There are a couple people who change very drastically in the manga by just how serious the manga becomes. Haruhi is pretty much the down to earth girl of the anime and manga but even in the manga, she has times when she makes large leaps in her personality and I fell in love with her more in the manga then in the anime. She just seems to have a lot more character with her emotions then the rather bland character they tried to portray her as in the anime. During times, you do find out that she really is a girl, with real girly feelings and every once in a while, she does tend to think about romance or looking cute. She at times feels a little similar to Tamaki in how stupid she can be (maybe the right words would be dunce to feelings actually) but her heart is in the right place.
The twins are the next ones I want to talk about but I really can’t without spoiling so much! The characters change so drastically that you would not be able to even imagine how different they are from start to finish but you have to read it or I will spoil it. That or you would not understand any of it at all.
Tamaki changes a lot too, and again, sadly the only thing I can say is that he ‘grows up’ and I can’t believe I’m going to say this but I love him even more for the changes that happen. I could just not let go the idea that Tamaki grew up at all, and it pains me not being able to talk about it do to spoilers. Seriously, read the manga!
In fact, I think the only ones that don’t leap that far are Honey, Mori, and Kyouya. Honey and Mori seem to act much more like someone the characters can turn to in their time of need where as sadly, Kyouya seems to be left out at times. I know there are a few times he grows in the story but its not enough and makes me feel that he will never grow from what he is now. He feels like a static character where as Tamaki and the twins seem to jump from one thing to another very quickly. I wanted to see a little more of Kyouya but I didn’t get that.
The story was so deep at times that I had a hard time not crying and I actually did in the middle. Almost all of the drama that is in normal family life was there, from problems between siblings, to problems in the family, social status, and relationships. Some of these things were made a bit extreme for the fact it was about rich people but when you break the main point down, its stuff that we all have to go through at some point. I felt they did a rather wonderful job building up on these things and not giving us too much detail where the idea would be lost. Near the end of the books, they also had special chapters to show what happened after the story finished, and talked about what would happen in the future for the group. This helped close some of the questions that were left and also gave us just a bit more fun as the kids grew up. I love when stories tell us what happen after because we get to see the characters we have grown to love grow even more. I look forward to if Hatori-san makes a sequel or even just a side story book about their life growing up in collage even though I don’t think she will.
The artwork is pretty much what you would think of a Shojo style manga with beautiful men and even more beautiful hearts, flowers, and clothing designs. Sometimes we get something that is a little off for comedic affect but other then that, it’s a very well put together manga with the art style getting better and better as the volumes progress. As the story gets deeper, you actually get that feeling in the artwork and, just over all, it works.
