Mimi's manga / #questioning character(5)

I actually want to fucking scream. I've never... Related... To a character so hard like I did with Soushi when reading this. Reading about him talk about how being into metal music and his intimidating look prevented people from talking to him hit me like a train. Seeing him dealing, growing, and how his social anxiety and possible GAD kept him from conveying important shit or even living a goddamn life felt like I'd been thrown off a fucking plane. The way Soushi tried to speak up made me cry more than once because I know... I know how that feels when you're on the verge of passing out because there's so much weight on you to speak. Coming from someone with AVPD and BPD and struggling with that constant tug-of-war of wanting to speak, wanting people to just not hate or be disappointed you, and wanting to keep the people who are nice to you close while so much of you is scared to do or say anything all at the same time fucking sucks. I've been that person starting from 5th grade that had a wore that depressing look, that intimidating-ish face just so people wouldn't come up to me. Hell, I still do! The moment I had with this book... Anyway, the story was great, I had an existential crisis, and I'm looking to buy this physically. Update 10/20/25: WHO KNEW THAT SUBLIME WOULD BE THAT BITCH! Yes, I bought this in Japanese because I loved this so much that I needed it on my shelf. Yes, I bought this in English TWICE because I needed this on my shelf but I wanted to read it the night of release and ebooks are cheaper.

This was such a 3 or a 3.5 star for me overall but vols 1 & 2 are straight 4 stars. Mainly because I don't think I liked any of the characters except the main two and even then Mashita was riding a fine line for me. Yoshinori was definitely the only character ever, everyone else was either ok or "please stop talking". I've also noticed that this took forever for me to get through even after all the vols came out because of vol 3. The story itself was just ok, nothing gripped me but I also didn't want to drop this either. But when Yoshinori's friend was a part of the story and the vacation stuff stared kicking off, I just didn't feel like reading it. Probably the worst part of all 4 vols for me. Afterward, it just became fine again. Overall this was just fine.

Update: This is just for the 1st vol, not my complete thoughts for the whole series. I plan on rereading it once I give a damn about reading vol 3 because I am Nagisa'd-out. Honestly, I really did expect a bit more from this one. I've been on a Nagisa Furuya binge right now and I've noticed they really like slow burn high school romance love confessions (help! we get it! ohmygod!). I also feel like the story in this vol felt empty? Maybe because I kept see this get hyped to hell and back about an emotional slow burn romance that I thought I would get... emotional. Although, because we have 3 vols, having love confession be quick and out of the way so we can get more time with slowly grouping together I'm much more in favor of. Most of Nagisa's other stuff ended right when they started dating so we don't often get enough time to see them be together. I like that we're getting more time with these two as a couple with this one. I'm interested in continuing this.

Update: ... Who knew that the 1st read was gonna be the HEIGHT of my Nagisa Furuya marathon. Loved this, liked My Summer of You... but it was all downhill from there. This was probably the best I've seen of Nagisa. It was also the 1st story I've read from her and I kinda felt everything else in this binge I'm putting myself through has gone down from here just a bit. The sad part is, going through her work book after book and not jotting down anything melted my brain and I don't 100% remember all that happened. I do remember liking this more than anything else I've read from her. It is a book I'm going to reread so I can update this. I would've actually like to've seen two lions get a second book because I feel like this couple was a bit more interesting than the one from my summer of you.

Start: 07/23/25 || Ended: 06/20/25 I've been lied to. People/Manga Updates telling me this was heartwarming can kick rocks. I was already hesitant because of the cheating protag tag and I do not ever side with a cheater UNLESS the person they're currently with is a piece of shit. Instead they gave me one of the most loving, charring, supportive girlfriends I've ever seen???? I think the justification comes when Mai explains, a little confusingly, might I add, that she had a feeling that he might not be fully in love with her while also maybe be into men and that she had hoped to change that part of him. Yes, this is biphobic and fucked up but I do think because of the type of character Mai is and how supportive and charring she, if this was a poly romance she would've become more open to him being bi. But I also think that's only half of it. With her already feeling like Takafumi wasn't fully here even though he was trying and she was already falling out of love with him even though she was trying made her realized that their relationship wasn't going anywhere. So even if this was a poly romance they would've broken up anyway. Shrug emoji, I guess. I did not like that she was the ONLY person who apologize at the end. I didn't really give a shit about Miharu. I never found myself caring about Takafumi also so their chemistry was nonexistent to me. It was not the heartwarming emotional time I wanted to have.