This week and beyond I decided to have the goal to write something about the manga I’ve read. Nothing much but enough to capture what stands out to me and we are staring with Ikoku Nikki!
You know that broad aching pain after the pain when you hit a part of your body? well it feels like that. Not sure how else I would describe it. I feel adrift while reading it everyone's experiences feels like bits of my life and what it says about them comforts me in... in a way. Anyhow I found a word in a tag line to one of the cover page to be succinct, "healing" its quite a healing story to read. I feel my thoughts ripped out of me and into the story when I see one of them speak, I feel my feelings validated seeing such bareness. I don't understand most things but it touched me if i can remember it as well as it heals me... I wish and will do so.
I still want to talk more about this so bear with this. I feel deeply like Asa's dad, a nothing person, a person with nothing inside and out, yes of course just do what is said by mom they're right but its not always the case no? There is no way to tell what he is actually is like for he is dead and even if he is’nt Yamashita Tomoko can just never explain it but in that I found myself. I'm Alive! where am I going with this? maybe it comes back to that feeling "my thoughts ripped out", I saw myself in him and not just him I think everyone to an extent. Okay talking about this more will just get more confusing in essence: I see myself in these people, Their story does not have a story, I feel connected yet distant, I will see them again and again.
Next is a pair Double House and Kizuna! Eh?. what in the world is what you would say right? but they're quite similar, they're both the first volume in a series! I mean only one of them both are meant to be so! It counts! Thats my only reasoning for combining them together for now. See me finish Kizuna in like a month + and for Double House there isn't much to say for a 1 volume story canceled to soon. If i were to grade on potentials then yeah I can rate it higher but no. Ah and well I'm the kind of person who while found the use of "frames" as a tool to understand the constraints being out of the picture of good persons to be, could be artistically interesting see nothing beyond that. I'm sorry for this half baked thoughts!
Last and least Joy. I see Joy the same way i see many BL's i've read, it is fine. Yes, I dropped it but that isn't any fault(well in my eyes a bit) of the work itself. To be frank I found the characters be odd, bizarre? Ah not bizarre boring looking thats what i was going for. The story in tandem with the artstyle and general visual language to me makes the plastic cartoonishly simple story very bare and uninteresting. But i don't necessarily see this type of visuals to be always boring. I suppose the accompanying story just doesn’t gel well in my head that all i could think is how plastic all of them are. I do have a lot of Etsuko’s work in my tbr so I might find other stuff from her that I liked more.
Well I say last but I have more to say for my other read this week, Classmates! You can see my rambling later on. And thats all I got this week I decided on a whim that I’m going to update this weekly round up on a Sunday. Let’s hope I’ll continue with this for a while! P.S I dont think i'll make it so uhhh i dont really like it, its a "i am aromantic and what the hell" problem rather than anything because of the story and it did get better as it goes on(thanks friends).