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When i started reading this one i didnt have much of an expectations for it, just thought there is gonna be a simple office romance portraying the protagonists insecurities and problem they face, and i was totally wrong. It has much more to offer than romance or drama, the romance element is not used for entertainment purposes but is used as a tool for character development, which has worked out well.

There is a Time loop Sci-Fi concept which sets the underlying plot for a Rom Com Josie comic. Like many romance Webcomics this too has a great comedy tone to it, the same old exaggerated ... and cartoonised reactions makes it more enjoyable to watch, the author has also used some pop culture and anime references for fun, which seems to be trending these days. In addition to comedy there is also some good character development which addresses some social issues or misconceptions.

The Plot
There is a boss who is good at doing his work but acts as a complete jerk towards others, especially his subordinates. He is always unsatisfied with his subordinates and criticises them unreasonably to the point of his subordinates cursing/swearing him to death. the female protagonist is a subordinate of this boss and is also being abused by him(verbally). One day he abuses a subordinate and she curses him to die in agony while being consoled by others, and the boss actually ends up dying, whenever someone curses the boss, he ends up dying and whenever he dies a time loop starts for the female protagonist, therefore in order to stop living in the same day forever she stops the subordinate to not curse him to die, which stops him from dying and the loop stops and the next day starts for the female protagonist, the same thing happens again and someone curses him to die and he dies and the female lead is stuck in the same day, repeating again and again, the female lead is sick of the time loop occurring again and again which is also ruining her love life. She is interested in a co-worker and he also shows some interest in her. To lead a normal life she must avoid time loops for which she needs to make sure her boss doesn't gain others curse and ends up dying.

---Spoilers---
She struggles a lot to do this and understands that to be free of the time loop she must transform her boss from being a jerk into a nice person who treats others well, the story continues from there on and shows the events that occur after that

This manga has a lot to offer for mystery lovers, It is a detective story set in a different time period(the past), even though it has someone with a special power to detect lies, the detective gathers the evidences for cases primarily through his ability. There are a variety of interesting cases, so this manga is gonna be a treat for mystery lovers.

the story begins with the childhood days of our female protagonist Urabe Kanoko a girl who can detect lies, she doesn't realise she is the only one who has this ability, when others learn about her ability they ostracise her, even her family ... is afraid of her. Since she no longer wanted to trouble others she left her home at 16, on her travel she met a detective, Iwai Souma and helped him solve a case, after which Souma got to know about her circumstance and welcomed her to stay and assist him in his cases, Kanako was delighted that her abilities did not bother Souma and was happy to be of use to him. Thereafter the story goes with solving lots of cases

Just because there is a human lie detector it doesn't mean the cases are gonna be solved easily, the detective still has to collect evidence acceptable by police or the client to justify his theory behind the case, which he collects by solely depending on his skills. So even if there is the supernatural element, the mystery element is the dominant one in this manga.

even if its a periodical detective story the enjoyment from a manga could only be achieved through its characters and this manga has a bunch of interesting characters whose reactions and interactions has worked out well to keep things lively. One interesting aspect of this manga is that they have used the characters from one case in other cases and made things much more livelier than regular mystery mangas. Other than the mystery there are some character development in kanako through out the flow of the manga which is influenced by the detective in every cases while she uses her power. There is also the subtle growth of romance time to time.

For me overall, this manga had a great story - the way he solved the cases were interesting, and it also showed how she matured and how their previous ideologies where changed by the flow of the manga. great art - it was well illustrated, the characters were also well drawn, great characters - characters with interesting priorities and simplistic reactions and all these made me thoroughly enjoy it and give it a score of 9.

If you are looking for an office romantic-comedy without the "mature" content in the way, then this manga is a very good choice.

The story revolves around 2 couples. All 4 of them are "otaku/nerd" they are not passionate about the same thing, everyone is into different things like gaming, cosplaying and anime/manga.

The story is generally about the silly crisis faced by our 4 protagonists in their day-to-day life, thus slice-of-life & comedy is what the main focus of the manga is and it does very well at that.

The characters may look like normal shoujo manga cast, but there is more to their personalities than they ... appear. One couple is a newly formed couple and the other is a couple that has been together for many years, they will fight over every little thing, still their relationship is very strong.

apart from these 4 people there are hardly no other supporting characters, later in the manga 2 more characters were introduced and their stories/relationships were also explored.

On the whole wotaku ni koi wa muzukashii promises a lot of entertainment with refreshing characters, in a unique(4 nerds in office) setting.

Winter Woods is a Sci-fi/Fantasy + Romance comic with fresh art, characters and story. The characters are very well made and relatable. the character development of winter who is learning human emotions is portrayed very well. The art or should I say the Direction(as in directing a movie) is what has conveyed the feelings of each characters beautifully and made this story a success.

that is the end of my review, but if you want to know the summary of the comic in detail then here you go...

PLOT SUMMARY

A long time ago there lived an alchemist who lost his son, to overcome his sorrow he started ... creating a human by using the parts of dead people, after a lot of failures he accomplished creating a human with emotions, they both lived together, until the alchemist turned very old and passes away leaving behind the human he created and Roy - a parrot he created who has six senses and can talk, but roy has a Key that needs to be wound up periodically like a toy to keep his memories intact.

A few years ago he was discovered and was experimented upon for research purposes till now, even though he seems to live perfectly without ageing he doesn't seem to be showing any hint of Emotional Quotient

The lab sets him and the parrot to be with Jane - a writer wanna be who is waiting to hear a good story which would make her be accepted in a publishing house, which she has been failing so far. Jane takes them in with her thinking their story would be beneficial to her without knowing much about their past or the lab monitoring the house.

after they start to live together, he was named Winter Woods by Jane and the story continues with Winter getting fond of Jane and learning to feel emotions and becoming more humane, but becoming a complete human had the consequence of winter facing all the TIME he has denied till now.

This is a superhero comic with a twist. Our hero, Naga is a high schooler who has immense superpowers which he does not wish to use and would rather live a normal life. Naga is the opposite of all the superheroes anyone would have seen on TV or Comics, He is a lethargic kid who doesn't want to get himself into complicated/troublesome things.

It's an Action + Comedy kind of comic, It doesn't have lots of action sequences like in shounen manga, neither does it have edgy, gripping plot like"'if we don't defeat the bad guys within this time period something horrible is gonna happen", it ... doesn't have that kind of tension, yup "tension" would be the correct word. this manga has a lot of tension-worthy moments( lots of sad backstories), but by adding comedy in their day-to-day life this tension is balanced and the story becomes much more comfortable and enjoyable to read.

PLOT SUMMARY
The story is set in a fantasy world where evolved/hybrid Human beings, people with superpowers, immortals, normal human beings live together just like in a normal world, in the current time period. SPOON is an organisation that hires people with superpowers as heroes and fights crime. SPOON hires Naga a high schooler, who has immense amount of superpowers. Naga is not your ordinary superhero who acts valiant, he hasn't given much thought about his powers and is brought up very normally. After being hired by SPOON, he is also targeted by KNIFE- a group that always causes terror, KNIFE wants Naga to join them for he is considered the most powerful being in the whole planet. What comes next are the battles between the members of the two organisation, their backstories and a lot of character development.

The characters are all loveable, both SPOON and KNIFE has a set of interesting people. The character developments are mostly shown in the backstory and the majority of those are for the bad guys, in which case you would be able to understand each of them better. The only person who shows character development in the present seems to be Naga. The author takes a lot of time to show character development and he conveys lots of emotions and various principles of different people(including the bad guys) which is very interesting and sometimes feels like the whole comic is a debate between good and bad.

this manga is what i would expect from most shojou-romace mangas, lots of cute romantic moments (and i love them all<3), the difference between this and others are the 'drama', it doesn't have serious drama, which makes this more entertaining(adding unwanted drama to this mixture would have made it a mediocre work, but now it turned out to be great). the moments they share are too cute that one cannot stop grinning like an idiot. there are few other characters who make appearances later on.

i never knew i would use this term, but yeah this manga would be my definition of 'moe'(mangaka, look what you ... made me say*embarrassed*)

This manga shows the relationship between a geisha and her childhood friend who is a body painter.

the moments shared by the two of them has been portrayed well, it had this bittersweet feeling throughout the manga.

since it is a historic manga you also get to see some of the challenges faced by them as individuals and as a couple in that time/era.

In my opinion, this manga was very much enjoyable except for the end which had some unwanted drama. even though those events were portrayed well and the emotions were conveyed properly, I still felt it was unwanted.

In my opinion this manga was just annoying.
This manga could have been a gem if it had stayed true to its plot but since the mangaka decided to throw in some extra UNWANTED spices it lost its originality and became a mediocre

It was just unwanted drama

SPOILER ALERT

It was all good at the start, the female lead meets up with her first love who now is handicapped because of an accident and after which his relationship with his gf became weak and eventually broken, they both meet at work and are now work associates, they both start as friends and she feels like she ... has to profess her feelings this time and goes forward and eventually they start dating.

The things that happens after this is the real headache.

Relationship with a disabled, ok there are bound to be oppositions and struggles, opposition from her dad is acceptable but “her father suddenly getting a terminal illness, getting threatened by a possible rival in her relationship who is a nurse who shows that she can treat her bf better than her, and another guy approaching and reminding you of your struggles” are just bullshit

After stressed out by all these factors she just had to faint in a railway station on the track beside him who can only sit in his wheelchair chair and watch all this helplessly. (Seriously doesn’t she have any other place to faint where he could help?)

Why all this useless drama? Where are we getting with this? Anyone would breakdown if things get this hard for them, but things getting this hard itself is a joke in my opinion.

These are my takeaways from this manga

the storyline - yup it had a strong storyline underneath all the romance, drama, and smut. The male lead was raised under severe circumstances and was running towards his own goal. He did not have any consideration for others and so marries the female lead as a steppingstone. After marrying the female lead and being with her he reconsiders his life plan(which is revenge) and wishes to settle down with her. Simply put it shows how the female lead changes him after marriage.


The immature female lead - before writing about her, I have split this review into two parts ... - pros and cons, but now I’m not so sure because her immaturity annoys you and yet because of her straightforwardness and simplicity the male lead changes his perspective.


The art(or more precisely the tone) of the manga didn’t let it shine in some areas. I’m not saying it looks ugly, in my opinion the art didn’t do any justice to the plot. rather than using a stereotypical shoujo art(yup I’m talking about the way the female lead was drawn) a serious way of portrayal would have made this manga a remarkable one.


This manga focused too much on comedy rather than the drama, which resulted in a bad delivery of emotions, like whenever the female lead was anxious it looked more like an exaggeration and I didn’t feel the drama, it was a put off.


The cliche - if using the shoujo art style for the female lead wasn’t enough this manga even had the cliche of having too many characters having romantic interest for the protagonists(just to show some jealousy), like literally everybody who is not a relative to them is a love interest(at least a misunderstanding) at some point.

Yuugure Light is a good read with an overall score of 7. it has regular fun moments, slow-paced light-hearted moments and intense anxious moments. for me when the story started i got quite excited but later on due to the (subtle)drama the excitement got a little lower but still was good enough to be hooked up to know whats gonna happen next, so i wasn’t bored while reading it and I’m also satisfied with the ending.

I found this manga to be different from other Usami Maki's works because many of the other Usami Maki’s mangas concentrate on just the main girl, her love interest and ... their insecurities, this is also true in this manga but it focuses on the relationships of 4 main characters which is quite different from others.

honestly i love her other works more than this, of all the other Usami Maki’s manga this would be my least favourite not because this is a poorly done one, but because for me her other works are exceptionally good and i find them very much enjoyable. This is how i strongly feel but other readers might have thier own opinion which might differ from mine and for this reason i want others to read this manga and judge things for themselves, especially because this is a different one from other Usami Maki mangas and is quite good to read too, so read further to understand the story and its characters better and decide if you want to read this manga or not.

Here's how the story goes

Chinami lives with her single father. when her father asks her permission to move to a new place she agrees and they shift to a new apartment, later she comes to find that the one his father wants to remarry is also in the same condo. At first she is reluctant to meet her and her daughter Kazune, but then she decides to get to know them and see how things will turn out, when she visits her home she meets the Souma brothers - Kanata(elder one) and Yuudai(younger one) who are Kazune’s next door neighbours and childhood friend. Kazune was really happy to get a new sister and was expecting to get along with chinami, but the souma brothers were wary of chinami and her father, regarding the welfare of kazune and her mother. when chinami moves to her new school she finds herself sitting next to Yuudai, Kazune is also in the same school but different class, thats where the story starts.

A little bit about the personality and relationship between them

Chinami and Kazune get along well, they both were ostracised by the girls in their class due to different reasons. Chinami speaks her mind and says things bluntly which others wouldn’t dare to and hence they keep their distance from her. Kazune is alone because she was the popular Kanata and Yuudai’s childhood friend and got protected by them, because of the support she got from them she doesn’t voice her opinion much and acts like a push over in school. Kanata and kazune are good at studying so they teach chinami and yuudai who needs help, The relationship between the souma brothers is very normal like that of a dog and cat(you know, like regular siblings…), Chinami and yuudai’ are also like that. yuudai is honest, straight forward, friendly and caring - a guy who gets mad in behalf of his friends. he is in track and field club, often runs to get refreshed. normally he is simple-minded but sometimes he is sharp and understands if others are feeling down and is there for them. Kanata is sharp(He understands the things that are going on) and cunning(and uses them for his favour).

the relationship among the 4 of them is they give something to the other person and are also receiving something from them, more like they are there for the other person and the other person is also there for them. so they don’t want to prioritise one over the other and try to get along with everyone. The focus is on love, friendship and there are quite a few family developments.