Note: I am not trying to dog on the manga, this is just something that WILL frustrate people and they deserve a warning.
Art: The art style of Ozaki Koari is amazing, the colour pages are perfection and the warmth practically radiates off of the page dragging you into the cozy feeling she tries to build with her work.
The anatomy is generally well done, I've yet to see a wonky eye or misshapen hand.
Her style is very Anohana/Your name but distinctly set in the 2010's which does set her apart when reading some of the newest stuff from around the time the English translation dropped.
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Story/Characters: I didn't see much issue with the first few chapters of 'Golden Sheep' - the story had Ozaki's weird obsession with having young boys obsess over boobs and a lot of the story was pretty solid in terms of set up and execution. We get introduced to our 'Main four' of Tsugu, Sora, Yuushin and forgettable charact- I mean Asaki. The group are pretty divided into bullies vs bullied within the first few chapters and very quickly establishes a status quo that the story should follow - before smacking that out of the park and hitting someones car.
Tsugu is literally the best character in this manga; she's complex with motivations and emotions that resonate with a lot of young adults and teens that really make you want to see her happy, a genuinely fun character to watch in every panel and is all around an actual good representation of a "bubbly" teenager without diving into stereotypes too much. I have absolutely no complaints about her, she;'s perfect and I only really have a complain with how she feels less like a character by the end of the story and more like a filler love interest for Sora.
Sora is overall just really boring, he fits that self-insert quota for young Japanese men and the story definitely forfeits some autonomy for Tsugu to further Sora's character. I think out of all the characters his character arc is the best of them all, going from a boy who struggled to even say a word about being bullied to bravely standing up for his friend against someone who'd tormented him for years. Which speaking of -
Yuushin is the biggest piece of scum on this side of the manga world - he's got trauma, that's for sure, but his actions far out way the defence. He actively torments Sora for failing to notice a cry for help and he does so by literally feeding him to the wolves at every opportunity he gets for around a few years. He actively uses the dog that they all found as kids to lure Sora out and literally says "jump off this bridge and die and I won't beat up your dog". He's generally a pretty big douche to even the character's he's "nice" too and the worst crime of all, because he literally commits a crime, is the fact he sexually assaults Asaki. You heard me, he assaults her - while also knowing that she loves him. It's gross, it's disgusting and I genuinely want to actually throw up every single time I think of that.
My biggest gripe with all of these actions though is the fact that Ozaki glosses over it all, she has this boy literally SA a girl and then pretends like he's some wayward soul just doing a small oopsie and not a depraved psycho that committed a literal crime. He gets no slap on the wrist, no consequences to his actions and when Asaki see's him again, AFTER BEING SA'ed BY HIM, she doesn't react with disgust, or fear or even anger. It's like it never happened.
Asaki is alright, I genuinely only really began rooting for her because of the SA situation but she's also not that great. She actively excludes Tsugu because she 'gets pally' with Yuushin which is just? Huh??? And what sucks for her is she doesn't get much time to actually develop - she's barely a member of the main cast and honestly feels like an added extra to the group rather than a character that is important to these """friend""""
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Overall: I think this is a problematic manga - it glosses over some really heinous actions and Ozaki has a weird obsession with randomly putting weird sexual actions/intents on teenagers and it's just a bit weird? I think if you can enjoy this good for you, but truly it does nothing to actually deepen it's narrative and all of the plot is surface level at best.
