere.

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Sing "Yesterday" For Me (anime review)

    I definitely have mixed feelings about the anime "Sing 'YESTERDAY' For Me." Parts of it felt very true and realistic, but other parts were a bit problematic to me.

    There are three primary characters, two women and a man (that right there tells you most of what you need to know about why I don't love this series). The man, Rikuo, is a college graduate working multiple part-time jobs, and slowly working towards his true passion: photography. He has pined for Shinako, his college-crush, for years. They reconnect when she takes a job as a school teacher in the same area. At the same time, high-school drop out (?) Haru, who is maybe about 16 or 17 (?) starts hanging out with him at his job and coming around to see him. (her age relative to his - mid twenties? - is the other main reason I have issue with this series).

    It's not quite a love triangle, in that Rikuo is pretty clearly in love with Shinako, Haru is pretty clearly infatuated with Rikuo, and Shinako, while ultimately trying to date Rikuo, is still stuck on her dead boyfriend whose younger brother is still in her life and very explicitly wants to be with Shinako. So it's a tangled mess that would have sat better with me had Haru and the dead boyfriend's brother been the same age as Rikuo and Shinako. If they were all teens or all adults, then this would have had the change to be an interesting look at hearts and grief and growing up, and finding yourself. But that age gap was distracting for me. Possibly more for me than it would have for others given the prevalence (at least in anime/manga or high-school girls and older guys). But no matter the norms, I really wish they were older.

    Anyway, what I liked about the series was the inner complexity of Shinako, being torn between forever mourning her dead boyfriend and earnestly trying to move on with life. I also really liked watching how Rikuo took steps to better himself and his career throughout the series. Those two felt reasonably fleshed out. And (SPOILER) if they had stayed together, I wouldn't have been disappointed at all. In fact, I could have seen Rikuo having a conversation with Haru about how she needed to carve her own path into adulthood (similar to the one towards the end of After the Rain) that would have shown some real emotional maturity in Rikuo (and the series creator). But instead (SPOILER) Shinako goes to the brother and Rikuo can't bear to be without Haru and that just doesn't sit right for me. It's too neat a bow, it's not messy enough, it just didn't feel complex, it felt expected. And that was a disappointment.

    In some ways, After the Rain, is an interesting comparison piece exploring how an adult can handle a teen's feelings sensitively while also being confused themselves in what to do. That series didn't take the easy way out to find some acceptable way for that May/December pairing to actually happen. But Sing "Yesterday" for Me, did take the easy way out. Too bad. 

    The other series that kept coming to mind was Honey and Clover, one of the greatest Josei series of all time. In that series, they are college students or older, so the age issues are really not much of a problem, but they are going through many of the same feelings: grief, self-discovery, passion, etc... and it's handled with messiness but also ultimate growth and some resolution for each. I'm not sure where the growth was for either Rikuo or Shinako in any area other than Rikuo's career. They both ultimately chose to be with immature teens with a lot of their own figuring out to do and (as a parent) I worry that these teens being with these older folks will ultimately prevent the teens from doing the self-discovery and growth that they could otherwise be doing at these ages.

    I wouldn't recommend this show, it wasn't a bad watch, nothing overtly problematic, but not an emotional reward either. 

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.

Cocoon Entwined vol. 5 review (manga)

    Honestly, I still barely know what's going on in this series. Cocoon Entwined vol. 5 continues to follow the girls of Hoshimiya Girls' Academy. But thankfully, the back text of the volume helped me confirm what I thought was going on.

     I think the largest part of that is how hard it is for me to understand is identifying which girl is which in each panel. It could be that I genuinely struggle with peoples faces in real life (which I really do), or maybe it's that I've got that horrible white person disease of thinking everyone from any other background looks the same (I really hope I don't), or maybe the art is just that indistinct at times. Thankfully, there are a few characters I can differentiate and some of them are lead characters which helps. 

    It also doesn't help that the volumes are published so far apart in time and I usually only read a bit of the prior one to help get situated. A full read through the entire series from front to back is definitely warranted once it's complete, just to see if it hangs together a bit neater and clearer that way.

    Hoshimiya (same name as the school) has mysteriously disappeared (run away in an earlier volume). The school is left somewhat in a tither over it. Ayane continues to be manipulative. And they are all preparing for a final dance. Hana Saeki continues her half-hearted dalience with Ayane and agrees to go to the dance with her, but in the background Youko hasn't given up on Hoshimiya yet and asks a teacher to get a letter to her. And yet we know it's Saeki and Hoshimiya that are linked, even though they are apart. So why is Saeki dancing with Ayane? What is Youko really hoping to accomplish writing to Hoshimiya?

    It's a tangled web of feelings at Hoshimiya Girls' Academy where they are all bound by some really creepy traditions and maybe something more disturbing. I read it mostly because of Saeki and Youko (whose faces I can almost always tell apart from the others) and to find out more about what created the independent streak in Hoshimiya. I'm also a little bit intrigued by the supernatural element and the art continues to be interesting and unique, even if a bit tough to decipher. I can't say it's a great, or even very good series, but it's different. So I'll be waiting for volume 6

    

✩🚺

Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

All comments are moderated by a real person who only checks them once a day. Therefore, comments may take a while before they show up. Thanks for understanding. It's how we keep this a community of lovingkindness.