PAUSE is a webcomic by KJ-Tower, hosted on Tapastic, which tells the story of a boy, Yoshiro Koizumi who can apparently freeze time at will, and a girl who is immune to his time control. When the girl finds out about his power, his normal high school life is thrown into turmoil. While it seems like the perfect premise for an epic sci-fi action story it is in fact a high school love story with elements of the coming of age story. Despite the premise, the plot focuses very little on the idea of time control and more on how human relationships are affected by time control. It could be taken as a deconstruction of the whole Time Master genre.
Written in KJ-Tower's distinct style, The story has lot's of comedic and serious moments and plenty of very memorable characters.
PAUSE provides us examples of:
- All Women Are Lustful: Tanaka.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Akechi, who has a habit of referring to people by the color of their hair.
- Content Warning: In the beginning of Chapter 8, which has a massive Genre Shift.
- Covert Pervert: Tanaka is a good example of this, from playing H-games with her younger brother to having the libido of a rabbit on viagra, if her inner thoughts are to be taken seriously.
- Eccentric Mentor: Akechi, to Yoshiro.
- Genre Shift: The final chapter's mood and pacing is significantly darker than the other chapters. It abandons the high school romance feel of the earlier chapters, instead going for a very tense and violent mood. It even comes with a Content Warning.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Yoshiro's classmates are all very jealous that he gets to talk to Tanaka and hang out with her....
- Freudian Slip: Tanaka accidentally says "sexcuse me" after she bombards Yoshiro with her increasingly perverse thoughts .
- Innocent Innuendo: Tanaka refers to the moments when Yoshiro accidentally freezes time for her in a way that makes it seem like they had wild sex in an interesting variety of locations, and even resorting to a pregnancy scare.
- Love Confession: The reply to the confession is actually quite funny...
- Medium Awareness: Tanaka was actually quite aware of how much she ruined Yoshiro's reputation,"Especially back in Chapter 3".
- Psychic Link: between Tanaka and Yoshiro, allowing them to hear each other's thoughts without a filter. Hilarity Ensues as they think of the most perverted thoughts while the link is active with no way to control them.
- Stalker with a Crush: Watanabe, in Chapter 8, though he does apologise for finding another girl to stalk though.
- Surveillance Station Slacker: How Akechi found out about Yoshiro's time powers.
- Time Master: Yoshiro and Akechi.
- Wham Line: Towards the end of Chapter 8.