Okay so this is my first review of a shoujo on here. Granted I have done reviews before but heyoo. Running with the theme of this not being my first time, my recent re-read of this manga was not a first time either, no I had been reading from when it's first volume had been released, waiting for each chapter with baited breath. My first read of Taiyou no Ie was a pleasant one. It had all the good fickleness a normal shoujo slice of life should have with a honey oozing centre. The character you get is a charming scowls tsundere, with enough cute factor to allow you to ignore that sometimes she can be a bit of a buzzkill with an interesting backstory. The main male lead also was an interesting choice, albeit not extremely striking. Though I guess for a story about a shoujo main rooming with an older male, it was nice to get a male that was not sarcastic or somewhat belittling was a nice change of pace. I liked the brother and some of the other characters to come along. The rivalry for once was a bit more realistic, it was nice to have a female rival that didn't become a complete b*tch after encountering our heroine however I found myself not really caring for more of the outside characters such as the friends. Sure hey had a cute plot but at he time, the scenes with their relationship felt more like a filler to space he chapters.
But overall without giving any spoilers my first read of Taiyou no Ie was a good one, great art, funny cute story and a romance youth predictable that was refreshing.
That was what I thought until my re-read. Which is where I want my review to focus more one.
Do not get me wrong, this is still a good manga, and it's one I will happily re-read, there are reasons I re-read it. But as I re-read it there were certain things that irked me that I never noticed before.
For one the romance is actually a lot quicker than I imagined. The first time I read it, I recalled he main male being a lot more reserved so that caught me off guard a little. Maybe it was because I was reading whilst the manga was still ongoing making updates seem longer and that I was too caught up in the males ability to sparkle whilst wearing a fedora of all things and the fact he looked good in a suit- Sorry I side tracked there- but in any case the romance is as equally quick as it it is slow. A quick romance is fine, but when a naturally quick progressive romance starts to prolong it gets annoying. I mean towards the end, there was a lot of unnceccersary actions taken to prolong the characters actually getting together. They could have easily used some of this time prolonging stuff to actually give us chapters where they were officially together, they could have explained he same plot points whilst yah ey were together.
Another thing I noticed was, though whilst refreshing, the shoujo fell into a rather generic fashion. There were interesting moments but also rather plain moments that felt too forced or just like it was trying to live up to a cliché. Thus the friends arc that nobody really asked for, even the first male rival seemed rather cliché and uneeded, I think the brother as a rival was plenty fine.
The whole idea of the female main being a mobile author fell to the background a lot. If it weren't for the female rival, the whole idea of a mobile novel would have been useless. Towards the end it felt like the mangaka suddenly remembered that he web novel was a certain aspect of and tried to tie it in at the end, and I can appreciate that she would have had to keep that consistency to he start of he manga. But the web novel aspect is really just a background part to it. A thing to note is that this manga came out a little time after watashixxshinasai so maybe the mangaka had an idea inspired by that but in the end the manga turned into it's own thing?
I digress however, I think the only other thing to irk me about he manga is that it felt a little artificial. The romance and story wasn't the same as I first read it, which is a shame because maybe it's just because I just naturally notice more things upon a second re-read.
So with that in mind would I recommend Taiyou no Ie? Yes actually.
As I said my first read was a pleasant one, and no matter how many flaws I notice upon my many re-reads, that won't take away from the fact that I did enjoy the manga for what it was. Even when re-reading there were points where I felt the same way I felt when I did read it. So for first time readers I'd say yes, you'll enjoy it. You may notice things on your second re-read but it won't really ruin the experience for you so much that you'll want to put it down.
I enjoyed the manga and I will re-read it again. It's a cute short manga and that's all it aspires to be. For that I can appreciate it!
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