Mimi's manga / #slice of life(112)

For the most part, very cute, very sweet, but I left this with a low 4 star feeling. 3.5 to be honest. I thought the pairing and the story was cute, I did find "thinking the handwriting belonged to a girl" a bit annoying. I wished Sumito's friends got to understand and accept Kokuma throw out the story. There could've been more emotional scenes of them together instead of 4-5 sex scenes that felt like it was more important than fleshing out a damn character. And then there's the ending(?). That ending could've been everything. It could've made up for the stupid amount of sex scenes that only felt like were in here to keep your attention. But to have it cut the way it did just to give us an extra with more sex pissed me off. I didn't even know if that was actually the ending because of how messed up the uploads are on here. I had to do a lot of googling to see if that really was the ending. But the art. Oh my god the art! It's pretty normal most of the time, but whenever there's a genuine heartfelt moment and/or someone smiles... I am blinded by the non-existing beams of light that I can see so vividly. The soft moments that you get from this author's art is the main and maybe the only reason I want to read more of their stuff. I've read 2 books so far and I feel that their lack of character development and plot are gonna annoying me and have me asking questions. But I also know that their art in general and the imagery of when someone is genuinely happy will stab me multiple times in the heart and I will thank them. So, yeah, I think This Wonderful Season With You did this story better..

Maybe it was because the last 5 books pissed me off to various degrees with the most recent one being ok at best... But oh my god, what happened to the storytelling chapter 2 onwards?! Chapter 1 was fine. I was fine with it doing the recap thing and it really got me interested in this couple and seeing how a very shy person who's gone years isolating themself to now dealing with being in a relationship and living with said person. And while I got that, chapter 2 gave me the worst idea of that tone this story was gonna have... and I was right. I've read a lot of BL with some of the stupidest plot points to use as a conflict in my lifetime, but I've nearly dropped this when they tried to make coming out to their boyfriend a problem AFTER the BOYFRIEND confessed FIRST?????? Why did they think that worrying about telling the guy who asked you out first that you're gay would be a valid or even funny bit to sit through? It only lasted that one chapter but it stuck with me, it was SO stupid that it set the tone for everything else after and immediately made a 3-star story. Chapters 3 and 4's "problems" were just as bad. I hate miscommunication but no communication is worst. I'm disappointed because I saw that the author wanted to write something cute and I can see that! But all of the "conflicts" felt like poor writing and it wasn't even the translation's fault this time. The only reason I didn't drop it was because I thought it would get better and then I realized I was on chapter 4 so I just said: fuck it let's get this over with.

...... hard. disappointing. sigh. I was gonna add more to this but that's really all my thoughts. I really didn't like how they depicted generalized anxiety and avoidant personality disorder in this. As someone with avpd and gad, it felt like they tried but knew only what they saw on twitter about social anxiety and being an introvert.

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.

Nagisa??? Are we ok, Nagisa??? Did you loose the fucking plot and finally remembered what you were writing by the end of chapter 4, Nagisa?????? This was probably my 3nd least favorite Nagisa original so far (I'm reading s&n right now and....), but it's fine. I think it had some cute moments and though the slow burn felt really slow it didn't bother me too much. By the end I was feeling a bit mid on this one but I will be rereading it when it finally come out in English. That being said, I got problems: 1). The story and characters felt a bit Junjo Romantica-y to me and I have mixed feelings about that because I've grown to have mix to negative feeling about Junjo Romantica <3. 2). I know I didn't mind the slower burn in this one, but it was mainly the run-around Sora and Kengo were giving each other that just felt pointless to me. 3). The topic of color blindness felt really half-assed. I feel like we only got 1 hint about it when they were talking about space in chapter 2 (I think) and then Nagisa just completely forgot that it was a topic of discussion until chapter 6 where it felt like it was so forced and rushed because she just remembered that was the point. So that bit actually pissed me off... a lot.

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.

I can't believe this isn't the lowest Nagisa original on my list. I kinda found myself bored with this one and it was around this time where I noticed Nagisa likes writing 1 and 1 thing only and that's slow burn high school romance love confessions... But this one with the weird "is it gay to do gay shit with your bro" thing that they call a "doing a bl" and play it as a joke.......... Huh? This whole story had me cringing so bad. I'm actually afraid to read this again once the official translation comes out but because I know what they're gonna call it and I have to read through that.

Cute story. Don't really remember much of it because going on this marathon made all of Nagisa's stories blended together at this point, they're like all a steak dinner with a side of mashed potatoes and peas but each one is prepared differently and I'm crying. But this story's "gimmick" of having both their nicknames mean 8 is the stupidest link in this plot and I both love it and hate it because when it's time for the story to get serious it's so dumb because it all comes back to their names... However, as soon as I realized that their ship name and tag on tumblr would be 88 I needed to give it 4 stars. Hope this gets officially translated (update: it got officially translated <3)..

What in the God damn did I just read? I had a feeling that S&N would be at the bottom of my list but I didn't know that it would piss me off this much. I trusted you, Nagisa. Update: ... Why did I trust Nagisa? I've only really liked 2 books from her and one of them was above "fine" and the other was average at best. Everything else was either the worst version of what we already wrote or pissed me off to hell and back.