Mimi's manga / #rape(15)

Now that I read this prologue, I definitely recommend reading the first book first even though this comes before it in the story. Having read the first book put in so much context that having all that backstory and foreshadowing made me feel even more for everything that happened in this backstory. ... You ever just want to scream because you feel so emotionally attached to some fucking fictional characters? A part of me feels like I should have read this first before getting into Itou-san because it would have made it easier to read through kid!Itou and kid!Kyosuke's abuse. BUT the 1st book feels like an easier read compared to this that I think reading this in order of release gets you more invested in these characters. Like, by now, I found myself really emotional about the both of them... I wanted to die. What got me the most was reading through Kyosuke as a baby-baby, 5 YEARS OLD, having to go through what happened. It really reminded me of chapter 4 of Ore, Higaisha and, um... Yeah. I really just want to scream right now. Sorry, this one was a lot shorter than my feelings on the 1st book. Everything I felt there I still felt here.

I hyped myself up too high with this one, lads. I don't regret reading this, I just went into this wanting more... tragedy. More angst, more hurt to balance the comfort. And the comfort wasn't that strong either but was more present than the hurt. I think the main characters are fine, them as a couple are cute, I love re-encounters, and the story was interesting to me. However, doing the timeskip thing where the first 3 chapters are their senior year and the last 3 (+ extra, so 4) is them meeting up again after a couple of years I felt made both halves feel rushed. There's also the weird way they do scene cutting that didn't feel smooth, so it was really weird to follow like an odd video editing cut back and fourth. I really wanted to see more communication between Koru and Shiraki during those 3 days. I wanted more slow, quiet moments that would've made the sex scene in chapter 3 worth it. Before, you only really saw Shiraki grow a fondness for Kuro, who was in a "he's my friend, I want to protect him" kind of mode. When the first kiss happened, I was hoping for them to talk after that, but instead, it did a cut away. I felt the same way in the second half when Shiraki confessed because now we know that Kuro still had feelings but was scared to pursue that. And when we do get a perfect "pause and talk" moment, they cut away again to a flashback. We eventually got to sit the fuck down and talk through some stuff but even that I felt like it could've been delved deeper, but I was happy we got it. I did leave this liking this couple. I left this liking this book. I felt myself about to cry during chapters 6 and the extra. But I think I went into this hoping for something like CUT and then being let down because it was close to being as emotional as CUT was.

Update: Dropping the series as a whole but I did read all of this 2 vol combo. I also don't know the date I read this other than it being 2016 but I wrote as little of what I could remember down for it in 2023. So this is old but I don't really want to update it because I don't want to reread this shit book. Maybe it's because I'm 20, maybe it's because I'm not 15 years old anymore, maybe I'm not much more aware of how horrible everything in this book is, but the way how this relationship started bothered me to hell and back. The fact that Nemu just took the harassment (then rape) that Maya was forcing on him just angered me so much. Only the last 7 was actually something good. But throughout the book I was very disgusted by the "rape and blackmail is ok because they love you" narrative this game me.