Mimi

Story 1: Not as cute as I hoped. Maybe it's because I understand what having a form of generalized anxiety feels like, but I really hated seeing Kajiyama be so impatient with Aizawa. Seeing him go “doesn't he care at all" pissed me off so much because the author didn't even have to show me, I KNOW what overthinking and over-worrying looks like in someone with anxiety. I KNOW that working up the courage to text somebody, let alone while in the middle of a fight, has set him spiraling on his he should approach his text that he shouldn't be apologizing for anyway. So now so much time has passed that he feels you've gotten even angrier at him and he's even more anxious…

The way he yelled and pushed him out of his comfort zone instead of easing Aizawa out of the mascot helmet didn't make me care for them as a couple whenever there were cute moments.

Besides that, it also felt like 3 chapters weren't enough to have this story flow smoothly. Everything that happened at the amusement park felt like things were moving too fast. They didn't even take a moment to talk about what he said when they were alone. From there to the confession, it just felt rushed.

I love and support Aizawa. Kajiyama can eat rocks.

Story 2: Cuter. Pretty simple and I didn't hate either of the characters. I would've liked another chapter of them, honestly. Using the terms depressed and trauma like this was far-reaching.

Story 3: This was kind of ok. I was interested in the “does he actually like me" drama until what I thought would be dubious consent, turned into something too immature for me personally (like, guys… lube. Research, I beg you!). It made it so hard to read. On top of them not properly talking things out, it just kind of went back downhill for me.

2.75

This is not for me. I'm not sure what made me put this on my TBR but I definitely forgot what the tags were by the time I got around to this.

There are a lot of yearly 2000s/2010s BL bullshit that I don't like. That borderline homophobic and sexist dialogue is very much there that got on my nerves. I'm always very weary when there's crossdressing in BL because it's mostly handled as a joke/misunderstanding. The dialogue surrounding Izumi crossdressing, the “but I'm not a girl" stuff I hate, and Muroto's obvious interest in him either way but hiding that behind the whole crossdressing thing doesn't sit right with me. On the student/teacher topic, that's not the focused relationship, but I honestly thought they were college professors at first and not high school teachers so the whole thing about 19/18 year olders wanting to get with this teacher is uncomfortable for me. Alongside that, one of the people involved in this love triangle is one of the 19/18 year old students...

The last book by this author was a bit of a struggle to get through, too, but I was able to bounce back from that. I don't think I can take any more of this one. I also don't think I'm going to continue reading from Emi Mitsuki so I'm dropping the other 3 manga I had planned from her as well. Knowing how this story's going to be, maybe I'll come back to it if it stays in my head long enough. But, for now, I'm dropping it.

I really wanted to love this, but, honestly, I got bored real quick. I really thought I would knock out both of these 2 volumes before April ended. It's sometimes funny and cute, I don't hate any of the characters, but I feel like I've been glazing over everything, and I don't like doing that.

I'm sad, but also not really. I had a small feeling I wouldn't really enjoy it as much as the other stuff I've been reading. The web comic-like structure of the manga is off to me, even though it's pretty similar to other manga I've liked before. But I also think half of that boredom feeling was because it's a book that talks about food... too soon after I just read Aki and Haru. Another food-centered manga that gave me “food talk fatigue” (lol). This one doesn't beat me over the head with all the recipes and the food isn't the main character this time around, thank God! But maybe I shouldn't've gone into another food manga so soon, even though a part of me feels like I would've still found it boring in some way. I don't know if I want to read volume 2 or not.

3.75

Other than the way situations were situating like the kiss and the part at the club, this was really cute and I had fun with it. I couldn't help but roll my eyes at parts I knew the author wanted me to be kicking my legs because of how fanfiction-y some of those situations were, but I was smiling throughout all of this.

There were times it felt a little bit boring and found myself putting it down for a couple of days, but I think that's because I thought we were going to go on some of these investigations. Instead, it's a very “put these two in situations" type of story and I had to rewire my brain for that.

I liked all of the characters and their family dynamic’s cute. Lisa going “You guys looked like a family” almost made me cry and is the reason I need this physically on my shelf. Jiu and Yano keeping their distance from each other because of their work and not knowing each other's feelings could've been so annoying to read but it wasn't and I appreciate that so much.

Everyone's super cute and I love them.

3.5 || full series - 3

But a high 3.5, just not a 3.75 which is funny because on sites where I have to give full stars I'm giving this 4... Will update this with my thoughts later.

3.25

This is just more of volume one with a little bit more 👀🏳️‍🌈? going on so nothing's changed. Anyway, here's my united notes for this volume because it's not worth structuring them out.

Doesn't... doesn't Aki have a job? Didn't he just get promoted?

1. You spelled glompping wrong and that hurts me more for some reason.

2. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE USING GLOMPPING IN A POST 2018 MANGA?!

WASH DOWN THE BEER! GUYS, YOU HAVE TO WASH DOWN THE BEER! Did you wash down the beer? Have you try washing down the beer, yet?

Yuki & Rikka be like 🤨🏳️‍🌈?

3.25

Cute but simple. Very simple characters with simple dialogue. I could tell very quickly that the two main characters are not the main characters. The main character is the food. The “gimmick" is learning about how to make these dishes while Aki and Haru are just here. In fact, Yukino clocked their personality completely in chapter 2 and they've been that one-note since. I get that this is a manga about food but I want Aki and Haru to be more than just cardboard.

I hope volumes 2 and 3 actually expands more on their characters and let the food take a back seat a little bit because I'm at the point where I'm literally skimming all the recipe talk just to get more of Aki, Haru, and their friends.

I'll gush about this later. Just know that this manga made me extremely happy.

Pausing, but so far it feels like a 3.5

I like Ikki, Nakanishi's pretty cool... and that's it. I didn't like being in Karakida's head. The affection he showed to Ikki was cute and all but the way his thoughts read, the way he talked about himself and how well he could read people was so Light Yagami coded and pretentious sounding. It was annoying and I'm a Light Yagami enjoyer.

Also, from the beginning to page 68, they barely touched on Ikki's asexuality. While in his POV he does talk about how he feels but it just wasn't enough. I hope it gets officially picked up or someone else retranslates this because I want to keep reading this.

Will update later but this 4/5 is solely for the first (cover) story and the last story. The 3 in-between were nothing and felt like they worsened this book.

Girl help (derogatory): I know what door I choose to open. I've not had the best experience with Nagabe so far and yet I'm here reading his 2nd most “not for me" book I'm aware of...

Girl help (affectionate): *looks at self in the mirror* what do you mean you need eat by nagabe on your shelf right now whadda hell

I'll update this later, but... yeah.

I don't know why I'm determined to like a Nagabe manga. I want to love his work but the last 2 haven't been very favorable to me and I'm still aiming to read EAT knowing I really shouldn't. I love this world he's building and some of the stories in this book are great, but there's themes and dialogue choices he chooses that bother me so much that it impacts my enjoyment.

What I did love about this was its world and having each story connect since it's taking place in the same academy. You see the same characters in other's stories and it gives it this anime feel. This whole manga reads like season 1 of an anime, I can see this working well as an anime. I liked that by the time Cromwell got his own story we got to get to his personality well enough to perfectly play off Benjamin.

Out of the 8 stories, I ended up liking stories 4, 7, and 8 the most.

My very basic thoughts I was having while reading.

Story 1:

I don't know, man. I don't tend to like love potions and stuff like that because of the whole “removing of one's free will" and all that jazz... I think Alan should've thrown him out the window, but that's just me.

Sad, I really like both of these characters visually.

Story 2:

Honestly liked this story better than the first one but didn't like how that chapter ended. Loved Nicol's kink awakening. Good for him.

Story 3:

Skipped it. Student/Teacher relationship. Also, because there weren't any ages being said or signs of whether this was a “high school" academy or a “college" academy I just felt very uncomfortable reading this story.

Story 4:

Cute. Cute. Cute. Cute. This one's my favorite so far. It was super sweet and very warm, I'd love to read more of them.

Story 5:

Doug sucks and I gave Huey Mandark's voice in my head so I ended up hating them both by the end. I am suffering.

Story 6:

... This one was kind of just weird. For starters, Nagabe, I did not need to see that. But the kissing bit after that felt... weird. The way it was written was like when two 10 year olds find out what kissing is and try it together. It. Felt. Weird.

Update after reading ch7 - WAIT, THEY ARE KIDS?! LIKE “KIDS" KIDS!? LIKE “THEY PROBABLY ACTUALLY ARE THE EQUIVALENT OF 10 YEARS OLD" KIDS???!!

Story 7:

It started out kind of “what the fuck? why would you say that?" But it's ending with me asking for a full spin-off manga for these two in particular. Go figure that the story featuring two older men got the least amount of screen time...

Story 8:

Yo? OOOOOHH?! OHMYGOD!! A HUMAN!! AAAAAHH!??? SO THEY ARE STILL HERE!? I mean, I guess I didn't think they were gone completely but was I right about the World of Darkness analogy? Are there really still humans who live in the city parts of the world?? Nagabe!?

The LOOOORE!!! I want to know more about how divided human and beast folk are! What do they think of each other? Either way, favorite story out of the 3 I liked. Super cute, audibly made me “awe", I love both of these characters so much.

It really shouldn’t've taken me this long to get through this manga. It felt a bit too slow and I was kind of getting bored with it, probably because I didn't really about the main two, so I ended up putting it down for a while. It's not bad, I just wasn't interested in anything. I like a slower slice of life story where there's no or grounded conflict and it's just showcasing people living day-to-day. But when that's the case, I need to care about the characters and I just wasn't feeling it with these two.

3.5 for the "Escalate" oneshot

3 for the "Monotone Blue" manga

The fact that I'm still going to try and find a physical copy so I can this on my shelf kind of pisses me off because I don't think I like this as much as I wanted to. More importantly, I don't like Hachi.

The oneshot was kind of nothing but I liked how both of them were on mutual grounds about the whole thing. Now it felt like Hachi was being pushy and selfish while Aoi was much more timid compared to his oneshot self. I don't mind Aoi as much but Hachi's change turned him into a character I personally hate. Possessive, aggressive, and selfish. I get that he's a cat and the way Nagabe writes anthro characters seems to have more animalistic traits and behaviors, but I just really don't like him for most of the story.

There are also times when I felt like things could've easily been explained, dodged, or dealt with more calmly. But you either had Hachi overreacting and Aoi sounding suspicious.

Yeah, by the end it was pretty sweet and I'm here for Aoi's backstory, but there were just mostly Hachi-related things that embodied things I don't like in a character.

I thought it was all right. I think I was hoping for a different ending than that or for something a bit longer out of this oneshot.

One of the things that made me go “...huh." was when Mine was telling Murai it's ok to break up with him... because I said the exact same thing to my ex. Even though I wasn't sure of myself at the time I still accepted going out with her because I couldn't say no to my friend. She was also already active and to be all touchy-feely. I was not and that type of affection made me uncomfortable. I knew that she wanted to move further and it felt like I was holding her back so I texted her one night during spring break that it was ok to break up with me because I knew I could never give her what she wanted out of a relationship.

Being in that relationship made me realize that not only am I ace but that being close and touching makes me uncomfortable. I never really thought I'd ever see that written out in a manga. It felt weird how much I saw myself in Mine.

By the way, I would love to see continuation stories for Mine and his partner as well as Murai's friend.

I knew this wasn't gonna be for me when I saw it was about someone who was sent to be sacrificed. I tend to not like that kind of storyline... But I did not know that the lovey-dovey feeling between the two started while Taro was so young. On top of the fact that the Uru is basically his adopted father had me questioning if I should just leave right now. I got halfway and then just started skimming pages to understand the whole picture better.

I don't see how this has such high ratings. I think because on the surface the romantic feelings look very one-sided and the art's pretty. Uru is caring for this kid as his adopted child. Taro, however, has loved him for years. Uru trying to play up how dangerous he is as a beast while also making sure Taro is safe which is cute. It's very fatherly and that's adorable but his affection is growing for Taro while he's still a kid. Nothing really happened until he's an adult but everything leading up to that is completely uncomfortable.

Funny enough, my final straw was the fact that the wolfman doesn't stay a werewolf by the end of the story. That sucks and is not a plotline I want to read about beast people.

Ugh, it's a weird feeling right off the bat for me. The romance and plot moved too quickly to the point where I didn't really care about either of them enough for any of the emotional moments to hit me. There's also the looming uncomfortableness for me of Tsugumo being a kit when he died. Him retaining that personality, behavior, and knowledge as a deity made all the sexual stuff just hard to read for me even after the time skip.

Really gave me Kingyo no Ubugoe vibes which was an absolutely horrible feeling.

I want to update this at a later date, but I will say that trying to fit the amount of topics this wanted to cover in 3 chapters, all 3 of them having 27 pages was way too ambitious and should've been full volume length.

I think I understand why people kept telling me that the Wild Rose story was really sweet and the only one of the 3 to get a finished scanlation (at the time) after all these years. I'll yell about it later when I get my thoughts together.

4.75

I'll come back with a little bit of something to say, but just so you know.......

crying and laughing and screaming and giggling and kicking my feet and crying and crying and crying

There's absolutely no story. Fucking nothing. And I am feeling so giddy, so happy reading this after a slew of just.... uggggggggggh manga I've read. It's super cute, the art’s adorable, I love everyone so far, and even though I said there's no story there kind of is one but not really, and I kind of wish there was a bigger main story to follow. It is a little too sweet at times and has a bit of this quirky 2015 feeling to it, but then I see the anthro characters be adorable and I start crying over how much I love manga.

I remember seeing on mangaupdates that this was a webcomic, but I didn't think it would be in this format. The flow of these chapters (they're basically just pixiv posts) and how short they are means you can't really have a plot in there. I'm fine with this overall, I grew up reading Hetalia, I've watched Wan Sheng Jie, I'm used to this kind of webcomic format. It's just not what I thought it was going to be at first along with The Past Part 1 & 2 chapters made me want more story for the main two couples so bad.

Kind of started out rocky on the first chapter for me, I didn't really like how Reiji was just a 5yd kid in an adult's body. Dude just said his apt doesn't allow pets, he lives on the second floor, and here's this grown ass man banging on the floor for him to take in the cat... I didn't like that.

At least it got better and ended nicely. Even though it got cutter later on, I found that I really don't like when authors spend the whole book on the journey but only give us one chapter of them finally being together. It's different from a slow burn for me, I don't mind if it takes a while for the relationship to begin. It’s more of me wanting an extra one or two chapters of them dating instead of ending it immediately after they officially started dating.

This was basically just fine. I would've loved a second volume of all three of them just being and living together. I've come to like Reiji and Koichi by the end but there wasn't enough to make them memorable to me.

Slightly conflicted. Mostly disappointed. I felt this leaned way too far on the comedy side of things, nothing felt grounded in reality so when anything serious did come up it didn’t feel like it was handled well. I think the author wanted this to be a cute story about a scary-looking guy who’s kind and has always liked cute things and a guy who took an interest in him after seeing how misunderstood he was. Which is cute and I was excited about that, but while trying to show how cute they are together along with the comedy of the story, two conflicts got ignored and one conflict got overblown.

The first time Kousaka kissed Kijima it felt rushed and underserved at that part of the story while the second one made me angry because Kijima never really got visibly angry at Kousaka, letting him get away with so much. It was annoying to watch Kijima mostly get angry at himself when he had every right to be angry at Kousaka before chapter four. He was so fixated on this fortune-telling thing that he let Kousaka string him along without talking anything out until later. I’m mad that after the first kiss, they still acted like they were still dancing around each other even though they both knew each other’s feelings by now. Having Kijima finally get legit angry that he fought back at Kousaka because he miss heard him pissed me off. There were two other better reasons to punch this dude and this is what you chose?

It wasn't cute for half this story, it was kind of annoying.

Aki exuding misogyny? It is a BL after all.

And he's homophobic? It is a BL after all.

I know my main problem with this story was Aki himself. He’s written in a way where the author knows he’s pretty unlikeable, kind of a dick, and that’s the point. However, they also want you to care about what he was saying, sympathize with his story, and basically redeem his shittyness by the end... Kind of hard for me to do when I wasn’t given a reason to. The guy just sucks. Throughout the whole story, he is just an asshole, an asshole to Umi, an asshole to women in general. I didn’t like how he strung Umi around even though he knew by chapter 4 that he was feeling something, and yet he was still being a little shit even in the last chapter. Him being so stand-off-ish to Umi but also dangling the possibility of a relationship in his face to the point where Umi looks more confused than happy at the end of chapter 7 made me want to scream.

Something about Umi constantly apologizing really pissed me off because he had nothing to apologize for. There was a bit at the end where Aki apologized himself for how he acted towards Umi but it wasn’t enough and it didn’t change how he kept acting for the rest of the chapters. The part where we all just... dodged the fact that Umi was almost sexually assaulted but Aki was still being stubborn despite Umi explaining what was just happening. I’m not looking over that, what the fuck? You want to make a shit character, fine, but don’t think that chapter 7 was enough to make me go “aww, that was so sweet. they kissed! aww” like I haven’t wanted to punch Aki in the face for the last 16 days.

You had 7 chapters. And for 5 of them, I've felt like we've been saying the same thing. The story hardly moved.

This doesn't make me want to read seaside strangers.