For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed this manga for its realism in characters and their approaches to difficulties; however, the realism made the manga a bit of a grind to read accompanied by the clustered panels of words and the crude artstyle that caused some forms of disengagement in the overall storytelling.
The plot of this manga was quite nice no matter how one-dimensional the approach was — the plot was just a fulfillment of events, one challenge at a time, without much thought into the next development. Later on in the chapters, the manga has more depth in the storylines, but this also came with a lot of naughts.
Let me get into the real negative about the realistic approach in the plot: info-dump galore. Though the manga is slow and paced with real-life challenges and issues — old age, future struggles, interpersonal relationships — every time it has been mentioned in the manga, a chapter or two were used to simply explain the concept with enough words to cover a novel. Obviously speaking, this isn’t the most enjoyable time as a reader, and most of the information felt unnecessary for how time-consuming it was to read. There are some niches here and there where the manga employed some profound details into the world; however, it was accompanied by a lot of useless and forgettable information.
The characters of this manga are similar to the plot — realistic. Of course, this comes with some cons in there details and inconsistencies, but they were for the most part quite well-written by being sensible in actions and developments opinion wise — not everything falls in the lap of the mc, and if they do, it makes sense on why. Though, this also comes with a lot — and I stress a lot — of side characters who are only there to help the mc — there is no real challenge, enemy, rival, etc. besides for a bad premonition in the future, which doesn’t raise the stakes that much.
With the characters, I can’t stress enough about how crude the artstyle is. I know it’s bad and unethical to judge a story for its artstyle, since it is mostly subjective and uncontrollable, but the art for this manga really made it hard for differentiation in characters and the subsequent development of said characters. To be honest, because of the unimpressionable art, most of the characters and their developments are forgettable, and there are A LOT of lookalike characters that makes my brain hurt trying to remember their different personalities, etc.
If not for the constant info-dumps and the lackluster art style, this manga could’ve been much, much more enjoyable than it could have, but each panel was more grueling to read than rewarding due to how much I had to focus on the differentiation and engagement panel by panel. As far as challenging realistic issues go, this is one of the best of its kind; but it was overshadowed by my former complaints.
You guys know this is just my opinion, right?
Reading Rankings (Portnoy inspired + A Huang-Teizan Original)
10 - God’s penmanship
9 - Must-read. Drop everything else.
8 - Instant bookmark
7 - Entertaining
6 - Good to pass time
5 - Why are you reading this?
4 - Bad.
3 - Typical garbage.
2 - My head hurts.
1 - Retirement is a thought.
0 - “Did they even give you a story?!”
