Yamashita is such a skilled writer, I don't know how she does it. The composition of the last few chapters was rather frenetic with all the callbacks, etc. but my goodness were they satisfying to read. Then, I'm stuck wondering how one manages to impart such earnest themes upon readers without coming across as pretentious. What a nice series.

Getting chapters of this and My Brother’s Wife back-to-back proves there is a meaningful pattern to the universe.

Or at any rate at least strongly suggests it.

Frankly it's the best manga I've read. And I'm not qualifying this with anything or saying "in that regard" or "up until here" or something. I just think it's the best.

Yeah. I've been saying it's my favorite manga currently being published, but it's up there with Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Adrian Tomine for me now. It really motivates me to work on my Japanese because I want to read that dialogue in its original language because it's so direct and affecting that I don't want anything between the way it was written and me.

I love how this manga lets Makio be obtuse and Asa and Emiri be fumbling and awkward all the time, and not just when it suits the story. I remember having conversations like this all the time in high school, and what made them memorable and special was trying to say something and fucking it up and trying again and getting mad when somebody else gets it wrong or misunderstands me and just constantly, effortfully knitting meaning together out of a bunch of poorly-chosen words and ill-understood feelings.

Damn this is a great series
It just feels so fucking authentic
I'd say yeah it is one of the best mangas out there

What I love about it is that it lets these characters just exist they're not walking billboards or scolds for any particular issue they are just being who they are.

You know this series is a lot similar to Shimanami Tasogare now that I think about it

last edited at Apr 14, 2021 1:06AM

Yeah, it is a lot like Our Dreams at Dusk, at least in the ground it covers, but the way it tells the story is just so much more aggressively nonlinear and shifting the perspective around. The story would be great either way, but the way it's told adds a lot to to its depth.

Dammit. The day's not even half over, and that's already the fourth time I've cried. Thank you.

And yesterday wasn't any better. I think I've hit my catharsis threshold for the week. Time to find something silly and mindless.

I'm coming up on three years since my father died and I have never related to a chapter and a character in a manga so hard. This page in particular. As I told my theee~~~rapiiist, sometimes figuring out things about my relationship with my father is really painful and disappointing, and it's not like I can go and create any new memories with him. I also relate so hard to Kasamichi (Makio's sorta-boyfriend) and his finding dealing with older men scary because of his fucked up relationship with his dad. And other stuff.

My dad vocally supports me but politically only supports entities that don't want me to exist.

I believe that he genuinely loves me, but there's a limit to how much that translates to action or change on my behalf. Honestly, it's better to get that kind of disillusionment out of the way as soon as possible.

My dad vocally supports me but politically only supports entities that don't want me to exist.

I believe that he genuinely loves me, but there's a limit to how much that translates to action or change on my behalf. Honestly, it's better to get that kind of disillusionment out of the way as soon as possible.

My parents likewise insist they love me unconditionally, but both vocally and politically support entities that don't want me to exist while continuing to believe it's just a phase and I'll come to Jesus eventually so I feel this chapter.

man how can this manga hit every single topic so hard on the nail each time. great chapter. i loved the interview style of it too.

this is always so amazing

... when you can naturally say things like "be medium-spicy with your impressions" you're already on the path to being a wordsmith of some skill ^^;

I can totally get why she's doing what she's doing, and why it's getting to her . . . but at the same time, I dunno how to put this . . . If you don't know what kind of person your dad was, if he never bothered to be near enough to your life to make an impression on you, then he was just this older man you hardly knew. So does it really matter what he was like? Light some incense now and then and thank him for going to work so you could spend your childhood not starving, but beyond that (shrug).

I'm saying this as a dad . . . my daughter damn well knows who I am, for better or worse, and I can't imagine having so little presence in her life that she'd have to do something like that if I croaked. Even my stepdaughters, including the one I didn't come on the scene until she was in her teens, besides that I like to think they're very fond of me, we've made strong impressions on each other, paid enough attention to each other to have pretty good ideas what we're dealing with. I just feel like if they had no idea who I was, I wouldn't deserve much from them.

I can totally get why she's doing what she's doing, and why it's getting to her . . . but at the same time, I dunno how to put this . . . If you don't know what kind of person your dad was, if he never bothered to be near enough to your life to make an impression on you, then he was just this older man you hardly knew. So does it really matter what he was like?

That seems to be where Asa's headed, but she's 16, and her dad sort of seemed to be hiding in plain sight when he was alive, so I think it's understandable that it would take her a while to figure it out. There's a difference between somebody being absent because they're gone and somebody being absent because they were never really there, and I don't think that's easy to sort out when you're dealing with both kinds at the same time, and it's one of your parents. Also she's clearly making progress because she's framing things more in terms of who she is rather than who her father was now.

This chapter had a particularly Takako Shimamura flavor. That conversation between the coworkers could have come straight out of Koiiji or Musume no Iede.

Genuinely one of the, if not the best manga I've read. I cried reading it, and catching up on it last week I cried several times. It's just so good!! The use of panelling (like in ch38) and all the dialogue and the characters is just superb.

In this chapter there are two emotional high points. One in which a character bares his complex feelings about his father and one in which another character gives a wolf howl.

I love this manga.

It is so good at tieing it all together in the end! How the theme of echo reverberates from the start and culminates in Asa recognizing her own feelings about her dad in Kasamachi's. How the theme of earthquake, which started two chapters ago, mixes with that of the echo in order to form an answer to how Asa can find peace (for now, I think. Depends on whether next chapter continues her search for info on her dad or not) with the uncertainty about her dad.

And then that profound moment of 'wolvish' Makio howling. It touched me.

last edited at Aug 13, 2021 12:16AM

Everything about this chapter is great again. It makes such fantastic use of non-linear storytelling again; the way Asa chats with her friends and then instead of the manga being explain-y just showing us these moments, and then of course as Nightflier above said even beyond that everything just ties together; they are talking about a thread through the lyrics, and echoes, and that's that thread through the chapter, which helps her find those lyrics, and so on ...

It's not even anything too outrageous, but it just feels like other manga don't get anywhere near this sort of thing.

Man, I feel like I'm missing half of the nuance in ch40; at least, it seems that some of the connections between words have to do with the kanji. But KUDOS to the translation team for conveying that sense of poetry to the chapter. Guessing that was not an easy task.

Oh yeah, kudos to the translation team. They did so well enough that I realized Asa was starting to write the lyrics in her head because of how poetic it was sounding.

(I also love bats, so nice of the manga to make them sound cool, which they are!)

This author amazes me by their mastery of the narrative flow.

Waiting for the next update to come out. I am curious to whether it will continue to follow the dad or go out another direction.

Oooooooof.

Didn't think I'd see such a good representation of dissociation in a manga.

Sometimes it feels like this comic is staring right into my soul.

This is kind of terrifyingly good.

It makes such a great bookend with Living With My Brother’s Wife, which I also love (these may be my top two currently running series), but which in comparison is quite standard in visual style and characterization. I wouldn’t even says that’s the lesser of the two, but the artistry in the sharp-edged depiction of emotional states in this one is really quite remarkable.

It is really amazing. For me, the other manga I think of instantly if you ask me "What's the most amazing manga currently ongoing?" would have to be 3-Gatsu no Lion, Umino Chica's manga about the kid, now heading for young man, who's a shogi pro.

It is really amazing. For me, the other manga I think of instantly if you ask me "What's the most amazing manga currently ongoing?" would have to be 3-Gatsu no Lion, Umino Chica's manga about the kid, now heading for young man, who's a shogi pro.

D’oh! I’d have put that one in there too, if I had remembered. Maybe it slipped my mind because it’s so long between chapters, and so many chapters to an arc . . .

So, have I merely fallen under the spell of this one, or does it just keep getting better and better?

Loved the change-of-pace pacing and Makio's thunderbolt-insight at the end.

last edited at Dec 13, 2021 12:35PM