Manga/Hourou Musuko Licensed

I BOUGHT LUFIA: CURSE OF THE SINISTRALS INSTEAD.

;_;

The choices...THE CHOICES.

Good news, by the way:

From here.

Oh my god...really? :D

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!

If anyone is interested, the OSTs (which were included with the first and second DVDs) have been released.

They're calming to say the least...in a melancholy sort of way.

edited 19th Jun '11 5:54:41 PM by Tumbril

necro'ed with ancient troll power....

Or something like that, I gave up being a troll after I got hired for work, actually.

The current chapter is nice, ch101....

And I had just checked for it yesterday. Downloading... ^^

Rise! Rise!

Bringing back the thread to life, as the last few chapters have been a constant stream of developments. 121 in particular seems to be a real eyebrow-raiser, as Nitorin obliquely refers to having already slept with Anna in that way already... However how it's worded is pretty vague (at least in English), as it seems as it's like he's narrating it from some future date, but at the same time, hasn't actually done anything yet(see references to the Festival, which as far as I know hasn't been portrayed on-panel yet).

Also in a bit of an expected parallel, Takatsuki finally repeats Nitorin's words to her all those years ago, and she realizes it too. However, the chapter goes a ways in hammering the point that the two.. have drifted apart, in a way.

Kind of curious now with where this all goes now.

Rise! The manga has ended!

Overall I guess I ended up liking this series more than I anticipated. I heard it being called an ambiguously good ending, and I'd have to agree. Not knowing what, exactly, will happen to the characters is a bit like leaving us hanging, but I don't think it'd fit the tone of the work to outright tell us what would happen to them, as opposed to what routes they take in life. And so it goes.

That was... a nice way to send off the series.

The last few pages were particularly striking, especially the lines "There were two children. One wanted to be a boy. One wanted to be a girl. One stopped wanting to be a boy. That's all there is to it."

...Which is followed immediately by Anna and Nitori kissing (in what I assume was the first time they consummated their relationship), and Nitori firmly announces that he wants to be a girl... Which Anna rebuffs, "And what would that make me, a lesbian?"

Stunning stuff.

I finally got around to reading this to the end, having read up to the 10th volume while the translation was ongoing and then, sadly, kind of forgetting about it. So a thread necro and some random musing.

Damn if I do not love the series. The characters are kind of loosely drafted (and I'm not speaking only in the art sense) and not exactly lifelike but there's a kind of fundamental truth about them and damn if I didn't end up caring about pretty much all of them, the side characters included.

I also liked the note the story ended on, even if the execution didn't quite land.

To me it feels like this story suffered a lot of the curse of serialized manga where they're working on it without the knowledge of how long it'll be and more or less just focus on the present, stretching as they go. A bit tighter pacing could have elevated this to a masterpiece.

There's a lot of time spent on random things not entirely germane to the core of the series which are great, but maybe could have used some pruning and while I like the fact that time actually progresses in the story, it started really galloping towards the end. Again, not a bad thing, but could have been handled a mite better maybe, if the whole thing would've been structured so from the start.

But still, loved it and the ending didn't leave me all that unsatisfied and I was smiling wide, so definitely worth it. I really hope this'll be one of the all time classic mangas remembered as time goes by, even if perhaps it doesn't quite deserve it. When it works it really works.

edited 1st Dec '17 1:41:32 PM by GabrieltheThird