If it's just something on the level of "everyone has cat ears in this world and also same-sex marriage with children is totally normal" then I don't really mind Itou Hachi not making a big deal out of it and focusing on the fuzzies. This seems a bit different, though? More than anything else, the plot point that's been most prominent and central to everything else is Sayuri's low self-esteem. That's fine, I'm totally on board with an Itou Hachi manga with a little more meat to it, but if this is supposed to be an actual story, then I kinda need characters to react to estranged family members suddenly turning up as literal angels, with wings and a halo and everything.
This is apparently not a regular everyday occurence in this setting, so why are all the characters acting as if it is? How do you live with someone for several months without ever asking, "So hey, what's up with the whole angel thing, anyway?" Oda, I can give it a pass, she might think that the angel stuff is just really committed cosplay, or something. But this is Sayuri's sister, and she's so utterly incurious about it that it's distracting. At least have a scene where she starts to ask about it, and then it gets so awkward and hard to talk about that she changes the subject and is scared to bring it up again. At that point, it doesn't matter what you do with it later - whether it really is super serious and tragic, or difficult to talk about, or if it's played completely for laughs and the dark atmosphere was a red herring. Anything works, as long as you actually show the characters thinking about it more than "Jeeeeez Mikoto your magical angel wings are too warm at night, having your supernatural non-human appendages wrapping around me is exactly similar to having an extra mundane everyday blanket and nothing stranger or more interesting than that".
last edited at Mar 23, 2016 1:11PM
