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49/50 booksRead 50 books by Dec 30, 2024. You're 28 books ahead of schedule. 🙌
Given how popular Ouran High School Host Club is, I have a strong feeling this manga series gets better with each volume. After all, having a rocky start is not unheard of for many popular series.
But that still doesn't take away the fact that I had a difficult time getting invested in this story. From the premise alone, the plot seemed like something I'd greatly enjoy. But the way the actual story was executed on paper left more to be desired. The characters were not very fleshed out, and in hindsight felt somewhat like caricatures.
I think the layout could have also been more polished. The composition of dialogue/text and art seemed unbalanced. The text would often overpower the art in terms of how much space it took up in a panel, which made it difficult for me to digest the story through visual means. The events that take place also felt a bit all over the place, like a bunch of different plot points were jam-packed into a tiny volume. So this inevitably led to the pacing feeling off.
The story wasn't all bad, because the plot here is something I'd definitely enjoy if it were just executed more sophisticatedly. For now, I'll give the anime a shot because consuming the same story in a different format might work better for me.
I don't quite understand the hype. This book is meaningful and thought-provoking in some ways, but the convenient plot and all the coincidences followed by the contrived justification of said coincidences felt very unpolished to read. I enjoyed some of the discussions that were had, but overall nothing quite stood out to me as amazing. I thought I would be heartbroken after reading this based on what the general consensus seems to be, but while I did find it very sad, it just did not hit me in the emotions as much as I'd been told it would. This could be due to the fact that—despite being mostly nuanced—I did not care about our main character Amir a whole lot. Also, the frequent tidbits of information in the book regarding the turmoil and situation in Afghanistan felt a bit... off. I'm not quite sure what it is, maybe it's because this story seems to be highly catered towards people a part of the western audience who may be ignorant about all this.
I don't think this is a bad book, but for the amount of popularity it has, I just don't see what the big deal is. It was fine, but nothing that praise-worthy in my opinion.
this was so so so so SO good maybe this is because my consumption of sci-fi stories is lacking, but this story opened up my mind ten fold. the way it expanded my horizons by making me think outside of the normative confines of societal expectations for us humans is something i'm really grateful for. this story was incredibly character driven (just how i like it!) and felt pretty episodic. i loved the interactions between characters and all of their uniquely beautiful and nuanced personalities mingling together made my heart feel so full. there were sad moments—or a sad moment—that made me tear up near the end, all making me realize how much i ended up actually caring about everyone aboard the Wayfarer. this was exactly the type of wholesome, unabashedly queer, optimistic but emotional, low-stakes story i needed. what a breath of fresh air.
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