Mimi

3.25

This is just more of volume one with a little bit more 👀🏳️‍🌈? going on so nothing's changed. Anyway, here's my united notes for this volume because it's not worth structuring them out.

Doesn't... doesn't Aki have a job? Didn't he just get promoted?

1. You spelled glompping wrong and that hurts me more for some reason.

2. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE USING GLOMPPING IN A POST 2018 MANGA?!

WASH DOWN THE BEER! GUYS, YOU HAVE TO WASH DOWN THE BEER! Did you wash down the beer? Have you try washing down the beer, yet?

Yuki & Rikka be like 🤨🏳️‍🌈?

3.25

Cute but simple. Very simple characters with simple dialogue. I could tell very quickly that the two main characters are not the main characters. The main character is the food. The “gimmick" is learning about how to make these dishes while Aki and Haru are just here. In fact, Yukino clocked their personality completely in chapter 2 and they've been that one-note since. I get that this is a manga about food but I want Aki and Haru to be more than just cardboard.

I hope volumes 2 and 3 actually expands more on their characters and let the food take a back seat a little bit because I'm at the point where I'm literally skimming all the recipe talk just to get more of Aki, Haru, and their friends.

It really shouldn’t've taken me this long to get through this manga. It felt a bit too slow and I was kind of getting bored with it, probably because I didn't really about the main two, so I ended up putting it down for a while. It's not bad, I just wasn't interested in anything. I like a slower slice of life story where there's no or grounded conflict and it's just showcasing people living day-to-day. But when that's the case, I need to care about the characters and I just wasn't feeling it with these two.

I knew this wasn't gonna be for me when I saw it was about someone who was sent to be sacrificed. I tend to not like that kind of storyline... But I did not know that the lovey-dovey feeling between the two started while Taro was so young. On top of the fact that the Uru is basically his adopted father had me questioning if I should just leave right now. I got halfway and then just started skimming pages to understand the whole picture better.

I don't see how this has such high ratings. I think because on the surface the romantic feelings look very one-sided and the art's pretty. Uru is caring for this kid as his adopted child. Taro, however, has loved him for years. Uru trying to play up how dangerous he is as a beast while also making sure Taro is safe which is cute. It's very fatherly and that's adorable but his affection is growing for Taro while he's still a kid. Nothing really happened until he's an adult but everything leading up to that is completely uncomfortable.

Funny enough, my final straw was the fact that the wolfman doesn't stay a werewolf by the end of the story. That sucks and is not a plotline I want to read about beast people.

Ugh, it's a weird feeling right off the bat for me. The romance and plot moved too quickly to the point where I didn't really care about either of them enough for any of the emotional moments to hit me. There's also the looming uncomfortableness for me of Tsugumo being a kit when he died. Him retaining that personality, behavior, and knowledge as a deity made all the sexual stuff just hard to read for me even after the time skip.

Really gave me Kingyo no Ubugoe vibes which was an absolutely horrible feeling.

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.

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.

3.5 for the "Escalate" oneshot

3 for the "Monotone Blue" manga

The fact that I'm still going to try and find a physical copy so I can this on my shelf kind of pisses me off because I don't think I like this as much as I wanted to. More importantly, I don't like Hachi.

The oneshot was kind of nothing but I liked how both of them were on mutual grounds about the whole thing. Now it felt like Hachi was being pushy and selfish while Aoi was much more timid compared to his oneshot self. I don't mind Aoi as much but Hachi's change turned him into a character I personally hate. Possessive, aggressive, and selfish. I get that he's a cat and the way Nagabe writes anthro characters seems to have more animalistic traits and behaviors, but I just really don't like him for most of the story.

There are also times when I felt like things could've easily been explained, dodged, or dealt with more calmly. But you either had Hachi overreacting and Aoi sounding suspicious.

Yeah, by the end it was pretty sweet and I'm here for Aoi's backstory, but there were just mostly Hachi-related things that embodied things I don't like in a character.

Will update later but this 4/5 is solely for the first (cover) story and the last story. The 3 in-between were nothing and felt like they worsened this book.

Pausing, but so far it feels like a 3.5

I like Ikki, Nakanishi's pretty cool... and that's it. I didn't like being in Karakida's head. The affection he showed to Ikki was cute and all but the way his thoughts read, the way he talked about himself and how well he could read people was so Light Yagami coded and pretentious sounding. It was annoying and I'm a Light Yagami enjoyer.

Also, from the beginning to page 68, they barely touched on Ikki's asexuality. While in his POV he does talk about how he feels but it just wasn't enough. I hope it gets officially picked up or someone else retranslates this because I want to keep reading this.

I thought it was all right. I think I was hoping for a different ending than that or for something a bit longer out of this oneshot.

One of the things that made me go “...huh." was when Mine was telling Murai it's ok to break up with him... because I said the exact same thing to my ex. Even though I wasn't sure of myself at the time I still accepted going out with her because I couldn't say no to my friend. She was also already active and to be all touchy-feely. I was not and that type of affection made me uncomfortable. I knew that she wanted to move further and it felt like I was holding her back so I texted her one night during spring break that it was ok to break up with me because I knew I could never give her what she wanted out of a relationship.

Being in that relationship made me realize that not only am I ace but that being close and touching makes me uncomfortable. I never really thought I'd ever see that written out in a manga. It felt weird how much I saw myself in Mine.

By the way, I would love to see continuation stories for Mine and his partner as well as Murai's friend.

I want to update this at a later date, but I will say that trying to fit the amount of topics this wanted to cover in 3 chapters, all 3 of them having 27 pages was way too ambitious and should've been full volume length.

I think I understand why people kept telling me that the Wild Rose story was really sweet and the only one of the 3 to get a finished scanlation (at the time) after all these years. I'll yell about it later when I get my thoughts together.

I couldn’t. I straight couldn’t do this. This is probably a really cute story, Tajima and Koga (Kouga? I’ve seen both) are probably super cute together. In fact, I don’t think the story itself is bad, so I don’t want to give it such a low rating. However, my enjoyment was severely severed by Koga having a crush on his step-brother and I tried so hard to overlook it because that’s not the couple we’re following, it isn’t about them.

But I know how this goes.

We’re going to keep bringing up how Koga’s feelings. Even if it becomes less and less of a thing, it’s going to be talked about throughout the book, it’s going to be a conflict or a topic of discussion as he and Tajima become closer, it’s going to make me scream and throw up if I have to keep reading that.

Though I wasn’t that invested in them and I thought the first chapter was kind of boring, I was a tiny bit interested in where this would go after chapter two... and then chapter three started and I just couldn’t do it.

Aki exuding misogyny? It is a BL after all.

And he's homophobic? It is a BL after all.

I know my main problem with this story was Aki himself. He’s written in a way where the author knows he’s pretty unlikeable, kind of a dick, and that’s the point. However, they also want you to care about what he was saying, sympathize with his story, and basically redeem his shittyness by the end... Kind of hard for me to do when I wasn’t given a reason to. The guy just sucks. Throughout the whole story, he is just an asshole, an asshole to Umi, an asshole to women in general. I didn’t like how he strung Umi around even though he knew by chapter 4 that he was feeling something, and yet he was still being a little shit even in the last chapter. Him being so stand-off-ish to Umi but also dangling the possibility of a relationship in his face to the point where Umi looks more confused than happy at the end of chapter 7 made me want to scream.

Something about Umi constantly apologizing really pissed me off because he had nothing to apologize for. There was a bit at the end where Aki apologized himself for how he acted towards Umi but it wasn’t enough and it didn’t change how he kept acting for the rest of the chapters. The part where we all just... dodged the fact that Umi was almost sexually assaulted but Aki was still being stubborn despite Umi explaining what was just happening. I’m not looking over that, what the fuck? You want to make a shit character, fine, but don’t think that chapter 7 was enough to make me go “aww, that was so sweet. they kissed! aww” like I haven’t wanted to punch Aki in the face for the last 16 days.

You had 7 chapters. And for 5 of them, I've felt like we've been saying the same thing. The story hardly moved.

This doesn't make me want to read seaside strangers.

There's absolutely no story. Fucking nothing. And I am feeling so giddy, so happy reading this after a slew of just.... uggggggggggh manga I've read. It's super cute, the art’s adorable, I love everyone so far, and even though I said there's no story there kind of is one but not really, and I kind of wish there was a bigger main story to follow. It is a little too sweet at times and has a bit of this quirky 2015 feeling to it, but then I see the anthro characters be adorable and I start crying over how much I love manga.

I remember seeing on mangaupdates that this was a webcomic, but I didn't think it would be in this format. The flow of these chapters (they're basically just pixiv posts) and how short they are means you can't really have a plot in there. I'm fine with this overall, I grew up reading Hetalia, I've watched Wan Sheng Jie, I'm used to this kind of webcomic format. It's just not what I thought it was going to be at first along with The Past Part 1 & 2 chapters made me want more story for the main two couples so bad.

Slightly conflicted. Mostly disappointed. I felt this leaned way too far on the comedy side of things, nothing felt grounded in reality so when anything serious did come up it didn’t feel like it was handled well. I think the author wanted this to be a cute story about a scary-looking guy who’s kind and has always liked cute things and a guy who took an interest in him after seeing how misunderstood he was. Which is cute and I was excited about that, but while trying to show how cute they are together along with the comedy of the story, two conflicts got ignored and one conflict got overblown.

The first time Kousaka kissed Kijima it felt rushed and underserved at that part of the story while the second one made me angry because Kijima never really got visibly angry at Kousaka, letting him get away with so much. It was annoying to watch Kijima mostly get angry at himself when he had every right to be angry at Kousaka before chapter four. He was so fixated on this fortune-telling thing that he let Kousaka string him along without talking anything out until later. I’m mad that after the first kiss, they still acted like they were still dancing around each other even though they both knew each other’s feelings by now. Having Kijima finally get legit angry that he fought back at Kousaka because he miss heard him pissed me off. There were two other better reasons to punch this dude and this is what you chose?

It wasn't cute for half this story, it was kind of annoying.

Story 1: I liked this one even though I was a bit confused at the beginning. I didn't really get why Kou kept rejecting Daisuke even though it was sort of explained. It felt more like a why he said yes now instead of before, but it was still cute to see them try to work with each other. I added an extra star because they tried to “settle it in smash” who topped.. and then they never did and fell asleep.

Man, if only we had more time to send with them. Maybe, like, one more chapter specifically after this one that would show them being more of a couple instead of the last bonus chapter just telling us that they got closer... If only.

Story 2: When they showed that Michihiko was 23 I went “the other guy better not be 19 or I'm skipping"... 23 and 19 is a big age gap for me but at least they wouldn't’ve been fucking family! Or at least I hope they would’ve been fucking family. I didn’t stay, I skipped it immediately.

Story 3: I am so tired of this book. This story has an age gap that’s kind of uncomfortable at the start but only if you’re paying attention because age gaps are a sensitive subject for you. Koshika is most likely 19 when meeting Sousuke who’s an older man, at least 25+. He clearly has a crush on Sousuke, but what ew’d me out was Sousuke flirting with him. Yes, he could’ve been 20 but maybe you shouldn’t be vague about ages when one of them is in high school. The sad part is they meet years later and the rest of their story is so cute. They are so cute. But then they brought up how Sousuke knew and Koshika’s feelings and still flirted made me want to throw up. Can we get back to the first story, please?

Story 4: This book should've been about story 1 for 3 chapters and story 4 for 2 chapters. Forget chapters 2 and 3. Skip them. Story 4 is super cute and I wish it had more to its story because it ended way too soon. It made me remember that the art style in this is so good. I loved the way Miyamoto looked in general and thought Daisuke’s eyes were cool.

... Ok, but why didn't your dad just teach you the damn recipe?

Anyway, this was fine. Just fine. But just fine in a more positive way than a low 3 “just fine". I thought Roy and Kotaro were cute together, I almost cried seeing them try to do a high five but Kotaro didn't have his glasses on so they missed and I loved everything about that bit. My only problem was how the dialogue flowed. Something about the dialogue felt off, making me feel like I was missing context. The number of times I've said “why bring that up out of nowhere" or “who asked" was a lot.

The way they brought up certain topics felt forced like they were being told their next line off-screen while also being told to stay on track. There was a part where Masuda came by to pick up the order list and, without being promoted, brought up Kotaro was down at the cafe, kicking off the conflict. That's just one of three parts that stood out to me like that, It didn't make sense for him to bring that up the way he did because it didn't feel natural to the conversation. It came off as gossip to start something for no reason, so many conversations played out that way in this story. When people talked it either felt like a tonal whiplash or or “who asked" moment.

I'm sorry but I was really bored during the main story. I don't know, the story felt kind of stale but also cute. I just couldn't bring myself to care about either of them as much as I wanted to that when their conflict happened I didn't feel anything. It wasn't a bad story, I just didn't care.

Now as for the 2nd story, I was giddy for more of Minakami. I remember thinking to myself “man, I really like the design of the cafe owner. I really want to see more of them". But they just had to ruin it by the college guy be 19. Ugh. It's a cute story but they could've made him at least 24? Even before finding out his age I couldn't stop thinking how I would've loved it more of it was about him and the bartender from the place Suzuki worked at instead because I need more mature couples in my life. So that kind of sucked seeing that Isaki was under 20. And then they hit me with a joke like “What kind of useless adult am I, getting involved with a kid" like, ew!? Like, ew? Like, ew.

Something I do like, though, was the way this author draws mouths and eyes. Specifically their smiles, though. It makes me think of how fixated I was with another author, Kei Sumiya, who’s smiles during some genuine moments are so radiant, shiny, blinding, and warm. The :3 smiles Kure does makes me smile, I love it. It’s like when you’re talking to someone who understands the importance of emoticons and put shit like :) and -A- and (^u^) at the end of their text. I’m in love. I’m in love with the way Kure draws smiles.

... I’m so confused on this one. Kinda... Sorta?

I'm pretty sure I forgot that was tagged as mature, but I didn't think that this was going to have this many sex scenes. It kind of ruined the actual story for me even though half of the plot was about Keppei's issues revolving around having sex with Keita. There are times in this manga that didn't need a sex scene, times when serious talking about Keppei's embarrassment and Keita's trauma would've been better... But instead, they fucked.

It wasn’t like we didn’t get to see them talk about each other’s problems, it just wasn't enough and you could tell the author really wanted to put a sex scene in every chapter. There's also the fact that some of those scenes were with each other's 18yd selves and I hated that. It's just my age gape disgust that got in the way at times.

This story was both really cute and very frustrating for me. I really loved the characters and I liked the premise but the time we spent reading them fuck felt wasted. On top of how it ended in six chapters, it was difficult for me to be happy about the proposal with the way chapter six went.

Kind of started out rocky on the first chapter for me, I didn't really like how Reiji was just a 5yd kid in an adult's body. Dude just said his apt doesn't allow pets, he lives on the second floor, and here's this grown ass man banging on the floor for him to take in the cat... I didn't like that.

At least it got better and ended nicely. Even though it got cutter later on, I found that I really don't like when authors spend the whole book on the journey but only give us one chapter of them finally being together. It's different from a slow burn for me, I don't mind if it takes a while for the relationship to begin. It’s more of me wanting an extra one or two chapters of them dating instead of ending it immediately after they officially started dating.

This was basically just fine. I would've loved a second volume of all three of them just being and living together. I've come to like Reiji and Koichi by the end but there wasn't enough to make them memorable to me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA so anyway, this book gave me a migraine because of how much dread I've felt reading it. It’s been a very long time since I've read something this heavy in atmosphere, and yet, it still felt different than something like CUT or Ito-san. In the middle of chapter two I needed to sit the book down and take a nap after about an hour because I was already feeling so anxious Alan that it made me fucking tired. I’ve been looking for exactly this feeling for months! The hurt/comfort here was like Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas morning. I was bawling my eyes out, I was fucking miserable caring so hard about two fictional characters! I was having the time of my life reading this.

One of my main setbacks, though, was the high levels of religious preaching coming from ... everywhere. I get it, it was his upbringing and a huge part of the story. I think it's because my Baptist upbringing was never a negative one and I just have to remember that not everyone’s religious experience is that fortunate.

The other thing was the age gap situation. It's very well known that Alan is 17 when they first met. Hayden's, however, is very rocky. He's either between 18 (turning 19 that year) to 21 and the thought that he was 19 or 20 looking at Alan that way bothers me a little more than the religious talk. That being said, 17 was the legal age in Texas in 1999... Plus, it started in winter and Alan most likely have been 18 for some months by the time any romance started between them. Also, the little note at the end talking about how everyone was legally above age is funny to me because I’ve never seen that disclaimer at the end of a BL before. It still just felt weird to me, though.

I felt like I had to reorganize my thoughts on this story. This was a less-than-average read for me sometimes. I really like the almost family-like dynamic between Maggie, Al, Ned, and Mary, they had this vibe of “we’ve been friends since first grade, we grew up together” and I loved that. I loved that Maggie knew about Ned’s feelings for Al and was here for them, I loved that they all were here for Maggie towards the end of the book. I loved the tension the book had at times! There are a lot of things about the stories and the characters and the backstory that interest me so much.

But there was also something... something that held this back for me. I thought the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star bit was sweet in the context of what it was for until the author wanted me to take this song seriously and then it just felt corny. Even though I grew to enjoy their friendship, starting with Al flirting with both Maggie and Ned felt weird to me. It's just this "siblings who flirt with the same person and that person flirts with them both" is not my cup of coffee, to be honest. Chapter four felt kind of confusing to me the way it jumped around in the timeline.

I just find it funny that some of the small things got to me enough because of how mundane and still this story was. There was this gloomy and heavy atmosphere that was almost perfect. I love the hurt. The comfort is cute. But some of the comedy made me roll my eyes and I will never get over how they tried to make Twinkle Twinkle Little Star important.

It started off feeling like a bunch of nothing until it got to the point where they had to pretend not to know each other for work because no one knew about their relationship... That killed me to read because it's not like y'all can't be friendly and talk sometimes. Just don't be flirty with each other! That's my only annoyance with this story and it's only set up that way for the bigger conflict. A base that wasn't needed, it was just there to piggyback off the already dumb conflict that was there because just wouldn’t interact with each other as "just friends".

So this whole book has this annoying underlying plot with a stupider plot on top of it. Shame because the two main characters are pretty cute together.

A very slow start for me, I was getting bored up until chapter three. Them fighting and the aftermath of Shuu realizing things actually had me invested. I would honestly like a second book about them in there relationship.