Mimi's manga / #slice of life(131)

I felt like I had to reorganize my thoughts on this story. This was a less-than-average read for me sometimes. I really like the almost family-like dynamic between Maggie, Al, Ned, and Mary, they had this vibe of “we’ve been friends since first grade, we grew up together” and I loved that. I loved that Maggie knew about Ned’s feelings for Al and was here for them, I loved that they all were here for Maggie towards the end of the book. I loved the tension the book had at times! There are a lot of things about the stories and the characters and the backstory that interest me so much. But there was also something... something that held this back for me. I thought the Twinkle Twinkle Little Star bit was sweet in the context of what it was for until the author wanted me to take this song seriously and then it just felt corny. Even though I grew to enjoy their friendship, starting with Al flirting with both Maggie and Ned felt weird to me. It's just this "siblings who flirt with the same person and that person flirts with them both" is not my cup of coffee, to be honest. Chapter four felt kind of confusing to me the way it jumped around in the timeline. I just find it funny that some of the small things got to me enough because of how mundane and still this story was. There was this gloomy and heavy atmosphere that was almost perfect. I love the hurt. The comfort is cute. But some of the comedy made me roll my eyes and I will never get over how they tried to make Twinkle Twinkle Little Star important.

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,

From the tags to the cover art I was really hoping for something much, much more sad. Instead, it's just above average with a dash of frustration which is exactly how I like my manga, apparently... Funny enough, I didn’t really like how Naruse would explain to the reader why he broke up with Toui only because he would contradict himself one second and then become fully aware as to why he felt the way he did. His reasons for leaving are understandable to the point where even Toui knew himself, but they never really sat down and talked it through so when there came times when Naruse was in the wrong, Toui was the one to apologize for everything because he already knew his work ethic and lifestyle was a strain on their relationship and it pissed me off! They both are really good friends but not the best boyfriends to each other. On Toui's end, he's taking advantage of Naruse's kindness and depends on him too much, though not on purpose. Naruse felt underappreciated and taken advantage of so it's understandable why he'll want to break up. However, he also didn't try to communicate to Toui that this was how he felt so it's just been three fucking chapters of running around in circles leading to a chapter that just peeved me off just a little bit. Update: The above was written before chapter four and while I still stand by everything... Everything I yelled about got touched on in chapter four word for word but in a very 5/10 way. It could've been much more impactful leading up to the sex scene, but at least they did finally talked... At least we got a really beautiful wedding shot, the only thing that made me feel any emotion: two beautiful unnamed women getting married in chapter three page 26

It started off feeling like a bunch of nothing until it got to the point where they had to pretend not to know each other for work because no one knew about their relationship... That killed me to read because it's not like y'all can't be friendly and talk sometimes. Just don't be flirty with each other! That's my only annoyance with this story and it's only set up that way for the bigger conflict. A base that wasn't needed, it was just there to piggyback off the already dumb conflict that was there because just wouldn’t interact with each other as "just friends". So this whole book has this annoying underlying plot with a stupider plot on top of it. Shame because the two main characters are pretty cute together.

Kind of started out rocky on the first chapter for me, I didn't really like how Reiji was just a 5yd kid in an adult's body. Dude just said his apt doesn't allow pets, he lives on the second floor, and here's this grown ass man banging on the floor for him to take in the cat... I didn't like that. At least it got better and ended nicely. Even though it got cutter later on, I found that I really don't like when authors spend the whole book on the journey but only give us one chapter of them finally being together. It's different from a slow burn for me, I don't mind if it takes a while for the relationship to begin. It’s more of me wanting an extra one or two chapters of them dating instead of ending it immediately after they officially started dating. This was basically just fine. I would've loved a second volume of all three of them just being and living together. I've come to like Reiji and Koichi by the end but there wasn't enough to make them memorable to me.

... I’m so confused on this one. Kinda... Sorta? I'm pretty sure I forgot that was tagged as mature, but I didn't think that this was going to have this many sex scenes. It kind of ruined the actual story for me even though half of the plot was about Keppei's issues revolving around having sex with Keita. There are times in this manga that didn't need a sex scene, times when serious talking about Keppei's embarrassment and Keita's trauma would've been better... But instead, they fucked. It wasn’t like we didn’t get to see them talk about each other’s problems, it just wasn't enough and you could tell the author really wanted to put a sex scene in every chapter. There's also the fact that some of those scenes were with each other's 18yd selves and I hated that. It's just my age gape disgust that got in the way at times. This story was both really cute and very frustrating for me. I really loved the characters and I liked the premise but the time we spent reading them fuck felt wasted. On top of how it ended in six chapters, it was difficult for me to be happy about the proposal with the way chapter six went.

I'm sorry but I was really bored during the main story. I don't know, the story felt kind of stale but also cute. I just couldn't bring myself to care about either of them as much as I wanted to that when their conflict happened I didn't feel anything. It wasn't a bad story, I just didn't care. Now as for the 2nd story, I was giddy for more of Minakami. I remember thinking to myself “man, I really like the design of the cafe owner. I really want to see more of them". But they just had to ruin it by the college guy be 19. Ugh. It's a cute story but they could've made him at least 24? Even before finding out his age I couldn't stop thinking how I would've loved it more of it was about him and the bartender from the place Suzuki worked at instead because I need more mature couples in my life. So that kind of sucked seeing that Isaki was under 20. And then they hit me with a joke like “What kind of useless adult am I, getting involved with a kid" like, ew!? Like, ew? Like, ew. Something I do like, though, was the way this author draws mouths and eyes. Specifically their smiles, though. It makes me think of how fixated I was with another author, Kei Sumiya, who’s smiles during some genuine moments are so radiant, shiny, blinding, and warm. The :3 smiles Kure does makes me smile, I love it. It’s like when you’re talking to someone who understands the importance of emoticons and put shit like :) and -A- and (^u^) at the end of their text. I’m in love. I’m in love with the way Kure draws smiles.

(Ended 11/23/24) ... Ok, but why didn't your dad just teach you the damn recipe? Anyway, this was fine. Just fine. But just fine in a more positive way than a low 3 “just fine". I thought Roy and Kotaro were cute together, I almost cried seeing them try to do a high five but Kotaro didn't have his glasses on so they missed and I loved everything about that bit. My only problem was how the dialogue flowed. Something about the dialogue felt off, making me feel like I was missing context. The number of times I've said “why bring that up out of nowhere" or “who asked" was a lot. The way they brought up certain topics felt forced like they were being told their next line off-screen while also being told to stay on track. There was a part where Masuda came by to pick up the order list and, without being promoted, brought up Kotaro was down at the cafe, kicking off the conflict. That's just one of three parts that stood out to me like that, It didn't make sense for him to bring that up the way he did because it didn't feel natural to the conversation. It came off as gossip to start something for no reason, so many conversations played out that way in this story. When people talked it either felt like a tonal whiplash or or “who asked" moment.

(Ended 11/30/24) Slightly conflicted. Mostly disappointed. I felt this leaned way too far on the comedy side of things, nothing felt grounded in reality so when anything serious did come up it didn’t feel like it was handled well. I think the author wanted this to be a cute story about a scary-looking guy who’s kind and has always liked cute things and a guy who took an interest in him after seeing how misunderstood he was. Which is cute and I was excited about that, but while trying to show how cute they are together along with the comedy of the story, two conflicts got ignored and one conflict got overblown. The first time Kousaka kissed Kijima it felt rushed and underserved at that part of the story while the second one made me angry because Kijima never really got visibly angry at Kousaka, letting him get away with so much. It was annoying to watch Kijima mostly get angry at himself when he had every right to be angry at Kousaka before chapter four. He was so fixated on this fortune-telling thing that he let Kousaka string him along without talking anything out until later. I’m mad that after the first kiss, they still acted like they were still dancing around each other even though they both knew each other’s feelings by now. Having Kijima finally get legit angry that he fought back at Kousaka because he miss heard him pissed me off. There were two other better reasons to punch this dude and this is what you chose? It wasn't cute for half this story, it was kind of annoying.

(Ended 11/30/24) I am giving this story 4 stars because this story was cute and I loved it. However, the whole book, Short Distance Love, was a fucking train wreck for me. The rest of my thoughts will be about the whole book and all 4 of its stories. I'm not going to add the incest and age gap tags to this story since it doesn't aply here, but they are apart of story 2 and 3. --- Story 1: I liked this one even though I was a bit confused at the beginning. I didn't really get why Kou kept rejecting Daisuke even though it was sort of explained. It felt more like a why he said yes now instead of before, but it was still cute to see them try to work with each other. I added an extra star because they tried to “settle it in smash” who topped.. and then they never did and fell asleep. Man, if only we had more time to send with them. Maybe, like, one more chapter specifically after this one that would show them being more of a couple instead of the last bonus chapter just telling us that they got closer... If only. Story 2: When they showed that Michihiko was 23 I went “the other guy better not be 19 or I'm skipping"... 23 and 19 is a big age gap for me but at least they wouldn't’ve been fucking family! Or at least I hope they would’ve been fucking family. I didn’t stay, I skipped it immediately. Story 3: I am so tired of this book. This story has an age gap that’s kind of uncomfortable at the start but only if you’re paying attention because age gaps are a sensitive subject for you. Koshika is most likely 19 when meeting Sousuke who’s an older man, at least 25+. He clearly has a crush on Sousuke, but what ew’d me out was Sousuke flirting with him. Yes, he could’ve been 20 but maybe you shouldn’t be vague about ages when one of them is in high school. The sad part is they meet years later and the rest of their story is so cute. They are so cute. But then they brought up how Sousuke knew and Koshika’s feelings and still flirted made me want to throw up. Can we get back to the first story, please? Story 4: This book should've been about story 1 for 3 chapters and story 4 for 2 chapters. Forget chapters 2 and 3. Skip them. Story 4 is super cute and I wish it had more to its story because it ended way too soon. It made me remember that the art style in this is so good. I loved the way Miyamoto looked in general and thought Daisuke’s eyes were cool.