Doom85
Member
Finished Spirit Circle (6 volumes) recently.
Really solid. The main character, Fuuta, is a high school student when a new girl named Kouko transfers into his class. Fuuta can see spirits, and he sees a spirit of a strangely dressed man following Kouko. When she realizes Fuuta can see the man (East), she is furious. She gradually reveals she and Fuuta have gone through many lives via reincarnation and that in one of Fuuta’s lives he did something insanely horrendous that can never be forgiven and has marked all their following reincarnations to end in tragedy. Fuuta gains access to a Spirit Circle that lets him bear witness to all his prior lives, and the life that Kouko shows utter hatred towards will be the last. Once he has born witness to them all and knows the truth about what he once did, Kouko makes it clear to him that she intends to kill him.
One of my favorite aspects was some of the lives we get to see, all are interesting, but some in particular do make you really feel like you bore witness to a full life (albeit abridged) in a lot of unique locales and time periods. The knight/witch one, the carpenter/Egyptian one, and the Sleeping Tower one were my favorites.
It does get mildly action Shonen-y towards the end, but without betraying the tone of the series IMHO. And the ending is pretty satisfying.
Next, starting what is supposed to be one of the GOAT shojo titles, NANA:
I’m a little way into Vol. 2, pretty interesting so far. I’ve heard Nana K. (the light haired one) will test your patience with decisions based on emotion over logic, but I know it’s supposed to deliberately written that way to show it‘s better to try to be patient when finding love as opposed to overlooking or be forgiving of manipulation or cruelty. Nano O. (the dark haired one) is supposed to be more level headed in comparison, and she’s definitely pretty cool in comparison. Shame it’s not a Yuri manga as I’ve heard lots of people say the two leads would clearly be happier with each other than some of the guys in their lives.
I know the manga has been on “hiatus” for like well over a decade due to the mangaka’s health issues. But I’ve heard most say it’s still worth the journey despite the lack of closure. There’s been rumors she might get well enough to come back as she did like some single page promotional art or something like that recently, but obviously her health, and any mangaka‘s health, should be top priority so hopefully she doesn’t force it and only comes back if her health can truly take it.
Also, Goodbye Eri (by Chainsaw Man’s Tatsuki Fujimoto) released in the English physical volume last week, so I’ll be reading that this week for sure. Look Back was an excellent one-shot he also did, and of course Chainsaw Man is fucking incredible, so I’m definitely looking forward to this.
Really solid. The main character, Fuuta, is a high school student when a new girl named Kouko transfers into his class. Fuuta can see spirits, and he sees a spirit of a strangely dressed man following Kouko. When she realizes Fuuta can see the man (East), she is furious. She gradually reveals she and Fuuta have gone through many lives via reincarnation and that in one of Fuuta’s lives he did something insanely horrendous that can never be forgiven and has marked all their following reincarnations to end in tragedy. Fuuta gains access to a Spirit Circle that lets him bear witness to all his prior lives, and the life that Kouko shows utter hatred towards will be the last. Once he has born witness to them all and knows the truth about what he once did, Kouko makes it clear to him that she intends to kill him.
One of my favorite aspects was some of the lives we get to see, all are interesting, but some in particular do make you really feel like you bore witness to a full life (albeit abridged) in a lot of unique locales and time periods. The knight/witch one, the carpenter/Egyptian one, and the Sleeping Tower one were my favorites.
It does get mildly action Shonen-y towards the end, but without betraying the tone of the series IMHO. And the ending is pretty satisfying.
Next, starting what is supposed to be one of the GOAT shojo titles, NANA:
I’m a little way into Vol. 2, pretty interesting so far. I’ve heard Nana K. (the light haired one) will test your patience with decisions based on emotion over logic, but I know it’s supposed to deliberately written that way to show it‘s better to try to be patient when finding love as opposed to overlooking or be forgiving of manipulation or cruelty. Nano O. (the dark haired one) is supposed to be more level headed in comparison, and she’s definitely pretty cool in comparison. Shame it’s not a Yuri manga as I’ve heard lots of people say the two leads would clearly be happier with each other than some of the guys in their lives.
I know the manga has been on “hiatus” for like well over a decade due to the mangaka’s health issues. But I’ve heard most say it’s still worth the journey despite the lack of closure. There’s been rumors she might get well enough to come back as she did like some single page promotional art or something like that recently, but obviously her health, and any mangaka‘s health, should be top priority so hopefully she doesn’t force it and only comes back if her health can truly take it.
Also, Goodbye Eri (by Chainsaw Man’s Tatsuki Fujimoto) released in the English physical volume last week, so I’ll be reading that this week for sure. Look Back was an excellent one-shot he also did, and of course Chainsaw Man is fucking incredible, so I’m definitely looking forward to this.
