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| THIS IS A MANGA ONLY DISCUSSION POST. DO NOT DISCUSS ANYTHING BEYOND THIS CHAPTER. ---------------------------------------- ...what the heck did i just read. x_x |
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| I didn't think the ending was that bad, but I definitely thought the build up to the end could have been done alot better. For the most part if felt like the main story was stretched so as to allow more chapters, a la the "nightmare of the week" scenario. And alot of the characters actions does not seem to have been well thought out in relation to the story. But overall, I think it wasn't really about the story as much as the "is this going to be a yuri or yaoi" meme that was more fascinating to the readers? :D |
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| In the end they were in the purgatory or something that way...I don't know it was a weird end |
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| I absolutely adored it! No one could ever have guessed how it would end. (Unless you are japanese and you actually got the bird in the cage references.) I really hope to get other people interested in this manga, because I'm sure even a straight guy could manage to stomach 'two guys' kissing for the sake of this intriguing plot. |
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| Wow.. really nice! Nice ending.. though i was a little afraid that the romantic connection would be lost in those final pages! But yeah.. i was like WTF.. throughout the whole chapters! |
havelock said: so the one girl who dissappeared without graduating, was the on one who was miscarried, huh but were the problems they were trying to solve the ones of their previous life, or something that awaits them when they're going to live? SPOILERS yes.. basically she wasn't strong enough to be born (if that makes any sense to you)... i think the class was a kind of a test, to see who was strong enough to be alive/born (remember the part where the nurse asks ichigo if she/he has any recollection or memory of the past, before she had her first period.. and she realizes that she doesn't) |
morbidly_sexy said: I absolutely adored it! No one could ever have guessed how it would end. (Unless you are japanese and you actually got the bird in the cage references.) I really hope to get other people interested in this manga, because I'm sure even a straight guy could manage to stomach 'two guys' kissing for the sake of this intriguing plot. ATTENTION, SPOILERS! There were never two guys kissing. And there were no lesbians or gays in this manga at all. Kureha loves Mashiro for being a guy, Sou loved Mashiro for being a girl and Mashiro himself wasn't sure he was a guy or a girl. This whole manga was about a fictionized way of showing what it looks like for a child who's gender isn't know yet to pick one up. As we see in the beginning of the manga, the mother asks the doctor whether she'll have a son or daughter, the doctor says "well...", at that point, time stops, we get 10 volumes of After School Nightmare, and at the end time continues "...you're having a daughter". It was brilliant IMO. Really love this manga ^^ (and I'm a guy) |
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| Hoho this was a pretty interesting manga. I'd have given it 8+ if the story would have actually had any influence on the ending. I think that 10 volumes is too much in order to create a relationship, pull an "it was all a dream" sort of ending and mislead us. |
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| I really liked the ending to this manga, I actually guessed what was behind the door, but i wasnt sure and the hypothesis was vauge :P, i think this story was a bit long though, in the middle i was starting to get the feel of: why the hell are we watching another dream where nothing happens?. But all in all that was the only thing that let the manga down. This is the one of the most unique endings i have come across so far (that i enjoyed some are unique but crap) haha i was getting anixious when i thought every one else wouldnt be "born". |
| most.... epic.... manga.... ever.... I FCKING LOVED IT first manga to ever really truely make me cry... and to make me so frustrated that I bit my pillow until it ripped... truely amazing... |
"참 많은 파도가친다.앞으로 여행할길은 너무멀고길지만 멈추면안돼.. 멈춘순간 어른이 되어가는 길을 포기하는 나락으로 떨어진다. 어른이되어가는 경험은 이제부터 시작이지만 아직어리고 젊다는 최고의무기로 아직 눈앞에 보이지않는 더넓은 세상을 밟고싶다." --김재중 CLICK IF YOU WISH |
| Ya know, I don't think I've read a manga this fucking epic and twisting. I did not expect anything that happened in the last few chapters. The only thing that pisses is me off is the romance half of it. Are they gonna be together in that life? Blahhh. Oh well, truely a crazy ass story. |
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| It's sooo good! I love the concept of "before life" and couldn't see it ending any other way. |
Luisa-chan said: I wasn't expecting this kind of ending in fact, well I was a bit disappointed, I never thought that this this of before being born was the true point of the manga, loved everything about the story except the last chapter I guess... I feel the same way. Whole manga was great and interesting until the last chapter. Although i'm not disappointed by it, rather surprised that the story could be ended like that.Still its a pity it didn't say anything about other characters well-being. Anyway i'm giving it 8/10 |
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| I think this manga is really good. o_O (except with the lead trying to figure out her gender+feelings) But! Everything was unpredictable. So many twists >_< The ending gives me the feeling that it is not enough, but it is definitely a fabulous ending. |
| You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down |
accela said: ...what the heck did i just read. x_x Haha I rather feel that way too. I really enjoyed reading this manga, though. With all the plot twists and surprises that were thrown at us. I did vaguely wondering about the passage of time when Mashiro seemed to be constantly on her period. And it's interesting to think that she killed her brother at the end. That both siblings were trying to kill each other during the whole story. caroxab said: havelock said: so the one girl who dissappeared without graduating, was the on one who was miscarried, huh but were the problems they were trying to solve the ones of their previous life, or something that awaits them when they're going to live? SPOILERS yes.. basically she wasn't strong enough to be born (if that makes any sense to you)... i think the class was a kind of a test, to see who was strong enough to be alive/born (remember the part where the nurse asks ichigo if she/he has any recollection or memory of the past, before she had her first period.. and she realizes that she doesn't) That's rather depressing to think about. No wonder the nurse was so desperate for her to come back to the class. It'd be really interesting to read this again after learning everything. I wonder if there's any significance to Thursdays in Japan when it comes to childbirth. So.... does the moon represent the mother dilating...? |
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| I really liked the ending! But I think it took too many chapters to get there. |
| What a great series. :) I like how it the ending was pretty open. Throughout the manga you could interpret a lot of things differently. I'm glad she picked to be a girl. ^_^ |
| HEY! |
| ....UAU. |
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MoreThanLife said: most.... epic.... manga.... ever.... I FCKING LOVED IT first manga to ever really truly make me cry... and to make me so frustrated that I bit my pillow until it ripped... truly amazing... that's how i feel , it kept me n my toes .plus my heart feels so weird i don't even know how to feel ,im messed up coz i just finished it this second , and after knowing everything i want t read it again coz i stopped for a while and read it back in my head and i was like hah :0 NO WAY ....WAIT AND THE ... HUH? OMG .. TT _TT i hope they wld find happiness , im so sad coz the guy part died ,i kinda liked him i wished that both of them wld had lived ,but that's what the story rly was about . and i was shocked about Sou's past and sister , that made me want to give him a hug lol i loved this manga and no manga made me feel like this since i read the Deep Love series .that was deep lol ,and a lil when i read Variant im just a bowl of emotions now damnit ,but i don't know how to cry :( i wish i cld ,maybe that helps ...anyhooo when i was reading this i kept thinking about it ..in school at home . and everywhere , i even gave my dog a hug coz he lokes like Sou in the dream lol well i hope they cld find happiness , all of them :3 |
SAYA_13May 16, 2012 4:30 PM
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| The ending ... *speechless* ^^|| |
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| This really was a great series. Female Mashiro at the end looks much better than male/female Mashiro throughout the series. This series has lots of potential for spin-offs to cover all the alternate universes that take place. Too bad that seems unlikely at this point. My biggest complaint is that some of the earlier graduations truly had no relevance in the plot. Because everyone completely forgets the people who graduate, it felt like some large portions of the plot became unimportant or pointless. Also, now that I finished the manga, I don't think the Horror genre fits this at all. The beginning is only slightly creepy because you don't know whats happening, but everything becomes normal by the end. EDIT: This manga was one of the first manga I've ever read. Four years later and hundreds of generic manga later, I decided to reread this work and I am not disappointed at all. It is rare for a manga to have such a steady build-up and come to a clean conclusion. The simple yet vague plot of this manga is one of the reasons I took on manga-reading as one of my hobbies. I wish half of the manga I read are as interesting as this one. |
PurpleYamAug 20, 2016 2:39 PM
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| Wow I don't read that many manga's but I'm glad I choose to read this one. I admit that 10 volumes might be a bit long but I don't think it's dragged out, just very detailed and it showed how conflicted Mashiro was. I loved the ending, I kind of had a bad feeling about what lies behind the door but it turned out to be better than I expected. I never could've guessed this would be a "before live" story, I'd thought of the possibility of it being a sort of "pre" heaven but not "pre" birth place. What I don't understand is why everything crumbled when Mashiro was about to graduate...? I mean, was that whole world just made for him and it collapsed after he left that place? So everyone he met there were just "spirits" guiding him in the right direction? |
| wow..okay. interesting indeed..... originally, i was gonna just read the beginning and the end but now i'm motivated to look into the middle. putting it on hold for now! |
Animefanx3 said: * 2 years later *Wow I don't read that many manga's but I'm glad I choose to read this one. I admit that 10 volumes might be a bit long but I don't think it's dragged out, just very detailed and it showed how conflicted Mashiro was. I loved the ending, I kind of had a bad feeling about what lies behind the door but it turned out to be better than I expected. I never could've guessed this would be a "before live" story, I'd thought of the possibility of it being a sort of "pre" heaven but not "pre" birth place. What I don't understand is why everything crumbled when Mashiro was about to graduate...? I mean, was that whole world just made for him and it collapsed after he left that place? So everyone he met there were just "spirits" guiding him in the right direction? It was a hospital right? And everyone else who was still there died in the fire or something. Which is why I'm confused why Sou was still there in the real world, since he should've been dead. |
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| ohhh man, i'm gonna have to think about this one and maybe re-read it when i have time before i score it (although the fact that it's re-readable probably says enough about it as at least a decently interesting manga) it's been bugging me this entire manga and as big of an ikuhara fan as i am, i just like SENSED through little bits and pieces and (likely intentional) hints scattered throughout chapters, that this was going to not just be a half reality half dream fantasy but a full-blown, everything's-vague-and-a-metaphor Utena-esque type of ending. and for the most part, i was right, and i'm still unsure if that's what i wanted this story to be, but now that i'm thinking back on all the themes and meanings it really does make the most sense and i'm not sure why i wanted that typical everything gets solved and is normal and happy type of ending when it was so clear it wasn't gonna be that type of shoujo. it gave me that painful sort of feeling with the way it ended, an unresolved sadness i tend to feel about shows that stick with me for a while (and i'm sorry i keep on bringing ikuhara up but it's super similar to how i felt when i finished utena and penguindrum). there were certainly elements and plot lines that i don't think needed to be there at all for the sake of the true intentions of the story, but i really have to at least commend the writing for how carefully ahead of time twists were planned because the surprise factor paid off. not at all expecting many of these specific twists to go the way that they did, especially the final reveal that mashiro's life at the school was all just a pre-birth purgatory-esque test type thing? maybe i'm missing some key parts of this, and maybe i'm supposed to be confused/ things were left open intentionally, but in my understanding all of the students (at least the ones who took part in the dream class) are all individual cases of having to make some type of choice or realization before birth, and i suppose that's why they forget their past experience in exchange for their birth, and vice versa as to why graduations caused other students to forget the 'alumni' since they're not in that world anymore. but really, mashiro's the only one who's decision makes sense, it's the ultimate sort of pre-birth stage where you're not male or female and somehow that fate is decided, and this is a fantasy imagining of that, i get that. but kureha and sou and the others? if the school setting is all a test and their memories are fake, what are their trials supposed to be? if kureha was never raped/ wasn't born yet to see her mother abused and hate men, why would those be her memories? and if sou wasn't born yet to a family that ended up neglecting him why would he conjure up a fake possessive sister to cope with something that hadn't really happened to him yet? i guess my only theory that would make he other characters' lives and motives for being there that makes sense to me is this: somehow our fates and destinies are predetermined and whatever powers that be know them to be what will happen to the child in question. therefore this pre-life fetal purgatory whateverthehell test is created, with the future memories serving as a past that child thinks they already experienced, as a test to individuals who are known to have a rough part of life ahead of them, to see if they'd be able to deal with it and still live their lives happily/resolved. so essentially, to see if they're strong enough to be born. to be born in that world is to graduate, and everyone's past and darker/hidden problems are the same problems they would maybe experience in the future, so the whole point of the dream school is for students to be born with a strong enough will to survive life. for example the senpai/ president of the judo club, at the end of his journey when he graduated he came to accept that when he's born he's going to be pressured by his wealthy upbringing to behave a certain way and assimilate into this high society he doesn't feel he belongs in but must do to inherit his dad's company. the test was a countermeasure by this purgatorial world to see that, should he be born, he'd be strong enough to endure this without losing sight of his true self/personality dreams, and he clearly shows his realizations before he graduates. and it makes sense that in mashiro's case, the memories are so few since s/he was described as a 'unique case' whose fate changed when her mother experienced the emergency c-section after the accidental fire and only one twin could be born, thus mashiro herself either decided to be born female, or simply realized that it was already destiny all along and she just had to accept it and let her male counterpart die/remain unborn or whatever happened there. since everyone else's fates weren't altered to mashiro's extent, their memories were full up to adolescence and their big decisions were usually of a personality or family related kind of theme. but mashiro didn't have those experiences, thus her big obstacle was her own existence and the gender she would have to live as, and being born as what was supposed to be a twin knowing you were born the day your sibling died and whether whatever twin survived was going to be strong enough to essentially live for the both of them. the more i think about it the more i appreciate this story and realize it was never half-assed to begin with, this was all beautifully done (..... IF i'm even analyzing this all as it's intended to be......). if we keep going off of this theory, then cases such as the girl who skipped three classes and disappeared are essentially why miscarriages happen in the real world - the child isn't 'strong' enough to be born, which is pretty fucking heartbreaking.i wonder how an abortion would look in this world, or a kid that's born with a mental or physical problem? i guess now my only question is why, if this is a world for every other not yet born person with a difficult life ahead of them, why did the world and its inhabitants seem to crumble when mashiro was about to graduate? sou and kureha were just about ready to resolve their own problems and be born/reset so why would everything disappear with mashiro?? i'm gonna just assume that it's only like that from mashiro's point of view since we see a reborn sou on the train with all-female mashiro at the very end, so it must mean that he eventually made it to graduation too... wow sorry that was longer than i'd expected and no one's likely to read it now that the manga's been long over, i basically analyzed my own questions for myself there. not sure if i'm completely off the mark but i don't think it matters with this type of genre of manga, where things are left so vague that it's practically inviting us to interpret its meaning on our own. definitely gonna consider re-reading this someday. |
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Pknoctis said: Animefanx3 said: * 2 years later *Wow I don't read that many manga's but I'm glad I choose to read this one. I admit that 10 volumes might be a bit long but I don't think it's dragged out, just very detailed and it showed how conflicted Mashiro was. I loved the ending, I kind of had a bad feeling about what lies behind the door but it turned out to be better than I expected. I never could've guessed this would be a "before live" story, I'd thought of the possibility of it being a sort of "pre" heaven but not "pre" birth place. What I don't understand is why everything crumbled when Mashiro was about to graduate...? I mean, was that whole world just made for him and it collapsed after he left that place? So everyone he met there were just "spirits" guiding him in the right direction? It was a hospital right? And everyone else who was still there died in the fire or something. Which is why I'm confused why Sou was still there in the real world, since he should've been dead. I'd like to know it too, why is Sou still there in the real world since he should've been dead? I don't mind he's alive, though, I really liked his character...xD |
| Hmm... The author used two interesting concepts ( showing what people's real self is like + the purgatory before birth thing) but I'm not sure they worked so good together.I think she should've picked one and elaborate it more. Overall it was okay, even if I felt like the romance part was dragging for too long. I really liked the reveal of armor's identity and the pseudo schizophrenia twist. |
| this has been on my plan to read list for something like three years now and i'm glad i finally got around to reading it. like someone mentioned earlier, i was really expecting graduation to be a far more ominous thing, so i'm relieved it seems to actually be the other way around. sou with glasses at the end looked trippy af though-- plus i was assuming since the last few kids were like "looks like we aren't graduating yeet" that they wouldn't be born, so what's up with him? i'll take it though. even if it turned out to be one long ass extended metaphor for twins fighting for life etc it was my first time seeing an intersex character in a manga and that was neat. will definitely be recommending this to friends just for the hell of it, good stuff |
Good at offending and bad at letting things slide. |
| This manga was a enjoyable ride. Not just the twists but even before the big reveal it works as a romance/“death game” combo taken at face value. I am left with some questions, so a re-read might be in order to judge how well everything actually ties in. A very crazy Jacob’s Ladder-esque ending. |
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| Wait what? They weren't even born yet? Bro I was completely convinced that they were all dead and going to the afterlife for like 30+ chapters. I get how Mashiro's dilemma makes more sense within this context, but literally none of the other characters' stories mean anything with this ending. Very disappointed. The twists and emotional highs of this manga impressed me, but knowing that they're all fetuses and their traumas haven't even happened makes it all just seem pointless. Settling on a 6 or maybe a 7 |
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| Such an interesting manga! I was hooked all from beginning till the end. Never read anything quite like this. As someone who doesn’t read a lot of shoujo, this totally exceeded my expectations. I didn’t think this type of story would be covered in this demographic. I wish this was talked about more, I’m sure a lot of people would be so intrigued even if they don’t end up liking it at the end. I’m rating this a seven for now. Some moments I absolutely adore, whereas others I... don’t know what to feel? Like the ending for example. Is it Genius? Dumb? Both at once? However, I loved every character! They’re all full of depth and I loved the problems they faced. Also how the supernatural theme was used to tackle those problems was a real treat. I definitely will always remember this aspect of the story. What I found iffy though was some of the romance plot. Maybe it’s my disinterest in romance in general talking, but I found the whole romance dilemma between Sou and Kureha to be quite annoying. Maybe if the romantic aspect was replaced by a more familial bond I would’ve liked it more. Like Mashiro simply being a sister for Sou, and Mashiro also just being a close friend for Kureha in the end. Aside from that, this truly is a rare gem that more people should read! I will definitely give this a re read in the future. |
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