Recent manga

[halfcactus]

I've been on a massive shoujo/josei kick, and the dissatisfaction of reading purely for the distraction and instant gratification is finally setting in. I don't think I'm built for inhaling a stream of media back-to-back and at a breakneck pace. I can actually feel my brain rotting haha.

Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty: modern-day, romance, paranormal + found family
Manga by Morino Megumi (English translation: Kodansha)

I would describe this as "DID, but paranormal". Not sure if I liked it (I sure am not a fan of the main romance and the way the physical abuse is mostly just there to ramp up drama), but it's short, has an interesting twist towards the end and some very touching found family beats. I was bawling my eyes out in the last chapters. I found it refreshing that the ML is the maid in this scenario--he's a poor student who does domestic labor in order to support his family, good at taking care of people, and great with kids.

CW: mental illness-related trauma--the FL is imprisoned at home, has been forced to stay in facilities that did not help her, and it's implied that she sometimes endures physical assault so she "resets" to her main personality state.

Namidaame to Serenade (ongoing): time travel, historical - Meiji era, romance, adventure, crime, mystery
Manga by Kawachi Haruka

I mainly picked this up because it was giving me 2000s vibes, but I wasn't expecting it to get so dark.

This is a time travel romance adventure with MULTIPLE fake identity storylines that starts as a wild goose chase for a necklace—the item that the FL needs to travel back to the modern day—and then spins out into a whirlwind of interlocking conspiracies, with increasingly complex secondary characters. While the main characters and pairings aren't of particular interest, I did really enjoy the strength of their emotions, the intimate yearnings, and the overall writing.

The standout characters are definitely the 2ML and the relationships among the literal circus that he works with. The drama! The messy and problematic dynamics! The twists! The way everyone teeters between betrayal and personal loyalty! Most recently they've been building up Chiyo and Tenshin's relationship and I'm very much seated for that.

Manga is ongoing and only available as fantranslation. It looks like the finish line is in sight since they've gotten a lot of the major reveals out of the way, but the events in the past timeline still need a bit of a push...

CW: drugs, prostitution, human + child trafficking

Hello, I'm a Witch and My Crush Wants Me to Make a Love Potion!: fantasy, romance, fluff
Light novels by Mutsuhana Eiko (translated by Charis Messier / Cross Infinite World), with manga adaptation (translated by Alethea Nibley / Yen Press)

What it says on the tin: cute and fluffy fantasy romcom, and one where the ML is actually more fun and interesting than the MC because the ML at least has a consistent personality and is unafraid of punishing bad children. The MC is very inoffensively cute, but horribly undercooked as a character. We know that she "loves" the ML for the bare minimum of human decency, but she also has like... zero interactions, relationships, or emotions for anyone else. There's a traveling merchant who treats her as family (and is Viet-coded, which is really cool to see in a manga!), but the MC doesn't really have any feelings about that. Neither does MC have any feelings for her mother who died when she was super young or her grandmother who raised her and taught her all the recipes, though it is very sweet (and funny) whenever she compares the ML to her grandma. Otherwise, the ML cares more about these family figures more than the MC ever does.

The series benefits a lot from being short enough to hide the writer's weaknesses; the manga covers only volume 1 of the light novel and is more enjoyable for it since volume 2 kinda sucks. We do get some moments of the MC yearning for a grandma figure in volume 2, as well as confirmation that the MC had been decaying with depression after her grandma died, but all of the characters come out flatter with a plot forced in.

tl;dr - enjoyable as a manga (dialogue flows better too); the light novels don't add anything

Matcha Made in Heaven (DNF): modern-day, josei, romance
Manga by: Yamanaka Umebachi (English translation: Kodansha)

Created by the mangaka of Ossan's Love, which I haven't consumed in any form.

DNF. This is so bad and not even in a fun way!!! I should have followed my instincts and bailed the moment they introduced a calculatedly daughter-shaped character (designed to bring the leads together, of course).

Everything you learn about the FL at the beginning--that she is a yoga(?) instructor and wants her career to be respected, that she hates society's patriarchal and misogynistic culture, that she had a traumatic previous relationship, and that she grew up in a tea farm, is all irrelevant. At some point homegirl (who I reiterate was a fitness instructor before she moved back to the countryside) gets muscle cramps from doing physical labor at the farm and the ML has to come save her because she doesn't know how to deal with it. And her traumatic relationship backstory mostly functions as an excuse for her to... pass out aesthetically in the ML's arms. There's no indication that it affects her life in any other way, once the basic romantic setup is established.

As for the ML, he's a highly competent tea nerd, and to his credit he looks the part, but he has no business dating anyone, considering he is, what, 30-something years old? But never communicates anything or honors commitments to either his daughter figure or his business partner/girlfriend when those personal obligations become less convenient.

I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss: transmigration, otome game, fantasy, romance
Light novel by Nagase Sarasa / Manga by Murasaki Mai

Your typical wish-fulfillment transmigration romcom where a minor villainess has to romance the villain to survive, but the villain is not that bad, actually! Once again a generic European setting with fantasy elements. The FL is a highly competent noblewoman who has been jilted by the prince, while the ML is kind of a Disney princess and his magic can do all the things but he's also a demon king and a yandere.

The manga was short, only around 3 volumes? Again, the shortness is what makes it readable, since the art is pretty but the writing and plotting feel largely inconsistent... And one can see the creator's classist/colorist biases in the portrayal of Beelzebuth. AND there's this weird slavery storyline* that one is only able to glaze their eyes over because it then crashes into an attempted rape storyline.

There's an anime adaptation on Netflix but it seems both terrible as an adaptation and in animation quality.

"[Character] is good because he only chose to sell demons who consented to being sold as slaves!" - They could just have focused on the part where he was a literal child that got tricked by adults into signing things...

CW: attempted rape (+ the perpetrators are gently let off just because it's standard in these kinds of stories for villains to go unpunished)

Snow White with the Red Hair (DNF): fantasy, romance
Manga by: Akizuki Sorata

DNF; I missed out on the anime for this, which means I also missed the window where I could enjoy this. XD The FL is an aspiring herbalist who's set on getting by on her own merits, and the ML is a prince. Perfectly inoffensive manga, I just wasn't in the mood.

Usotoki Rhetoric: historical, mystery
Manga by: Miyako Ritsu

A charming little shoujo manga where the FL has the ability to hear whenever anyone tells a lie, and the ML is a talented but humorously penniless detective who owes a lot of people money. I haven't gotten far enough to have any real thoughts about it, but the early chapters had a mystery-of-the-day format that was quite weak but focused enough on the FL's character growth to keep me engaged. It's only started to pick up in the doll arc, which is where I am now. The case writing isn't anything special, but the story is cute, occasionally OTT, and so far pretty gen in a way that might attract fannish feelings from me.

CW: mild horror (dolls)

I was checking to see if there was an anime adaptation and found out that there's an ongoing jdrama adaptation that just started airing in October!

Colette Decides to Die: fantasy (Greek mythology), romance
Manga by: Yukimira Alto (translated by Max Greenway / VIZ)

Plot: Colette is the overworked apothecary of a tiny mountain village. Seeking respite from her work, she jumps down the well, discovers that it's a gateway to the underworld, and is asked to treat Hades the bishounen.

In spite of the morbid title this is quite wholesome. Most importantly, in this version, Cerberus reverts to puppy form every time he's hungry, which is super cute. It appears it only just got an official translation this month and is listed as having 2 volumes so I guess we'll see what comes out first - volume 2 of the English translation, or Hades 2. XD My main takeaway is that VIZ's digital manga has a functional table of contents.

Comments

[geraineon]

I read some of Snow White with the Red Hair and it was ... fine... I guess? It was so inoffensive and nice that I got bored but I'm sure it's a hit for people looking for that!

Namidaame to Serenade sounds interesting! (... my taste has been cultivated on 90s and 00s manga XD)