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Bloom into You

Bloom into You, Vol. 1Title: Bloom into You, Vol. 1
Author: Nio Nakatani
Series: Bloom into You #1
Publisher: Seven Seas
First Published: September 13, 2017
Pages: 188
Genres: Drama, Slice of Life, Yuri
Format: Web
Source: Web
Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis:

Yuu has always adored shoujo manga and yearns for the day when someone might give her a love confession that would send her heart aflutter. Yet when a junior high school classmate confesses his feelings to her -- she feels nothing. Disappointed and confused, Yuu enters high school, where she sees the confident and beautiful student council member Nanami. When the next person to confess to Yuu is Nanami herself, has her romantic dream finally come true?

Rating Breakdown:

Volume 1: ★★★★★
Volume 2: ★★★★★
Volume 3: ★★★★★
Volume 4: ★★★★★		 Volume 5: ★★★★★
Volume 6: ★★★★★
Volume 7: ★★★★★
Volume 8: ★★★★★
My Review:

Bloom Into You is, without a doubt, one of the best coming of age love stories that I’ve ever read. Yuu is a young girl that dreams of experiencing the dazzling love that she sees in books and film. Despite this, she doesn’t find herself feeling at all excited when faced with romantic prospects. There is also some wonderful aromantic and demiromantic representation that I didn’t expect to find in this manga, and the subtle differences between each are written well.

The story is paced well, while many romances fall back on overblown drama to keep the narrative going with many ups and downs, Bloom Into You was consistent from start to finish, like a gentle heartbeat humming with life. The title of the manga is apt, as the characters bloom into love but also into themselves as they discover who they are.

I found myself relating a lot to Yuu, who wants to experience the excitement of love but doesn’t know what it is. It can be easy to fall into the comforts of verbal and physical acts of love to mask a lack of love for oneself, as in the case of Touko; or the admiration of another that you place the other person on a pedestal, like Sayaka. Each of the characters was multilayered and written with such care and understanding of the nuances of romantic attraction.

This manga talks a lot about love, how we fall in love, and what it means to be in love. The fluttery feeling that happens when we find the right person is something that many strive for, but love is more complex than that. People fall in love in different ways, and for different reasons, love is defined by the lover and each person’s experience can be wildly different. Bloom Into You stands out from other romance stories for the way that it presents the concept of love, and the sometimes steady journey toward realizing what it really means. It’s heartfelt and written with so much warmth that it made me feel happy from start to finish.

“What is love, in the end? It’s a word I could never say… Even though I’d always wanted to. But now that I’ve said it, I don’t understand what it really is.”

Trigger Warning: Sex

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Citrus

Warnings: Nudity, Mild Fan Service, Sexual Situations

My Review:

Citrus had been on my radar for a while being one of the more well-known Shoujo Ai manga available in the west. I finally sat down to read it and found myself feeling conflicted about it. The art is spectacular and the manga is worth reading to appreciate that in itself. The characters and the story can be charming and genuinely heartfelt at points, and horribly cliche and boring at other points. My ratings for each volume ended up moving up and down wildly and left me wondering how much I really enjoyed it.

The story follows Yuzu, a loud-mouth gyaru, and her new step-sister Mei, a reserved and goal-driven tsundere. The beginning is rough and the characters are so hot and cold, it takes a while for the romance to feel like it was actually developing. Though Yuzu and Mei’s parents marry, Mei’s father is barely in the picture from the onset, which really made me wonder about the convenient marriage to create a step-sibling scenario. Sibling romance in Japan feels overplayed, and the foundation was so weak in this one. Yuzu and Mei are cute in a way, but they were both so terribly inconsistent that their romance feels forced at times.

I enjoyed the fun female friendships in this series, but each character introduction was frustrating as every new female that Yuzu and Mei befriend happened to be lesbians, and all have some romantic interest in one of the two leads. Most of these brief romantic rivals have next to no good reason to be rivals; the stories that focus on these side stories are so overblown and absurd, it feels like reading a shallow harem manga at times.

The manga does seek to address issues regarding society’s views on homosexuality which I appreciated. The issue of acceptance and support from friends and family is as important as ever, as gay marriage is still not legal in Japan and many other countries around the world. I appreciated the conversation that this story brings to the table about the struggle for LGBTQ couples that have to hide who they are. However, I feel that the reality was not well represented in this series, it explores the issue, and the main characters dating in secret, but it also paints a rosy picture that is not possible for many.

In all, it is a decent series that is relatively tame in terms of sexual content. It isn’t a bad first yuri series for those that are looking into getting into the genre, especially for folks that enjoy colorful characters and plenty of drama without being too emotionally taxing.

“Unknowingly, I ended up running away from you because of my wavering feelings.”

Trigger Warning: Nudity, Blood

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Hare-Kon.

My Thoughts

Harems are a dime a dozen in the world of anime and manga, portrayed as the ultimate male fantasy and often played for laughs, it’s a trope that is riddled with issues while not portraying polygamy with any real accuracy beyond gratuitous sex. For some, polygamy is an alternative lifestyle that can be fulfilling and painful for others.

Polygamy has been a vehicle for numerous abuses all over the world, and it is generally misunderstood by many that see it as free reign to cheat on partners. The truth is, there are committed polygamous relationships, but rules are set by those within the relationship in the same way that they are set by those in monogamous relationships.

“The Hare Kon will continue to push you to your limits and bring you agony. And as long as you continue to love me, I will continue to destroy you and will protect you forever. This is the form of my love to you.”

This series is pretty large, spanning nineteen volumes, the reader follows the ups and downs of a hare-kon family. In response to Japan’s declining birth rate and low marriages, a pioneering town decides to make polygamous marriages legal. With this, the readers are introduced to a marriage between a man and three completely different women, each one representing some favored romance tropes. Despite this, Hare-Kon faces the question of polygamous relationships head-on, showing the absolute worst sides of this kind of family set-up along with the joys and kinship that is possible with a large family.

To say that this series is frustrating is an understatement, there are many issues with the way that the story is presented spearheaded by a husband that is unabashedly detestable at times. Ryuunoske could be charming and funny, but he is also extremely selfish and manipulative. Koharu “falling in love” was also extremely weak, she goes overnight from hating that she feels forced into a sham marriage to suddenly deciding that her unhappiness must mean that she’s jealous and in love.

Understandably, reactions to this series have varied wildly with many people swinging from hating characters to loving them. Honestly, what made me keep coming back was the gorgeous artwork and a genuine interest in seeing if the series actually goes anywhere. It starts off extremely weak, but the middle volumes become stronger and even enjoyable with some genuinely heartfelt moments. Despite the issues, many of the characters are engaging whether they are likable or not, and the author did a marvelous job in stirring up conversation about harems in the medium that glorifies them the most, an achievement in and of itself.

Warnings: sex, gaslighting

three-half-stars
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Hush Collection

Synopsis

A web of lies
Where do you go for truth in an age of social media illusions and deep divisions? How do you trust what you think you know about your friends and family? In stories featuring conspirators, psychics, deceptive lovers, and desperate killers, some of today’s most popular and award-winning crime writers explore the very nature of truth and the risks in uncovering the lies.

Book Ratings

My Thoughts

The Hush Collection is the first of Amazon’s Original Stories that I completed the entire collection and I had very mixed feelings. I am a huge fan of short literature and so I always love picking up these stories before I go to sleep or when I’m out traveling. I really wanted to like this collection more than I did, as the concept sounded great. The genres in this collection are all over the place, from dark satire to dystopia, so the collection feels a little disjointed from one story to the next. Crime is perhaps the only connecting genre, but even then it is a weak connection.

If anything I would sooner place these stories under the contemporary genre tag, as each one dealt in modern-day social issues, most notably the #MeToo movement which is at least mentioned in most stories. Let Her Be and Treasure also cast a spotlight on social media and influencers as central plot points.

Overall most of the stories I found to be merely okay, not because of poor writing but instead poor plotting and predictability. I outright hated The Gift but I seem to be in the minority on that one. It could be because these stories are shorts and they are not well suited to the short form. Actually, I was in the minority for a lot of my ratings, as Treasure ended up with the lowest average, but that was one of the ones I liked the most.

Buried is easily the strongest story in this series, and it helps that it is also the longest. This seems to be the consensus based on Goodreads as well, as it is the only story to maintain a rating over 4. If there was one story in the series that I would say was worth reading, it would definitely be this one.

Overall this collection was okay and would only recommend it for readers that really enjoy stories with some aspect of mystery with a lot of commentary about current social issues in America. At the very least, it is a decent introduction to a lot of authors and is a good way to see if that author’s work is for you. As a collection overall, I personally found it to be pretty weak and can easily be skipped if you are not interested in mystery/thriller authors.

In Summary

  • Pros: Decent mystery stories in different genres that are relevant to the modern age.
  • Cons: Many of the stories were only okay and had some issues, only one story that I would view as worth reading. I also didn’t care for the vague political commentary in most of the stories.
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Killing Stalking

My Thoughts

This manhwa was like a car that was driving wildly out of control toward tragedy and I felt like a bystander that couldn’t look away. Killing Stalking is perhaps one of the best psychological horror-thriller series I have ever read that is really plotted well. The plot moves at a startling pace, like an engine on full throttle up to the very end and it is an incredibly thrilling ride.

The main trio of characters⁠—Yoon Bum, Oh Sangwoo, and Yang Seungbae⁠—are all complex characters with strong moral grey areas in their personalities. I really enjoyed seeing each of these characters clash and unravel as the story goes deeper and deeper into their pasts and the way that their paths intersect.

“Do you know…? How to kill someone without killing them…?”

From the first chapter, I was hooked and I binge read this series, I was in so deep during the latter two volumes that I read each one in a single sitting, I just could not get enough of this series. The series is gruesome and tackles some very taboo subjects displayed in graphic detail due to Koogi’s phenomenal art, so I would not recommend it for the faint of heart. I felt genuine unease whenever Oh Sangwoo was in the scene, especially during the cat and mouse games that he and Yang Seungbae play. Sangwoo was genuinely a memorable and charismatic serial killer that reminded me of some of my favorite literary killers—Patrick Bateman from American Psycho or Harper Curtis from The Shining Girls. Charming devils that are almost pitiful in their relentless quest for power.

Mild spoilers ahead, but I feel that the romantic aspects of the story need to be addressed. There is debate as to whether this series constitutes as a boy’s love series due to the content and the nature of Sangwoo and Yoon Bum’s relationship. I’m personally in the camp that feels that it does not qualify as a boy’s love although there is a lot of romantic and sexual aspects to the story. Sangwoo states point blank that he is not homosexual, and his attraction to Bum is complicated and it is not just because of the abuse. I can’t delve deeper without going into major spoilers, but I caution anyone going in to not set up any expectations of a healthy romance in any capacity.

Warnings: explicit sex, sexual assault, rape, gaslighting, graphic violence, verbal abuse, physical abuse, child abuse, gore, death

five-stars
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Makeshift Miracle

Makeshift MiracleTitle: Makeshift Miracle
Author: Jim Zub, Shun Hong Chan
Series: Makeshift Miracle #1
Publisher: Udon Entertainment
First Published: June 5, 2012
Pages: 120
Genres: Coming of Age, Fantasy
Format: Hardcover
Source: Library
Rating: ★★

Synopsis:

A young boy named Colby Reynolds searches for meaning in the world around him and discovers a place where dreams can come true ― if he's willing to pay the price! Along the way he'll see sights he's never fathomed and encounter hidden truths about himself he'll wish he never knew.

The hit online comic is now a beautiful, high-quality hardcover graphic novel, perfect for teen readers and manga fans with a durable, library-quality binding.

Rating Breakdown:
Volume 1: ★★☆☆☆
Volume 2: ★★☆☆☆

My Review:

This comic was a little bit difficult for me to decide what I thought about it. I was really digging the first few chapters and the illustrations are absolutely gorgeous. I loved how the main characters were the only colored parts of the panel, it made for really striking visuals. As the first volume wore on, however, I started to wonder where the plot was going. There were characters introduced and a few events, but nothing of substance was really happening.

There was a convenient amnesia plot which is a trope that I really dislike because the entire plot is withheld intentionally. I hoped for more answers from the second plot and it quickly became a bore waiting for some answers to finally be given to the reader. There are chases and a little bit of action but everything felt rushed. Characters are taken out just as quickly as they are introduced, somehow an important piece of the plot but readers are never given any real time to care about them or their fates. There is little to no development of the plot or its characters at all.

Things pick up at the end when the antagonist basically tells the main characters the big secret around the amnesia plot, which again, goes back to why I don’t like these sorts of stories to begin with. Nothing makes sense until the big reveal which means that the plot will be weak without it. While I liked the revelations at the end, it was so out of left field it didn’t have a strong impact. I just wish that the plot could have been fleshed out better and more attention could have been paid to the characters to make me care about them more. There’s a romance but it makes no sense and I couldn’t really feel it.

The quality and detail in the art also went down in the second volume as compared to the first which just added to the feeling that this series was a little rushed. I did like the central message about dreams, desires, and aspirations, even if it wasn’t developed well. It’s a very good message about how dreams can be both good and bad and how easy it is to hold yourself back with fear. I just wish this story could have been executed better because it had a lot of potential.

“I won’t say I’m not nervous… Because I am. Nervous about growing up and taking hold of the things I want out of life.”

Trigger Warning: Nudity