Manga Ramble 17 16 Life

The tricky thing about manga reviews is that unless they're really old or they're really short they're not complete yet. And it's hard to fairly and properly review something that hasn't been completed. So I've been reading some older mangas just to keep an unequal balance in my review ratio (let's forget about the ratio of baking posts please).

So this is a fairly short manga with only 11 chapters and another filler sort of episode. It revolves around this girl who is fairly average with no real aspirations. Her friends say she should go into music, but while her family is musically inclined, she herself feels like she's not worthy of pursuing the same career. When she goes to sing karaoke by herself she's scouted and under some unfortunate circumstances turned into a singer. Because of the short duration of this manga, the plot is very rushed. The rationale the author tries to whip up behind the whirlwind romance between the protagonist and the main love interest is quite rushed, but might actually happen in show business. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors? But anyways the way it plays out it seems like Takase only kisses Saya at all to convince her to stay on as a singer against her wish to stop singing for fear she isn't good enough. It seems his actions if interpreted in a certain way all point to him selfishly doing this for his own gain rather than for true feelings for Saya. With the cliche point of falling in love just because someone passionately kissing you *cough* Saya *cough* and the other cliche of falling instantly in love because of seeing Saya work hard, you've got yourself an extremely cliche manga. Though it's full of cliches and an extremely straightforward plot, it's not to say that this wasn't a little bit uplifting all the same. Saya does become a successful performer (thank god there was no arc about her sister becoming jealous and sabotaging her) and she and Takase end up living happily ever after. There was a slight hiccup with some other random Erina girl trying to monopolize Takase, but that's pretty easily wrapped up. Same with the problem of Saya resembling Takase's ex. There's not a whole lot of drawn out conflict at all.

Overall if you're into a shorter read and you want something that's not very stressful this is a good one for you. It's heartwarming, it's earnest, and it's just got this kind of innocence about it. That's probably due to the fact that she's 16 and naive, but it's just cute. And the ending is very satisfying if you love happily ever afters.

I just thought this was funny because he's like "Let's go eat bear paw" and she's like "wtf nah man I'll take a hamburger"

Ah, I forgot to mention the meaningless love triangle (if you could even call it that) with Takase, Saya, and this blonde boy. It doesn't really do much and it's kinda pointless, but eh it's there.