Hyperventilation

I feel like this story translates much better as a short film than it does in writing. The briefness that is justified on screen in a short form does not look well on pages, where the limitation of time is simply not there. It would've been a lot more valuable if the story was expanded on in manga, too bad it didn't happen. As is, we got basically the same frames as in the short, but somehow more awkward without the motion. The anime was very dynamic and it was difficult to convey that on paper. Not sure which came first, but out of the two the manga came out underwhelming.

Not sure if this is true of all editions (I read the newly-released LOVExLOVE English version from Tokyopop), but I was disappointed with this. If you've watched the animation previously (I think I first saw it in 2019 after seeing it mentioned on Tumblr) then this manga is just a different format of the same exact thing. In fact, the animation actually is better because you get more minor details that do not come across in the “manga”. And here the classification as a manga is very loose - it's just screencaps of the animation put in order with some dialogue boxes. You're not getting any of the nuance and emotions that the animation provides. Further, the animation has some scenes you're not seeing here. In order to really appreciate the relationship between these two people, definitely watch the animation along with the bonus content not in this book and just use this as a sort of companion guide. If you're only reading this and accepting it as is, you're missing out.