Mimi's manga / #supernatural(7)

Even though it had a strong Junjo Romantica feel to it I really wanted to read more about the first couple who work at the bookstore. Still very pissed that dude cut his hair but they were pretty interesting to read. The second couple was also interesting and probably had my attention more because of their backstory together. I think this and the chapter with the morphic catboy would have been better if there weren't any sex scenes. Mostly because it felt like it took away from what story we could in a couple of pages and the catboy looked a bit too much like a kid even though he wasn't. I just kina... eh. And you best believe I skipped that chapter with the spirit who's "kid-like in appearance".

I had so much interest in the beginning but by the middle of chapter 3 I kinda just lost any interest. Maybe it was because of the bullshit vampire stuff or maybe I couldn't keep going after I found myself hating the writing of both chapters 1 and 2. Chapter 1 was, like fine but a lower grade kind of fine. But ch.2 literally took me more than 2 days to even want to finish. Not sure if the stories are any good. I was promised something "sad" but the only thing sad was how long it took me to drop this manga.

It was alright. Really adorable if a little boring. I wish there was a bit more involving the yo-kai and the fact that they kept recapping the beginning of chapter 1 for the next 3 chapters was really annoying. I would have loved to have seen them go to see his parents, introducing Rin, and trying to rekindle a relationship with his family. Even his brother was on board with helping to make the family whole again. Maybe even a newer family photo with Rin in it? That would have been cute. Speaking of cute, that chapter 5 oneshot was not. Guilt tripping, manipulation, and rape? In a chill story like this, that oneshot was out of pocket and disgusting.

In general, it's a cute story with characters that are fine but no one I cared to get too invested into except for Riku. I do like that this book only talked about 1 story instead of 3+ like most bl manga, it gives you more room to flesh out the characters and story... Room the author clearly didn't take, I feel. While I liked it to the point of wanting to buy it and seeing this be turned into a two-part OVA, I feel we moved too fast to let Iori and Goura characters develop. They just felt flat as people with the only thing moving them being Riku. Maybe I just didn't really care for Iori and the way he thought about Beast Folk. A thought he clearly got from his grandmother that I don't completely agree with. There were some nice moments especially at the end I would've love to see more of through out the story. However, can I just yell about a part of the story I didn't understand and I'm not even sure if this was the author's or translator's fault? There's a part where Iori begins to think about adopting Riku for a second but then says something like "I'm gay, I can't do that". The story up until now has not talked about queer people adopting nor did it ever come back up. What came up instead, some 3 or 4 pages later, was Iori talking to Goura about how humans can't adopt Beast Folk because they were abused or treated as pets by some humans in the past so they don't allow that anymore. While that's a good bit of backstory that would be interesting to know more about, WHY was that not his first thought as to why he couldn't adopt Riku instead of him being gay? It should've been "I'm human, I can't" and not "I'm gay, I can't" if you're never going to bring up why queer people can't adopt in your modern fantasy/slice of life story. That moment was just left there hanging and because it never came back up again it felt even more out of place and weird. Maybe there's something in Japan that makes is difficult or impossible for queer people to adopt at the time of writing the story but we wouldn't that and there's no in-book segment explaining it..... ????? I'm realizing now that this story has a problem with explaining things. It can't even hide behind having more sex scenes over plot since there were only 2½ total sex scenes. It just felt like they went in circles talking about the same thing that they could've moved on from or worked off of by explaining some other things, but they never did. They would just bring up the same topics as if they're bringing it up first the first time while also stopping at the same pots, never explaining it further. Again, while I like this story, my main problem with it was the lack of story explanation and that adoption dilemma really got to me.

... I almost did it. I almost made it to the end without crying. Short, sweet, to the point, and really fucking hurt. I didn't really think I would care this much until the road trip happened. I knew how this was gonna go, but the set up to the end was really solid as soon as I noticed the alight sad feeling I got. But what fucking did it, what fucking drew one single tear, was the post-festival ending.... Fuck you, you didn't have to do that to me. I'm in pain.

I'm actually kinda mad they did that to me at the end. It's such a mid 3/5 stars type of manga, straight up took me from june to august to force myself to finish it. I didn't think this was bad or anything it just didn't get me to care that much about the two main characters but I also didn't want to dnf or put on hold another manga so I just sat on it... There are 2 moments in the last chapter along with the final 2 pages that fucking did me in, I couldn't stop cry laughing.

Where is the looooooore?!?!? I wanted more Kotofuji loooooooooore!!!! This had me on a frustrating rollercoaster because I really wanted to be a reincarnation story in a way, but instead we got ghost fucking. Fine. Whatever. But then they show me interesting backstory for Kotofuji and now I'm invested but they're not spending time talking. I want talking. I need talking. I want to know more about Kotofuji and Tsuguyasu and more about why he was in pain in the shrine. It just feels like things aren't being said, it's just being swept under the rug so they don't have to deal with the conversation of it. Or there was a conversation but it happened off screen and I want to throw my ereader. Not to be ace on main but if these bitches don't start conversating in my romances I'm gonna start chainsawing tables. Update: So I wrote all that around ch 3 or 4 and while a conversation did finally happen, everything I said still stands so I'm not removing all that. I'm actually both confused and angry about how this went. Yes, we got more backstory for Kotofuji. Yes, we got a "let's talk about this" moment. The conversation and explanation was so surface level that I felt tired reading them not wanting to be a "burden" to each other on top of being a tiny bit confused Kotofuji and Tsuguyasu's timeline together. Not even a marriage proposal, my favorite thing in a manga, saved this for me.