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Jul 15, 2023
This is a one-gimmick gag manga that suddenly decided to become a romantic comedy halfway through. It succeeded.
As the stereotypical shōjo romance manga clichés go, the protagonist is a plain but good-hearted girl who's eclipsed by the more popular but mean-spirited 'rival' girl vying for the same love interest as the protagonist. The gimmick in question here is that the rival is openly interested in the protagonist herself rather than her love interest, much to the protagonist's chagrin. This single joke insists upon itself for the first ten chapters, with the exact same setup and the exact same punchline, only differing in the comically exaggerated
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build-up in between. It stops being episodic afterwards, and the plot starts from scratch with chapter #11, but this repetitive gag continues until halfway into the story, when minor drama kicks in and development happens. We're no stranger to the "girl forces herself on the other girl who's not interested, but eventually reciprocates her love" trope that underlies practically half the yuri stories in existence, but the weirdly paced character development makes it feel all the more jarring as characters remain static for ~10 chapters until a plot event suddenly changes their personalities for the next ~10 chapters.
If you don't mind any of this and you're fond of light-hearted stories revolving around characters incapable of communicating their feelings without causing further misunderstandings, you're going to enjoy this, because the cuteness makes up for it all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 19, 2023
In short: Lovely manga with cute and interesting characters and an increasingly messy plot.
The reason for this is that Ame demo Hare Demo is a rewrite of the author's earlier two-volume comedy manga Todo no Tsumari no Uchouten. It's evident that she wanted to reuse the setting and the base plot for an entirely different setting with a heavier drama plot she had in mind. You can tell this is the case because you can feel the sudden shift in tone at the seams of these two plots stitched together and this contrast almost gave me whiplash. Without giving spoilers, I want to say that
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the way comedic elements were retconned with grim backstories, seemingly important points early in the story were forgotten, and pivotal plot elements in the last volume clearly conflicting the story that was laid out in the first volume is jarring and dissatisfying and will put off some readers.
(Un)fortunately, I'm a shallow person who cares less about a cohesive plot and more about cute girls being cute together, and Ame demo Hare demo succeeds at delivering exactly that. For that reason, I can say I enjoyed it a lot and I strongly recommend it to the kind of person who likes fluffy comedic love stories of seemingly incompatible couples surviving trial-by-fire drama with a sombre backdrop.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 14, 2023
There's a reason this manga isn't labelled yuri anywhere. Although it wants you to believe otherwise, there's no love triangle in the proper sense within the threesome either, despite constant references to the Summer Triangle asterism. After dragging you through five volumes of drama, pretty much nothing is resolved. Instead of wrapping up a mess of a love dodecahedron, the reader is supposed to imagine how things might end up like in the future, which is a cop-out no matter how you look at it. I picked 'mixed feelings' instead of 'not recommended' because the manga isn't bad in itself. The characters are interesting, and
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feel human and well-developed. The story is actually fairly decent other than the hasty ending, if you're into romantic dramas. The art is great (although shocked expressions are overused), and little recurring themes like astronomy symbolism (which is blatant) and food themed items (which is less obvious) are fun to track. Some readers will certainly enjoy simply watching this complicated web of friendship develop with trial by fire. But any reader that expects the ending to mean something will end up severely disappointed with this shaggy dog story.
Heavy spoilers follow...
Most egregiously, the very core of the plot, the fact that Mikage is aware of the other girls' feelings to the point that it brings her so much angst and drives the entire story, is left up in the air with an 'I'll tell them one day'.
Let me break down the main triangle to illustrate:
Nadeshiko → Mikage: This is the only love interest in the triangle that the manga actually develops. It's revealed at the very beginning of the manga and by the time it reaches the end, although Nadeshiko is aware that Mikage knows her love for her, Mikage stubbornly continues to keep it a secret from the rest for the sake of maintaining the friendship as she's always wanted, despite all the drama this mindset brought about. It's (very vaguely) implied that they might eventually end up together, with Mikage potentially giving in and accepting the idea 'What's wrong with coming to love someone who loves you?'.
Mikage → Tsukasa: We're supposed to think there's such a love interest because a triangle has three edges. The flags are even set in the first volumes in a way that parallels Nadeshiko's attraction to Mikage, but then it's never mentioned ever again. Throughout the manga (outside flashbacks) Mikage shows no romantic attraction to anyone. She simply appears to be interested in maintaining the threesome at a friendship level even if it means forcing her friends and herself to be straight to the very end.
Tsukasa → Nadeshiko: Mikage correctly surmises that there's hope for Tsukasa to be 'normal' again unlike herself and Nadeshiko. (She gives an example of how Tsukasa was excited to hear Kyousuke's confession... ignoring Nadeshiko's ex-boyfriend with the takoyaki t-shirt.) Thus, Tsukasa is left in the dark the whole time as Mikage pushes her to get a boyfriend. In the omake, it is indeed shown that Tsukasa eventually 'grew up', got over her love for Nadeshiko after being led on to selflessly support Nadeshiko's love for Mikage... and just found a boyfriend in the end. (This was apparently ironed over in the English translation, with the boyfriend mention replaced with a 'sweetheart'.)
And the side characters:
Subaru ⟷ Kyousuke: Subaru never grew out of his sister complex in the manga, although it's implied that he's changing as a person as he comes closer to Kyousuke instead. Similarly, Kyousuke's lingering love for Tsukasa was also left unresolved, although it's clearly shown that he's developing a crush for Subaru instead, so I can say that this pair is at least partially resolved.
Kashiwagi ⟷ Maezono: They appear twice in the manga and get married in the omake. Congrats.
The moral of the story is that friendship wins over love, so you had better change and not repeat Mikage's mistakes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 22, 2023
As the name implies, Syrup a compilation of short and sweet one-shots from both established and up-and-coming yuri authors alike. Each volume has a single theme around which the authors are free to build their stories. Due to this creative freedom, the stories have next to nothing in common with each other besides said theme. The stories run the gamut from G-rated slice-of-life to S&M erotica, although rest assured that it never gets pornographic. The art is great and Morinaga Milk headlines the first three volumes, what's there not to like? Well, it's hard to talk about individual stories without divulging spoilers when the stories
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are so condensed, so I'm going to talk about the volumes at large instead so you know what you're in for:
The first volume has the theme 'shakaijin yuri', a yuri subgenre about the lives and struggles of grown-up working women that has seen a boom in popularity in the last decade to the point that one can find anthologies dedicated to it alone. I can't say anything about shakaijin yuri that hasn't already been said, but I can say for sure that the variety of the stories here appeal to a wide audience and the authors managed to come up with creative settings that leave the reader craving for more chapters.
The second volume 'secret' has the theme of forbidden love, from taboos like infidelity and stalking to... rather absurd stories. It's the least likeable of the bunch for those who just want mainstream love stories but it'd certainly pique the interest of those looking for something different. Some of the stories are straightforward romantic intrigues, some of them are off-kilter and gritty, and some of them are eyebrow-raising left-fielders but none of them are can be called unoriginal at the very least.
The third and fourth volumes 'night' and 'honey' share the theme of 'the first night'. Unsurprisingly, they have the highest amount of clichéd tropes and sexual content (I mean, hey, it's what the audience wants), but I nonetheless found them quite enjoyable because one can never have enough fluffy feel-good stories if they're written well. Despite the predictable theme, watch out that saccharine candies and bittersweet candies have the same coating. These two volumes would probably appeal to mainstream readers the most (and to fans of Morishima Akiko's style of storytelling).
The fifth volume 'pure' has the theme 'onērori' (that is, relationship between a young girl and an older one). I've always avoided this subgenre but felt the obligation to read the last volume of this otherwise splendid anthology and was pleasantly surprised to find out that not only is it devoid of sexual content, but many (admittedly not all) of the stories don't have any romantic content either. They instead focus on what Miyazawa Iori once called 'great unidentified emotion' (巨大不明感情) — emotional connection between women (interdependence, healing, support, safety, admiration and so on) that conceptually underlies yuri as a whole, and these stories in particular genuinely work out quite well. As this concept isn't quite as popular in the West, coupled with the initially off-putting premise, it's no wonder this volume was left out of English localisation.
Anthologies have a very important purpose in the small but vibrant art movement that is yuri. They incubate aspiring authors and serve as a creative outlet for ideas that might not make it into larger works or merit publication as standalone works in the eyes of publishers. Syrup is overall a great sampler of the ethos and artistic currents of the yuri scene of the recent years and I decided to dedicate my first ever review to it after more than a decade on this website.
PS: At the time of writing, only these five volumes have been published and I don't expect there to be a sixth one, although it's still marked as 'ongoing' on MAL.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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