Manga Match 74 True Love

If you're looking for one of the most wack and morally questionable manga with lowkey the weakest female protagonist and most contradictory male protagonist with actually morally questionable real parents...well you've come to the right place.

{Spoilers. Come back to this once you've read it and revel in how terrible you feel?}

Honestly I'm not sure why I finished reading this manga all the way through. I felt both uncomfortable because of the themes that were explored in the manga and also annoyed at how spineless Ai was. And kind of grossed out by the whole incest thing. But by the end I was kind of numbed to how morally wrong incest was that I just don't know what ended up happening and I think I'm just still stuck in a state of disbelief that this was allowed to be published in the first place. Sure I think I've read some stuff on people that were cousins twice removed or something. But never a brother-sister relationship. Before I get further off track, here's my wack synopsis.

So, there's a brother and sister named Yuzuru and Ai respectively. They're only a year apart and inseparable. He always picks her up from preschool and she clings to him as an loving and sweet younger sister does to their responsible brother. Their family is pretty perfect, except their parents fight a lot. So they divorced and each took a child. Yuzuru grew up in America with his journalist(?) dad. Ai grew up in Nagano with her mom. And this was pretty fine with Ai burying how much she missed her brother deep inside and Yuzuru yearning for his younger sister up until he moved back to Japan. They reunited and...all this time Yuzuru has been harboring convoluted feelings of love for Ai. Ai has also never been in love with anyone else. And so they develop romantic feelings for one another. Despite their close friends finding out and thinking "Hey, maybe I can be the love interest instead and we can stop this morally incorrect thing from continuing." But they don't stop. And they just continue to commit incest.

What's super questionable is just how Yuzuru and Ai act. They know it's wrong, but Yuzuru's mindset is just "I want to make her happy" but he's also selfish and doing this for himself when he says "I'll die with this love kept a secret" when he tries to date Ai's friend, but quickly crumbles when Ai confesses to him. Once he sees her tears he just melts. Absolutely no resolve. Even though it's morally incorrect. And Ai is absolutely ridiculous as well. She just tears up a little and everyone softens towards her. And whenever something mildly inconvenient happens she just freezes and either lets the other person hit, yell at, or accuse her without saying or doing anything in her own defense. Absolutely ridiculous. Please don't let her be your role model. She's so incredibly frustrating. You'd have to read to understand, but honestly I don't want you to have to read this.

And then when their father dies while on a trip to America that's really sad. Because their mom's already found out and has to separate them herself. And Ai's response is just "I've been forsaken by God, this is the price of my sin. Give me back my dad and I'll stop" if I'm recalling correctly. But before she said "Let me be forsaken by God." So, which is it? Hard to tell.

The ending was a definite plot twist. It came so suddenly that I would almost call it a cop-out. Yuzuru turns out to not be blood related to Ai. So it's not morally incorrect to be together anymore. Which I guess is a sigh of relief. It definitely was to me. But even just mentally thinking that you're siblings is still a little bit of a grey area to me. Also, his parents were actual blood related siblings who actually committed incest to create Yuzuru.

And I suppose we can go into the whole argument of why incest is illegal in the first place and heck it might even be a human construct. However, as a law-abiding citizen, it just doesn't seem right.

Would I recommend this? Not really. Even if it wasn't about incestuous siblings, I would still say that Ai is frustration enough not to read. There are definitely better stories to read out there. Go read some others because this is just too long and too unfortunate and slightly cliche and contradictory for me to recommend.

Manga Match 73 7 Jikan-me Rhapsody

Alrighty y'all I just had lunch and a walk with my friend S. We went out for Korean food and then we went to the lake to have a walk around in the hot summer sun. I went to the animal shelter for the first time and it was really crazy to see all of those animals, some of them that were just abandoned by their owners. Really hit me hard that not everyone loves or has the capacity/means to love their pet for the time they need. And that's really unfair and something we don't often think about because we either don't have an emotional attachment to having a pet or just don't like to think about abused pets. There are an infinite number of problems in the world that I just don't know how to solve.

But you didn't come here for that! You came here for some sub-par manga reviews!

{Spoilers, but it's so short you already know what's going to happen}

So this follows a second year high school class representative named Rinko. She's a super hard worker, think like main protagonist of Special A, just like that. And she always gets tasked with stuff because of Saku, her homeroom-turned-modern-Japanese-language teacher. He also runs a Love Guidance Room where guys and girls can get advice on how to ask someone out or how to go on the first date which is really sweet. And this is basically just the story of how Rinko falls in love with Saku and how Saku has had feelings for Rinko for a really long time. But! Unlike all of the other shoujo student-teacher romances, Saku waits for Rinko to graduate and then makes a move on her. All in all it was a super wholesome time. Saku is a really sweet and responsible adult and Rinko is so sweet as well that you can't help but root for their successful relationship. There's nothing more to say! It's just wholesome and you should read it since it's so short!

Manga Match 72 Koisuru nante Kiite Nai

This was a surprisingly good manga. It really caught me off guard. It's honestly expected for it to not be a super great experience when the manga is only 3 chapters. You can't expect a whole lot of development within three short chapters. However, this manga was really successful.

{Spoilers, but it's only 3 chapters so}

It follows this office woman who's realized that she's no longer in her prime. She asks to be temporarily moved to another department in her company to become more competent at her job (which is super admirable wow) and she's being trained by this very straight-laced man. He teaches her the ropes, but also allows her to grow on her own in terms of how she thinks the job should be done. A really good and nurturing teacher, you know? And it's a strictly professional relationship. Until it isn't. And I think it's just really sweet how they naturally fall in love after working together and seeing each other's strong points. It's not like in shoujo where they fall in love at first sight. I think it's more realistic to desire for this kind of love where you fall in love with their personality and their admirable points rather than their visual. But maybe this is just some musings from an old lady, who really knows?

And the ending where she's uncertain if he likes her and then he hands her a report of all different aspects about himself so that she can get to know more about him. It was dorky, but also really sweet.

I'd recommend you read it. It's super short, the story is compelling, and it displays a more quiet romance that we don't often see. It's definitely kira-kira at some points, but I think overall it's worth checking out because of the plot line and execution.

a short reflection about the end of my second year in college

So, this is my last day of uni for the year. It's pretty surreal. It went by incredibly fast and it was packed full of emotions of sadness, nostalgia, happiness, gratefulness, overwhelming laughter, and it was just such a good year overall. I love being able to walk to my friends' houses from where I live and being able to hang out until 1 AM playing video games or just talking. Living in a college town is definitely different, especially since no one lives with their parents. And it's really liberating to be able to live like this sometimes. Of course I love living with my parents, but there's something really magical about the whole college experience. Not to say that there aren't ups and downs, and not to over-romanticize it, but it's just a really valuable experience that I'm glad I got to have. I'm so incredibly grateful for all the things that this year taught me. So many times this year I've felt sad or heartbroken or lonely, but all of those times were remedied by good laughter, great friends, and just the feeling of finally having made a place of my own in the community and groups that I'm a part of. Yeah, it was just a spectacular year full of sparkling youth.

I was going to tack on a manga review to this, but I think it should stand on its own. I'll come back with the manga review next week, but I don't think it'd be good to put them together.