Morthos

I need to take a break from this series before starting Four Seasons and read something I'll actually enjoy.

I don't know why I'm determined to like a Nagabe manga. I want to love his work but the last 2 haven't been very favorable to me and I'm still aiming to read EAT knowing I really shouldn't. I love this world he's building and some of the stories in this book are great, but there's themes and dialogue choices he chooses that bother me so much that it impacts my enjoyment.

What I did love about this was its world and having each story connect since it's taking place in the same academy. You see the same characters in other's stories and it gives it this anime feel. This whole manga reads like season 1 of an anime, I can see this working well as an anime. I liked that by the time Cromwell got his own story we got to get to his personality well enough to perfectly play off Benjamin.

Out of the 8 stories, I ended up liking stories 4, 7, and 8 the most.

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My very basic thoughts I was having while reading.

Story 1:

I don't know, man. I don't tend to like love potions and stuff like that because of the whole “removing of one's free will" and all that jazz... I think Alan should've thrown him out the window, but that's just me.

Sad, I really like both of these characters visually.

Story 2:

Honestly liked this story better than the first one but didn't like how that chapter ended. Loved Nicol's kink awakening. Good for him.

Story 3:

Skipped it. Student/Teacher relationship. Also, because there weren't any ages being said or signs of whether this was a “high school" academy or a “college" academy I just felt very uncomfortable reading this story.

Story 4:

Cute. Cute. Cute. Cute. This one's my favorite so far. It was super sweet and very warm, I'd love to read more of them.

Story 5:

Doug sucks and I gave Huey Mandark's voice in my head so I ended up hating them both by the end. I am suffering.

Story 6:

... This one was kind of just weird. For starters, Nagabe, I did not need to see that. But the kissing bit after that felt... weird. The way it was written was like when two 10 year olds find out what kissing is and try it together. It. Felt. Weird.

Update after reading ch7 - WAIT, THEY ARE KIDS?! LIKE “KIDS" KIDS!? LIKE “THEY PROBABLY ACTUALLY ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF 10 YEARS OLD" KIDS???!!

Story 7:

It started out kind of “what the fuck? why would you say that?" But it's ending with me asking for a full spin-off manga for these two in particular. Go figure that the story featuring two older men got the least amount of screen time...

Story 8:

Yo? OOOOOHH?! OHMYGOD!! A HUMAN!! AAAAAHH!??? SO THEY ARE STILL HERE!? I mean, I guess I didn't think they were gone completely but was I right about the World of Darkness analogy? Are there really still humans who live in the city parts of the world?? Nagabe!?

The LOOOORE!!! I want to know more about how divided human and beast folk are! What do they think of each other? Either way, favorite story out of the 3 I liked. Super cute, audibly made me “awe", I love both of these characters so much.

3.75

This volume, in particular, felt padded out. Looking at the other books, this series seems to like to get up there in pages. I really hope Limit and Four Seasons are a lot tighter in their storytelling because it felt like I just spent 150 hours finishing Assassin's Creed Valhalla! It's like they artificially took way too long to get to the contents of chapter 5 & 6. If we're meant to feel Kohei’s longing and slight frustration see how super obvious he was about his feelings… I kinda get it. It just didn't feel natural to me. It was kinda bloated… Like an Ubisoft game.

I just think there was a little too much back and forth bickering between the two by the time chapter 4 rolls around that it starts to get annoying. I've noticed that Tachi, specifically, has so many opportunities to say more or even take a stand whenever he's cut off by others. He's definitely done so before when the conversation isn't about or is with Kohei. But we're at a point where they're both written to “run away" and it was just really tiring to read that over and over again.