Kimi no Iru Machi
A Town Where You Live

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This MANGA.

It's so good and, at the same time, so bad.

What makes it so bad? Well, let's go straight to the point─the story got too good too early. Yes, what makes it good is also what makes it bad (there's some Yin-Yang shit for ya).

Kimi no Iru Machi (or A Town Where You Live) is good drama. No denying. But the part where the writing was at it's prime happened too early in the story so I understand that to follow up an act like that is difficult. But Seo Kouji had the option of ending the series right there instead of prolonging this shit. ... So what happens is the experience, the praise, and the respect that you have with this manga are now replaced with meaningless fillers and fan services. If you're okay with that, then fine. That's your business. But that's not okay with me.

I was close to dropping this manga because the story got too boring in some parts.

I mean, sure, yeah, there are some arcs after "that particular arc" that talks about the ACTUAL STORY but when you realize that this happened after "that arc", it'll just feel inferior and that's a damn shame.

I'm sure right now you feel I'm over hyping you about this '"arc" and how it is superior among other arcs. I'm sorry. Results may vary.
(Edited: For those of you who are wondering, I'm talking about the "Tokyo Arc" here; the one the anime was focused on. And of course, the "better" part is everything before Volume 16.)

But let's talk about the good stuff now. KNIM is packed with a lot of plot twists. Some mild and some heavy which will leave you in the edge of your seats. I also like the amount of realism this manga has. It's one of the few things the didn't waver even after the series went downhill.

And the art. MAN, the art.

The amount of details in the eyes of these characters (especially the girls) is insane. Even to the point that it's..... creepy. I don't know if that's a standard to Shoujo mangas (even though it's not a Shoujo manga). I don't read them.

And the BGs are aces. Kudos to you, Seo-san.

It's kinda sad how this manga could have been better of what it is right now had it not been stretched out. But even though that it's been through shit, I still acknowledge this as one of the best that I've read. The emotional roller coaster this series has makes it seem worth it even though at times, you wish you were reading another manga. But regardless, I do recommend you checking this one out.

Kimi no iru machi is a manga that will pass to history not because of its beauty, but cause of the original yet weird ideas from its mangaka. First one third of the manga was really enjoyable, quite a nice story between the two main characters developing a relationship while struggling with some typical high school problems and family issues. Romance on this part of the manga was really good, quite a cute story. After that is when the story took a very twisted turn. Perhaps as an attempt to make it more dramatic and interesting, the mangaka came up with a very interesting ... and original new love triangle. This might be the very first manga where the main character, Haruto a guy, gets stolen by his love rival; yeah, you heard me right, he, not his girlfriend, gets stolen by the other guy. I guess love lost against friendship on this part of the manga. If you have ever heard the phrase "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer," well, this manga took that phrase to a new level. Later on, after those events, the manga became a slice of life centered on what Haruto wanted to do in the future. I do enjoy slice of life mangas, but the problem with KNIM was that it was only in the perspective of Haruto, who was never such an interesting character to follow, and not to mention that the romance part was barely present and lost its quality. Haruto struggles for about half of the manga about what to do for a living, even did weird things that went completely against his character, like breaking up with his girlfriend for a random job he got, only to end up becoming, what was really clear since the very beginning of the manga, a chef.

Art was really good, perhaps the only talent and strength of its mangaka, but even the art also lost a bit of quality towards the end. Towards the end, the heads of the characters had a weird shape at the top, they look a bit like the Coneheads but with hair.
Charaters of KMIN, what can I said about them, they lack development. They fail to show any maturity at the end of the manga. I would even venture to say they were more mature at the beginning than at the end. Sure the mangaka came up with the really great idea to just make other characters say "yeah, you have grown" as prove of their development, but their actions still showed otherwise. Something very funny is how most people did not like the main characters at the end of the manga. The choices taken by the main characters were never that popular nor understood by the readers.

Anyway, If somebody decides to venture and read Kimi no Iru Machi, I would suggest read just the first one third of the manga, when they become an official couple, and then drop it and just read the final chapter. And if you do that just ignore the helmet at the end.

There's probably one question that you'll continue to ask yourself in this series. How is this guy so popular with the ladies?

Story

This is a manga about the relationship between our central characters Haruto, a country bumpkin from hiroshima, and Yuzuki, a city girl from tokyo. Basically the story is about how Yuzuki comes into Haruto's life and causes a bunch of problems for him. Say for example, Haruto has a crush on a girl, she will clumsily get in the way of that in a rather silly fashion. However despite the interference, Haruto can't help but not leave her alone.

Overall the first ... part of the story is relatively decent I must say in terms of shounen romance plots. Nothing is terribly original, but it's paced well and the setting helps keep the story a little fresh. However this only occurs for the first part.

Without spoiling anything the story is branched into 4 seperate arcs. While the first is relatively strong, the remaining 3 are where the series heads down hill. The second arc for example introduces some very illogical drama. Now to be fair, the characters are young and inexperienced so this kind of behavior can be expected. However the problem is, none of the characters ever explain their actions, and none of them ever seem to grow from them. It makes the characters lack layers and makes it difficult to sympathize with them.

The following 2 arcs are mainly filler as the core story is done after the second arc. Mostly filled with fanservice and plot threads that seem like they might build up to something good, but never really go anywhere. This part of the manga is obviously for people who really like to see a couple be together. As fanservice, it is passable at times. But it's dragged out far too long, making the series become rather static and boring. I wouldn't mind it being a straight slice of life if it had been that way since the beginning. The final arc even proceeds to have a very cop out ending which I am very much against in story telling. So all in all, it started out decent and then tinkered off and became rather lifeless.

Characters

The characters are fairly decent at first. Not that they are terribly interesting, but still semi-believable. The main problem is how their growth is handled. It's never apparent to the audience that the main characters are growing up in any fashion, but other characters might have to point it out for you. This is against the "show but don't tell" aspect of storytelling and it makes it seem like the manga is trying too hard to prove that it actually developed it's characters. It will also use time skips liberally to tell you that characters have developed off screen, which would be ok as long as we got to see some of the development.

The biggest problem is of course the handling of the side characters. Not only are most pointless, but there are far too many, and little respect is given to them. Keep in mind that everything in this manga takes place from Haruto's perspective. So we never get to see any of the characters outside of their time interacting with him. This can be done well, if you limit the amount of characters and focus the time well on the main lead. But here it just feels like an excuse not to develop any of them properly. Funny enough, most of them develop far more than our main leads technically. However it's all done offscreen and we never get to see any of it. Also some characters just blatantly get written out of the story, which shows that the author hardly even cares about most of them.

Most of the women are introduced as just harem fodder unfortunately. It seems that no matter what, whenever Haruto goes to something new in his life (new college group, job hunting, part time job, etc) a new girl will be waiting. Unfortunately with the combination of the first person perspective and the fact that they are given very limited chapters, it just begs the question on why they are introduced at all. Especially when Haruto is already in a relationship at these points so introducing further women to be distractions is all but pointless (as you can bet, every single one of them falls in love with Haruto). Now it's a common trait in harem manga to have a lot of girls. But that's most effective "before" the relationship starts, rather than after.

Enjoyment

Like said before. At first it was enjoyable, but then it just got downright boring for me. Though I can understand some people like couple chapters, but I still think it was done in supreme excess. Also not a big fan of cop out endings like said before, so the drama eventually just felt forced and pointless with no real meaning attached to it. Which would be ok if it was entertaining, but I can't really say I feel that way about KNIM.

Honesly there are better romance/ecchi manga's to waste your time on then this if you ask me.