Responses
yeah i kinda like how mundane and natural and dialogue is; also i have been trying to guess the demographic magazine of the manga i read these days by looking at the panelling and i am assuming this is a seinen...?
ouahgghrhgagaihgahgahh..... uagrhdhhuggaga.... uuuurghhhhhh.... hold on shawty (zaijian countdown [2024] by amai moca) im tryna figure out how to spell georges.
like writhing aside, this piece of work is simply so beautiful. do not let it go understated just how much well illustrated backgrounds and settings contribute in shaping the atmospheric feel of a manga/manhwa/manhua. tingyu and akki cutting up the watermelon in akki's kitchen, and akki sitting down on his bed facing tingyu's sleeping form in chapter 1? the bookstore and the restaurant in chapter 2? simply gorgeous! (also may i. humbly recommend park jiyeon's works, of wolf in the house, momentum, and incidentally dyed by spring's love fame, if you are looking for atmospheric works - momentum and incidentally dyed by spring's love specifically :) )
anyways, the melancholic yearning just seeps out of the pages... there's such a cinematic quality to this piece of work, most likely because there are so many scenes drawn here that look like they could be cinematography shots with excellent and deliberate mise-en-scene. even though it's only 3 chapters in, i can already picture the wong kar wai dreamy haziness this would have if it ever gets adapted onto the silver screen in my perfect vision.
the restraint in the writing accompanied by just how expressive the art is really helps communicate to the readers the heart of the emotions that the characters feel in such a gutwrenching way - even though only snippets and afterthoughts of what the characters are thinking and feeling are actually put into words, the loneliness, the yearning, the sadness, the longing... the DISTANCE that the characters feel, it's all captured in such a painfully exquisite manner through the art in a way that makes you feel it so acutely too. once you notice it, you just can't help but be constantly aware of the space that lingers in between akki and tingyu. the distance between them is never really all that far apart, but it also never really gets closed or goes away either - moments where they close the distance happen few and far between, sometimes even in split-seconds, and there's always a retracting happening, always superseded by a moment that emphasizes the distance afterwards. this space isn't just felt through the writing of the characters' relationship, it's also driven home by the art during really atmospheric moments, moments that would leave the most impact on the reader. moments i mentioned in the earlier paragraph actually - all of them had akki and tingyu drawn with space between them. the distance is just so emblematic of akki and tingyu's relationship, of a closeted gay japanese man living in japan, and his chinese former-exchange student best friend who can only fly into japan from china for a week once a year because he has to take care of his sick family member back home. as a reader, all of this culminates into this really bittersweet feeling that ebbs and flows like waves on the beach :")
all in all... absolutely no notes from me. it's sublime. it's exquisite. it's a work that really utilizes the medium of the manga, a storytelling medium combining art and writing, in the most ideal way for me. perfect execution, 10/10, tingyu the mega malewife and akki the yearner supreme you will be sticking around in my mind.