I've read all four of the one-shots, and I have mixed reactions for all of them. I'll just share my detailed reviews for the first two stories though, and just have some short reactions to the latter two. Why? Because: 1. Reviewing the first story will give you a primer on the mangaka's style of storytelling 2. I believe the second story is overrated, and I want to express why I think so 3. The the last two stories are pretty irrelevant now, and it's a pain in the ass to write more full length reviews.
- Overhearing a Flower Song
Basically your typical shoujo fare about a normal girl who meets a delinquent guy. What I appreciate is that blushing isn't so obvious all the time, because when it is noticeably dark, I can tell that that character must be really embarrassed. Having rare blush moments makes those moments more meaningful, and creates a nice slice-of-life atmosphere at the same time.
The story better than your usual shoujo angst, but it still suffers the same flaws. Overly plain heroine with little characterization, the backgrounds are meh, and so on. Speaking of art, its plainness actually makes a great slice-of-life feeling too. The characters' faces are plain, without too much eyelashes or sparkles. The hair isn't big and the foreheads aren't big either. Nice way of showing that it's just a simple story about a normal guy and a normal girl.
On the downside though, I feel that because of the said plainness, the impact of the story is lessened by a lot. Because there are only so few facial expressions, it's hard to really grasp the character's feelings without the help of their words or their blushing. The art part of storytelling is crucially important if the words aren't as great, and the story suffers because translations of manga on the internet usually aren't that great compared to official translations.
Oh well, decent read for a shoujo anyway so 7 for this.
- Into the Forest of the Fireflies' Light
Honestly everyone makes a buzz about this because it's so tragic and it just so happened to have a movie adaptation. It still suffers the some of the flaws of the last story, especially the few and unvaried facial expressions (although the characters still seem to have a bit more personality here at least). I will say that the backgrounds are a lot better here though, and that should be expected of the fantasy genre.
One annoying thing for me is how the girl who's supposed to be six years old (nine years old later) sometimes acts like a teenaged girl. Although it might be just the translation's fault (and I hope it is too, for the sake of people who hype this story way too much). It's not that big of a deal though, since most of the story's development happens when the girl is already a teenager.
Actually that's also another flaw. The story rushes too much to reach the climax, when the girl's already a high school student. It hinders the impact of the characters' feelings and the story itself. Personally it also gives me this bad vibe that the mangaka wanted to focus on the romance way too much to the point of disregarding the development that should come before it. There's a chance it isn't the mangaka's fault though; it's possible that she had a page limit and couldn't stretch it out as much as she wanted to.
Lastly, I feel like the ending was badly executed. Again, it there's a chance it's just the translation's fault.
The whole monster festival part builds up how it would be the last time Hotaru can see Gin, particularly pages 37-40 (I'm basing it on mangafox so the numbers might be different on other sites). Gin says that he can't wait for summer anymore, and wants to see Hotaru right away. And then right after, Hotaru says that that summer will be the last time she can see him again. What. Why did she just assume that. How would she even reach that conclusion if all Gin said was that he wanted to see her right away without waiting? Maybe what Gin meant was that he literally couldn't wait to see her, as if he was declaring that it was the last time and he was going to disappear after. Or maybe Hotaru just had a feeling or a hunch that it was the last time she could see him again, but not something she knew for sure. But before you can even think about any of that, Gin ends up grabbing a kid by accident. And now I'm even more confused than before. Was Gin already going to disappear, but ended up hastening it by accidentally touching the kid? Or was Gin still going to continue to live forever until he touched the kid by accident? Was it even an accident when he grabbed the kid? All these questions come up because of the combination of ambiguous text and ambiguous facial expressions which portrayed ambiguous emotions. Agh and the way the shoehorned the part with the demons thanking her because all Gin wanted was to touch a person, and thanks to her he finally did. Wouldn't it have been more meaningful if the first thing he touched wasn't some stupid kid, but her? Wouldn't it have been better if the reason he died was doing something he loved, like embracing her for the first and last time? What a mess.
Maybe I'm just nitpicking on the details too much, but as a fan of visual stories like movies, manga, and video games, I feel that ignoring too much details creates an obstruction to a fully engaging experience. I really hope the movie fixes most of these flaws though. Maybe that's why everyone hypes it so much. Maybe they saw the movie first and read this afterwards which made them biased. Maybe they didn't even read it at all and just rated it based on the movie. I don't know, but really, it's just an average fantasy-romance-tragedy tale, which loses out to other stories of the same genres.
Well, at least it was a bit unique. 8/10.
- Falling Autumn Leaves
Story is pretty okay for shoujo. Some of the characters' facial expressions are too lifeless though. This is a recurring problem now for this manga. Also, that leaf background in page seven... does not fit in with manga in general. Looks like a photoshop effect. Lastly, the girl keeps mentioning "hot pot (without meat)". I think the parenthesis was okay the first time, but for every other time it's still there, it gets a bit annoying. Not sure if that was part of the manga or if the translators just put it in to avoid confusion.
This chapter is pretty average, but it's better than a lot of shoujos still. 7.5/10
- Deepening the Scar
The stigma against incest is probably preventing a lot of people from enjoying this chapter as much as they could. I was one of them, but when I reread it and tried to think more openly, this is actually pretty great. Probably my favorite out of all the stories. It actually tackled the issue in a realistic manner (aside from the part about the parents getting back together, but hey it could happen). The whole development in general was fluid in a way, better than the second story in my opinion.
I think the translation for this chapter was pretty good actually. There were some lines that really hit the feels. Kudos to the scanlating team! 9/10
Yeah I know I've been complaining a lot about the art and the ambiguous facial expressions, but they're not terrible. Lots of other mangakas have the same problem anyway, and this manga is pretty old too, so maybe it's just a bit outdated. And I don't really hate this manga, but I just don't think it's as "beautiful" and "amazing" as most people think it is.
Overall Rating: 8/10
**I'm not bashing the translators at all. I appreciate their work very much, and if it weren't for them, I wouldn't be able to read this manga. It's selfless people like them who share their works that make the internet really great.
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