Mawaru Penguindrum · Completed 24/24 ・ Scored 8
love you Ringo, failgirl supreme. everybody else in the show: what are you doing?
hard show to rate. some great antics and character moments along the way, but almost just as many ones that were total nonsense. and the final moral we've worked towards delivering is actually just kind of...obvious? remember to share your food, folks.
Yuri Kuma Arashi · Re-watching 2/12 ・ Scored 8
I have no idea what is happening in this show but I guess I like it? god I don't know. I need to watch it again and take notes. what IS a bear? what does it MEAN to be invisible? it turns out the promised kiss was literal but was there more to it than that?
(Asenshi subs are the way to go, don't forget that)
rewatched: 2023-08-14 to
listen, if you ever need to book-club this, i'm your bear
Still Sick · Completed 26/26 ・ Scored 7
Technically I only finished reading on 2022-10-30, but I literally took a 5 month hiatus from reading when I had only two chapters left to go, because [TV static noises]. If you think this means it *really* took me 201 days to read this series then like, whatever. It can be that, to you. But I don't wanna see a number that big when only 42 days at the start and 1 day at the end were actually spent in any proximity to the act of reading.
Anyway let's talk about the book. Overall it is pretty fun! Probably worth an 8. However I did have some problems with the structure of the story and the way the manga was drawn/formatted, which all added up to negatively impact my experience enough that I feel this has to be bumped down to a 7. (On a re-read, where I know better what's meant to be going on, maybe it could one day recover.)
One of the big problems I ran into a lot was with the speech bubbles. Often I couldn't tell who was meant to be saying what, or when a sentence was only thought instead of spoken aloud. Conversations also read kind of jarring sometimes because asides weren't really well indicated and it felt like the topic was whipping around really quickly. That could be a translation issue, but the poor placement and pointing of the speech bubbles certainly isn't.
By comparison to some other manga I've read (esp. Bloom which I noticed was always really good with this), mid-chapter time jumps are *really* poorly indicated, often not at all. You just have to deduce over the course of the next several panels that we had just skipped ahead a few hours or days. This takes me out of the story when I have to puzzle over this. It should be made as obvious as possible.
[PLOT SPOILERS NOW]
I feel like Shimizu doesn't really end up reckoning with the fact she thought she didn't actually like girls? That was this big thing she made a point of in vol 1, and reiterates in vol 2, but kind of just, seems to get over in between chapters 10 and 11. From "I can't accept this" to "hmm but can I tell Maekawa that I might like her now?" which are *quite* different things! I really wanted to hear more about her thoughts getting between those points since it seemed like it would be a big deal to her, and I'm frustrated it didn't happen.
Chapter 19, where Maekawa is drafted into a random artist's studio for a night, is very weird and I feel like stretches my credulity to its limits. Maekawa somehow settles in to a project she's never seen before and suddenly is able to meaningfully organise people (something she doesn't actually seem to do at work) as well as contribute to getting it finished, all in a single night. She repeatedly thinks "what would Shimizu do?" and tries to do that, but I don't understand how that translates into her doing those things *well* on her first try! It's just too silly.
Of course, this chapter has secondary purposes, in forming a sort of "respectful friendship" template for Maekawa's new story, and then leading into Shimizu's mistaken reading of the situation based on her own festering insecurities, and that all being brought to a head. If we *have* to do a plot line about relationship insecurities exacerbated by comical mixups, then I have to admit this was a good setup. But I'd still prefer not to have done such a plot line at all since it is *so* clichéd, lol.
After that, though, seeing our couple together is very lovely. And Maekawa going to talk to her dad is a great chapter, and hits real good emotional payoff.
that "comical misunderstanding" thing irked me too! i was so glad it was resolved quickly. i do wonder how much confusion gets added in translation... i want to grab my copies and see how i feel about the points you made but they're in over in tokyo T_T anyways, glad you didn't hate it...!
All Comments (4) Comments
love you Ringo, failgirl supreme. everybody else in the show: what are you doing?
hard show to rate. some great antics and character moments along the way, but almost just as many ones that were total nonsense. and the final moral we've worked towards delivering is actually just kind of...obvious? remember to share your food, folks.
I have no idea what is happening in this show but I guess I like it? god I don't know. I need to watch it again and take notes. what IS a bear? what does it MEAN to be invisible? it turns out the promised kiss was literal but was there more to it than that?
(Asenshi subs are the way to go, don't forget that)
rewatched: 2023-08-14 to
Technically I only finished reading on 2022-10-30, but I literally took a 5 month hiatus from reading when I had only two chapters left to go, because [TV static noises]. If you think this means it *really* took me 201 days to read this series then like, whatever. It can be that, to you. But I don't wanna see a number that big when only 42 days at the start and 1 day at the end were actually spent in any proximity to the act of reading.
Anyway let's talk about the book. Overall it is pretty fun! Probably worth an 8. However I did have some problems with the structure of the story and the way the manga was drawn/formatted, which all added up to negatively impact my experience enough that I feel this has to be bumped down to a 7. (On a re-read, where I know better what's meant to be going on, maybe it could one day recover.)
One of the big problems I ran into a lot was with the speech bubbles. Often I couldn't tell who was meant to be saying what, or when a sentence was only thought instead of spoken aloud. Conversations also read kind of jarring sometimes because asides weren't really well indicated and it felt like the topic was whipping around really quickly. That could be a translation issue, but the poor placement and pointing of the speech bubbles certainly isn't.
By comparison to some other manga I've read (esp. Bloom which I noticed was always really good with this), mid-chapter time jumps are *really* poorly indicated, often not at all. You just have to deduce over the course of the next several panels that we had just skipped ahead a few hours or days. This takes me out of the story when I have to puzzle over this. It should be made as obvious as possible.
[PLOT SPOILERS NOW]
I feel like Shimizu doesn't really end up reckoning with the fact she thought she didn't actually like girls? That was this big thing she made a point of in vol 1, and reiterates in vol 2, but kind of just, seems to get over in between chapters 10 and 11. From "I can't accept this" to "hmm but can I tell Maekawa that I might like her now?" which are *quite* different things! I really wanted to hear more about her thoughts getting between those points since it seemed like it would be a big deal to her, and I'm frustrated it didn't happen.
Chapter 19, where Maekawa is drafted into a random artist's studio for a night, is very weird and I feel like stretches my credulity to its limits. Maekawa somehow settles in to a project she's never seen before and suddenly is able to meaningfully organise people (something she doesn't actually seem to do at work) as well as contribute to getting it finished, all in a single night. She repeatedly thinks "what would Shimizu do?" and tries to do that, but I don't understand how that translates into her doing those things *well* on her first try! It's just too silly.
Of course, this chapter has secondary purposes, in forming a sort of "respectful friendship" template for Maekawa's new story, and then leading into Shimizu's mistaken reading of the situation based on her own festering insecurities, and that all being brought to a head. If we *have* to do a plot line about relationship insecurities exacerbated by comical mixups, then I have to admit this was a good setup. But I'd still prefer not to have done such a plot line at all since it is *so* clichéd, lol.
After that, though, seeing our couple together is very lovely. And Maekawa going to talk to her dad is a great chapter, and hits real good emotional payoff.