Seihantai na Kimi to Boku
Started reading the manga Seihantai na Kimi to Boku. It’s pretty good, although so far I’m more interested in the side characters than the main couple. I previously read the few first chapters on /a/ — it has one of the fastest romantic progression which delighted the anons and me. However, it was just the setup and with the main couple things grind to halt from then on. Not that it bothers me.
I find it amazing how likable all the characters are despite having very strong caricatured personalities. For example there’s the shy girl, the carefree guy, the alpha bitch, and the gloomy guy. All great. It is also my belief that in fiction all characters can and should be great. There are no wrong ways to live, and to recognize the hidden depths of every life is sublime.
Manga is a quite crazy medium in that I seem to always like the latest series the most. I feel like almost every other medium has “peaked”, leaving me mainlywith plenty of nostalgia about the old good stuff, but with manga, it’s like the ride never ends. Although my biggest complaint is that the amount of “serious” manga seems to be getting lower — for example there hasn’t been anything like Death Note, ever.
I like how in modern romcom manga, such as this one, it’s common that all the characters get paired. For example in Nozaki-kun and Tsurezure Children. So I’m excited for every new character, in particular for Taira (the gloomy guy).
I’m dying to find out who this “Gapacho” person is, haha. Probably it will be revealed in the final panel of the manga or something.
This manga has a weird sense for names, I just realized. There are two girls 東 and 西 who are basically opposites (east and west). Then there are opposing guys named 山田 and 平 (“mountain field” and flat). Similar theme continues with 岡 and 谷 (mountain and valley).
Maybe I’m imagining a bit, but Azuma is basically an alpha girl who was popular in middle school, but got tired of “the game” of popularity, but now she struggles to fit in high school because everyone else is so easy-going and friendly. I like these kind of “reverse fit-in” plots where the character has to almost hide their past because they used to be so different. And it almost always turns out their past wasn’t really “bad” but just difficult for others to understand. For example a guy with many girlfriends in the past may appear to only think about himself, but then it turns out he actually cared a lot for each girl in a way that normal guys probably even couldn’t.
Taira and Azuma used to be in the same school but were in totally different groups (Taira may have been mostly alone). But now in this school neither has very many friends, and they are becoming more friendly with each other. I like this because it feels very real and has happened to me a few times too: In the start of middle school all my friends were placed in another class, and I got into class with only one half-friend, which basically made us friends then. We got again separated when we went to different high schools, but connected again because neither had that many friends (I think), and it turned out our interests were more similar than we previously thought. Also in university I became half-friends with a guy from my high school with but with whom I had not talked very much.
Uh, ran out of volumes just at the good spot. It’s my luck that usually there will be like exactly one more volume coming out before the series concludes, which makes it awkward to return to read just that one after having forgotten events of the previous story.
Now started reading Occhoko Doji Oneesan. Where do I find all this stuff, seriously? (From one page threads mostly). Great so far.
Now that I think, this strong focus on comedy is quite rare among female mangakas. Nozaki-kun is an exception I can think of. Not that I’m complaining, I like all kinds of manga and often more those by women.
