Ashita Dorobou

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A sweet romance, built around an off-the-wall science fiction premise, about reconnecting with "the one who got away".

Story (7): The premise is very interesting: a guy reconnects with his ex-girlfriend, who mysteriously hasn't changed at all and has some connection to an alien orb floating over the city. And at first it's handled well. But as the story moves forward, the twists and turns of the plot become a little hard to follow, and the explanation doesn't entirely make sense. It's always interesting, however, and the plot holes didn't bother me too much.

Art (7): The artwork was solid. ... A couple action scenes were a bit hard to follow, but the character models were good (and consistent). Most impressively, the manga does a very good job of showing the same characters at different ages; you can tell who is who, but the characters look different (and not just because their hair-styles changed).

Character (8): Ashita is a great character, in all her forms. You'll fall in love with her too. And Kyouichi makes an excellent protagonist, conflicted and regretful, but also trying to do the right thing. I loved those two characters, and their interactions with each other. The other characters were more of a mixed bag; however, they tend to come and go fairly quickly, and none of them stuck around long enough to annoy me too much.

Enjoyment (8): It's a wild-ride with a great premise and a good ending. I enjoyed every minute while I was reading it.

Overall (8): The theme of "reconnecting with a lost love" is very rarely explored with this little melodrama and in a way that's this much fun. Just for that, and for the great leads, I'm willing to overlook some of the plot holes and annoying side characters and give it a solid recommendation.

This is probably one of the highest ratings I've given to all of the manga that I have read so far, but I feel that it's well deserved. Ashita Double is a great sci-fi romance story that has bits of sweetness, sadness and laughter mixed into it.

It's hard to talk too much about this manga without spoiling the plot because there is a central mystery here that gets unraveled over the 30 chapters that concerns Ashita herself. That being said, the pacing of this reveal as well as the overall pacing of the story is a real treat. It's nice to see a manga ... where things don't feel either too rushed or too bogged down with filler material. Every chapter of Ashita Double is necessary and propels the story forward.

Ashita Double is primarily a romance story, but if you like that as well as science fiction then this will probably be right up your alley. As an added bonus, it has one of the best portrayals of a "Tsundere" stereotype that I've read in a manga in a long time - even if you don't generally like Tesundere's it's hard to not like a certain one in this book.

Overall this is a great, fast read and I highly recommend it.

Ashita Dorobou is a romance manga with sci-fi elements that talk mostly about getting together with the one you love and coming in terms with your feelings.

When talking about the story of the manga, we can separate the story in two aspects:the more sci-fi aspect, and the more romance one. I will separate them because in the sci-fi aspect the story fail horribly and in the romance aspect it succeed quite well. So let's dive in.

In the sci-fi parts we have an UFO that appear just above Tokyo, and just as it appears the main character meets with his ex-girlfriend and reunites with her. After ... that we suddenly discover there are several versions of his ex and the one he met was actually is an alien. From there the plot get more complex (unnecessarily) as there are people that want to use her for their own good. The story fail hard early on because of unrealistic situations and reactions from people. Now I know what you will say "It's a sci-fi story, so it's okay for it to be unrealistic, right?"
While that might be true there are a lot of things that still need to remain realistic. For example the reactions of the people to the alien are very nonchalant, the "villain" of the story is a crazy soldier that you wonder why he is still a captain in the SDF. I mean, he shoots anti-tank missile on small target in the middle of Tokyo and no one in the government or the army gives a shit, apparently.

That's just the tip of the iceberg as there are sudden, random betrayal, plan to rule the world that is simply forgotten by everyone in the end, details that the bad guy knows just because and of course a skip in time that make us wonder "what the hell happened?" yeah, the story is just isn't that good.

Now for the romantic aspect, it is way better. The story begins with a love that already ended, and although the romance itself isn't the best thing ever, the themes behind it are great. Staying true to your emotions, not denying them, understanding how important something was to you. If the sci-fi part wasn't so serious, the manga would had been much better.

As for the characters, we have the main character which is a pretty bland guy. The main thing that affect him is Ashita, his ex. We have three versions of her in the story, two younger versions and one that is older. By being with her he can understand how much he loves her and how special their relationship. As for the minor characters, they are all carbon box that exist only to say how cute Ashita and some of them to advance the sci-fi plot.

The art is not bad, but not good either. It's pretty average. The only thing that I really loved about the art is the character design of Ashita herself. The artist gave her some nice lips. But that's about it.

All in all, that's a short manga that I think you should read if you care more about the romance and true love. Although the conclusion is pretty obvious it still nice to see how the manga present the regret and the passion to return to a love that lost.