Okay, I normally never do this. I've never before written about a manga that hasn't been completed. However, for this one I'm not sure if I'll ever get to complete it since it's been licensed. So, before I forget all of the precious feelings I'm holding in my heart right now, I decided to write about it. In the middle of finals week. Because I'm a genius. At procrastination, that is.
{Spoilers}
So, as we all know by now, I'm really good at procrastinating through discovering manga. It's one of my God-given talents you could say, but it's also a tremendous time drain. But sometimes you really just find yourself in the feels so much that it doesn't even really matter that your GPA is in the pits and you're in piles of college debt :).
And so I found myself enthralled with this manga. Honestly I have no idea why it has such low ratings on MAL. Maybe it's because it doesn't portray physically disabled people well? Or maybe people don't like the way the romance is going? Because I sure as heck don't like it either. But in any case, don't let the MAL score fool you because I gave it a 10/10 no regrets, and I never rate anything on MAL.
So the premise of this manga is this girl is living on her own in Tokyo after chasing her dreams as an illustrator and ending up as an interior designer at a firm in Tokyo partnered with an architecture firm. Surprise, there's a really cute boy there that happens to be her first love from high school back in Matsumoto. He's become a fine specimen of the male variety and a successful architect at that. The only catch is that he's in a wheelchair now due to a spinal cord injury from a car accident. But even so, Kawana still falls in love with him all over again. Even though Ayukawa is still wary of love, swearing to live the rest of his life by himself in order to not cause anyone anymore pain, the two fall in love. And it's really sweet. Together they're living this life, which isn't the most perfect, but they're two really happy people in it. Except that Ayukawa keeps getting sick and Kawana isn't really able to help him in any solid way. This turns into a bigger problem as the both of them only feel useless to the other: Kawana with her lack of caretaker knowledge and Ayukawa with his physical limitations to be the perfect life partner for her. What's even more frustrating is seeing all the couples around them in a similar situation and somehow all of it working out for them.
Then, here comes the tears. Kawana's dad gets really sick with stage 4 cancer. And they have this really sweet moment where she's cutting him apples and it hits her that her dad's going to die. Whenever these things happen, the waterworks just start. Like I told myself that I shouldn't cry. Like they're not even real people anyways. So why should I cry? But somehow seeing that, and thinking about all the people in my life that have been affected in a similar way, it just really gets to me. It's so cheesy, but it reminds me of how precious life really is and how even something like apples in the wintertime should be cherished. I seriously just sat in my dorm alone wiping away the tears. Lowkey glad my roommates didn't see tbh that would've been pretty embarrassing.
The real clincher was when Kawana and Ayukawa went on that trip to see the cherry blossoms on the ferris wheel and then just broke up. They were both so emotionally and physically tired and the love between them was so real that it hurt. They both kept what they were really thinking inside them and just let it happen. And just moved on. And frickin Kawana. Like I can't even blame her for being weak and dating that other guy so fast. Like I wish I could just be black and white and just mad at her for leaving Ayukawa. But she was so tired. And she felt so helpless. And she was just weak. Okay, maybe I can be pretty mad. But it's understandable and realistic and I guess I see where everyone is coming from, but it hurts. It hurts that there's no happily ever after. It hurts that they can't be together forever. And it hurts that no matter how this cookie crumbles, someone's going to get hurt. And it's so messy and so gritty and it makes my heart hurt so much and my brain so confused that I can't help, but to love it all the more.
Maybe this is just me wanting something other than finals to distract my mind, but I can't help just loving this story that's been created. It's so bad, it really is to think about this kind of thing and all the pain it brings me from an imaginary scenario, but all the same it's just wow. Even though you also probably can't afford to keep reading it past what's on the Manga Rock app (lol) I would say you should read it. I've never read anything quite like it, nor do I ever think I'll find anything quite like it, but it was a ride. Sure the protagonist was weak, but I think it's pretty realistic. I don't think that everyone can be a hero all the time. We can't be strong all the time. The world just doesn't work like that. You can hate on the manga and say that it didn't do x or y right or that you don't like the characters or the premise, but if you just take it how it is, that's an experience in and of itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment