Mimi's manga / #Pan/Bi/Demi character(38)

What in the God damn did I just read? I had a feeling that S&N would be at the bottom of my list but I didn't know that it would piss me off this much. I trusted you, Nagisa. Update: ... Why did I trust Nagisa? I've only really liked 2 books from her and one of them was above "fine" and the other was average at best. Everything else was either the worst version of what we already wrote or pissed me off to hell and back.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA so anyway, this book gave me a migraine because of how much dread I've felt reading it. It’s been a very long time since I've read something this heavy in atmosphere, and yet, it still felt different than something like CUT or Ito-san. In the middle of chapter two I needed to sit the book down and take a nap after about an hour because I was already feeling so anxious Alan that it made me fucking tired. I’ve been looking for exactly this feeling for months! The hurt/comfort here was like Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas morning. I was bawling my eyes out, I was fucking miserable caring so hard about two fictional characters! I was having the time of my life reading this. One of my main setbacks, though, was the high levels of religious preaching coming from ... everywhere. I get it, it was his upbringing and a huge part of the story. I think it's because my Baptist upbringing was never a negative one and I just have to remember that not everyone’s religious experience is that fortunate. The other thing was the age gap situation. It's very well known that Alan is 17 when they first met. Hayden's, however, is very rocky. He's either between 18 (turning 19 that year) to 21 and the thought that he was 19 or 20 looking at Alan that way bothers me a little more than the religious talk. That being said, 17 was the legal age in Texas in 1999... Plus, it started in winter and Alan most likely have been 18 for some months by the time any romance started between them. Also, the little note at the end talking about how everyone was legally above age is funny to me because I’ve never seen that disclaimer at the end of a BL before. It still just felt weird to me,

2.5 I'll whine about it later but to the ppl/person who tagged this was "plot twist" what plot twist??? Here plot twist??? However, to the ppl/person who put "bigoted seme" i love you --- Aki exuding misogyny? It is a BL after all. And he's homophobic? It is a BL after all. I know my main problem with this story was Aki himself. He’s written in a way where the author knows he’s pretty unlikeable, kind of a dick, and that’s the point. However, they also want you to care about what he was saying, sympathize with his story, and basically redeem his shittyness by the end... Kind of hard for me to do when I wasn’t given a reason to. The guy just sucks. Throughout the whole story, he is just an asshole, an asshole to Umi, an asshole to women in general. I didn’t like how he strung Umi around even though he knew by chapter 4 that he was feeling something, and yet he was still being a little shit even in the last chapter. Him being so stand-off-ish to Umi but also dangling the possibility of a relationship in his face to the point where Umi looks more confused than happy at the end of chapter 7 made me want to scream. Something about Umi constantly apologizing really pissed me off because he had nothing to apologize for. There was a bit at the end where Aki apologized himself for how he acted towards Umi but it wasn’t enough and it didn’t change how he kept acting for the rest of the chapters. The part where we all just... dodged the fact that Umi was almost sexually assaulted but Aki was still being stubborn despite Umi explaining what was just happening. I’m not looking over that, what the fuck? You want to make a shit character, fine, but don’t think that chapter 7 was enough to make me go “aww, that was so sweet. they kissed! aww” like I haven’t wanted to punch Aki in the face for the last 16 days. You had 7 chapters. And for 5 of them, I've felt like we've been saying the same thing. The story hardly moved. This doesn't make me want to read seaside strangers.

3.5 will add to this later

Started - 12/21/25 || Paused - 12/26/25 || Dropped - 03/15/25 || I didn't want to drop nor put this on hold especially since there's another sorry in here, but this book put me in a reading slump that's starting to piss me off. I don't like Minami, I don't care about the story, don't care about the couple, and really can't stand the art style. All of this doesn't make me want to continue, but I just dropped the manga before last and I don't want to do that again so soon. The gang stuff is whatever. I didn't care for it but I also didn't really mind it, it wasn't the main part of the book so I can deal. What really made this difficult for me (besides the art) was just Minami himself. He's moving way too fast for Sakurada who's obviously trying to become more comfortable with being with a guy. Hell, in a relationship in general, to be honest. But it doesn't read like Minami's is considering that most of the time. It's kind of annoying and disgusting, really not making me like Minami at all. I also thought that their first couple's conflict was just fucking stupid. I don't know, even though this is going on hold, I may just end up dropping it. This worries me because I have a couple more manga from this author on my TBR that I'm now not eager to get to. Edit 03/16 - I'm not coming back to this.

Started 12/19 || Ended 12/21 Idk, Goodreads' 2.50 kinda feels too low. It wasn't that bad and I'll add all my thoughts a lot later.