Paradise266's Profile - Reviews

Last OnlineToday, 9:06 AM
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BirthdayDec 4, 1999
LocationZuellni
JoinedMay 31, 2016

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Mar 16, 2019

Imamade Ichido mo Onnaatsukai sareta Koto ga Nai Onna Kishi wo Onnaatsukai suru Manga (Manga) add

Not Recommended

Preliminary (51/134 chp)

This is actually way more disappointing than it should.

Don't expect anything beyond the manga's attempt to present you the fetishes in the most boring and cliched way possible. There is no real nuance even with its main forte, and every other aspects of the series is as bland as it can get. Every chapter is structured the same way, and almost every attempt at progressing the relationships gets written off as a joke instead, so you won't get anything meaningful with its "fluffy" elements and romance either.

Art looks decent and easy to read, the character designs are some nice eye candy and you can ...

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Mar 11, 2019

Kiku (Manga) add

Mixed Feelings

There really isn't much to say about this series to be completely honest.

It's extremely short, so all it was trying to do is to give a message within the span of 1 volume instead of exploring what it's trying to tell. Nothing about it particularly stands out, there was no real plot and the characters were flat and identical to one another. There were no interesting storytelling gimmick since the main character, Kiku, spells out the themes of the manga for you every time he has an inner monologue. It's also one of Takahashi Hiroshi's first manga, so the art wasn't anything amazing like ...

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Aug 18, 2018

Haruka na Machi e (Manga) add

Recommended

Haruka na Machi e, to say the least, is an intriguing story about family, regret, and learning about who you truly are. It's a more mature take on the concept of "going back in time", in which the main character isn't a teenager with many hopes and dreams, but a 48 years old man whose life is already far weathered with many ups and downs. Nakahara Hiroshi, now in his 14 years old body but his memory still retained, struggles to decide whether he can change the course of his life, and relive his youth once more.

What's most interesting about the series is certainly the ... main character, and how his life unfolds through his interaction with the rest of the cast in the series. Unlike many stories where the protagonist is either trapped in an overarching plot with many mysteries and tries to break out of it as soon as he can or the protagonist actively seeks to change his life for the better, Hiroshi goes along with it, though he can't help but accidentally change details of his past due to his memory. He constantly juggles between living as a kid and as an adult, making him very out of place, the oddity within the cast. Hiroshi, throughout the story, always question himself, of what could have been his life, of what could have been his family. He explicitly shows signs of regret and conflict of living "another man's life", which directly correlates with the climax of the series. Hiroshi, as portrayed in the series, perfectly embodies the themes that Jiro sensei was trying to convey, and a great example of how nuanced a character can be and how a middle age man can realistically act in his situation.

Despite how well crafted Hiroshi is, I can't say the same about the rest of the characters. Though HaruMachi is indeed Hiroshi's story, and the chemistry between him and the supporting cast is splendid, I can't help but wanted to see more out of the people that also have their own struggle and regret, the people whose life that were decided by war and not by their own choices. I would have loved to see more of how Daisuke cope with the family he deems to be far from as happy as Hiroshi's, or how Tomoko deals with the pressure of society for being a woman, but I guess for a 16 chapters short there is only so much you can pack in.

The art is quite decent as far as I'm concerned. It's far from anything groundbreaking, has a relatively basic panel structure, and the character art is hardly anything expressive, with their expressions mostly the same throughout the series. It also suffers from a level of same face syndrome, where the female characters' faces ironically look like they are male's. Despite all that, it does a fine job at conveying a melancholic atmosphere, and the way the speech bubbles are always small and well panned out within a page makes it a lot more comfortable to read and a lot more natural for the small talks that the characters always have.

Overall, I would recommend reading this series. Haruka na Machi e is far from a masterpiece of literature, but it is extremely well grounded and solid. The story perfectly captures Jiro sensei's complete understanding of human relationships, and greatly shows how a heavily character driven story should be handled.

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