[+ all of the screenshots I couldn't find an excuse for in the main post]
EDITED JANUARY 2021: I've finally scanned my handwritten notes!!! All 7 pages are down at the bottom of this post for you to peruse. This is your final warning.
Often I wish Sasuga showed us less, especially things outside of Natsuo's perception. The parallel scenes in ~222 and 227-228 with Nat and Rui telling their friends about the breakup are... kinda nice to have. But she plays out imaginary/hypothetical scenes too often. Just show us Hina sitting there looking daydreamy, we can connect the fucking dots its not hard. And why did we need a scene with Yuji trying to step in front of a train? It's used exclusively to create needless intrigue and give him a reason to appear in the MiYuka arc, and after that we see exactly three bubbles from him the entire rest of the manga. I get subtlety is not her strong suit, but you can't just pound the table with your ham hands for 276 chapters.
Even so, too many characters straight up disappear outside of their own dedicated arcs. The whole utilitarian thing. With Fumiya and the lit club, I get it. Even really valuable friends often take a different route in life, and so can't be constant fixtures in each other's lives. (I still wish Fumi showed up way more.) But for 25 or so chapters Miyabi gets the most panel time aside from the main trio, then she confesses and just fucking disappears until she finds out he's having a kid.
when you write Natsuo's surname in romaji (Fujii) it has a [...] no fucking way
the stanford prison experiment bullshit in 43 is really some fucking bullshit.
"We're here for the waifus." actually, based on the number of comments on the chapters that have tiddies in them, I think most of us are here for the tiddies
Natsuo's reaction to "will you have sex with me here?" isn't getting super embarrassed and getting a nosebleed or entering some fantasy - he's like "wait why me? I'm lame and dumb"
... and then Sasuga goes into 270 chapters of skirt flips, panty shots, and nosebleeds
Natsuo not fully communicating (about Hina staying over and buying him his phone) is really fucking frustrating. it's not as if they made some big, full page promise to always communicate openly or anything but considering that was the whole undercurrent of A-side act III you would think he'd make an effort at least once! When Rui gets jealous about Hina he just kinda clams up and gets nervous, and when Mao drags him along he hides it... I get that development comes later but like holy shit this dude's been swimming laps in this kiddie pool for 160 fucking chapters
She has a tendency to over-tell, and have characters straight up explain things that they shouldn't fully understand if they're going to go through the thematic process. But it's subtler than many of the other flaws, and almost every manga has this, so whatever.
Nisekoi had a similar problem introducing too many disconnected, underexplored characters, but Nisekoi's writing was so mediocre that your overall experience with Haru, Paula, Yui, and co. was probably no different from your experience otherwise. Also, if your defense is, "hey, Nisekoi had the same issue!" you should probably take a hard look in the mirror. And to be fair to Nisekoi, it at least brought its entire cast together at the end to bounce off of each other in one giant plot orgy.
the spread in 256 is cool. And, y'know, scans. But like, he hasn't been able to write, at all, for about a year, and it's completely turned his life upside down. Then, the giant fucking climax of him writing again is: "Even if I try to impersonate [Tougen], it's no good. The reason why is, Tougen-sensei was always so scrupulous in his research. When all the scenes disappeared from my mind, it was because I lost my ability to create scenes. But Tougen-sensei was different. What Tougen-sensei had inside him was a sprawling memory of all the scenes he'd witnessed. How would he communicate them? What words would he choose? Tougen-sensei would..." and then he just starts writing again. Like jesus Keiko I get you're just rushing to fill tankobons but daam
more writing theme ideas that felt too generic or overlapping to keep in include:
• subtlety and depth of expression vs. hackneyed gimmicky plot vehicles
• writing is not a job. if you don't strongly want to build new worlds and characters, you will never create anything of real value. there is no forcing writing
not a fan of the parallelism with Natsuo's writer's block and Rui's stress disorder, only because it oversimplifies and opens the door for people to judge Rui when the situation is so much more fluid than that. Speaking of judging Rui,
I don't want to, because internet commenters are so often dumb fuckwads who can't read or process basic information, but I feel like I need to talk about the fandom, especially if this gets shared in the DG community. There are so many people out there (in online comment sections, to be fair) who passionately support Miyabi after 216, excuse everything Natsuo has ever done – and all the things he failed to do as well – and then give Rui metric tons of shit for the exact same things those two do. My favorite part of this manga is the fact that they undergo a painful and probably pointless breakup. Regardless of relatability or reality, it's nice to have that represented when you rarely ever see it in manga. But all the Rui hate post-216, while understandable when it comes from weekly readers, is telling. Natsuo can waffle, and wallow in his own guilt, and question his self-worth relative to others for TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY FUCKING CHAPTERS WITH NO GROWTH but Rui wallows for 2 chapters and acts on it (you know, like her character always does) and everybody loses their fucking minds. Nevermind that no one had shit to say when Natsuo was regularly hurting Rui, all of a sudden these dumbfucks want Sasuga to kill her off because she caused Natsuo suffering, even though the cause of his suffering A) started before they broke up, B) was hidden from her by Natty himself, and C) didn't really have anything to do with her. Meanwhile, Serizawa is so in her feelings that she's entirely yanking him around. She doesn't help him with acting because she legitimately wants to help him grow and be better, she just wants to get closer to him — and readers gobble her pure ass up. Yet over in New York Rui works together with Kajita to improve her dish for the contest, gets caught in his visualization of his future for literally 5 seconds and people have their fucking pitchforks out. And I'm not even talking about the people who call her a slut. Braindead fucking twats. Be better please
great, now I have to separate this from the main post to avoid pissing too many people off, if people even read the main post
Moral ambiguity is overrated, but god can this manga get black-and-white. Ben (who to be fair is kind of an exception) barely gets explored – beyond evilly eating fried chicken – before being fucking beaten to death in a Brooklyn alleyway, and while we get to see the behaviors and surface motivations of guys like Tanabe and Okunugi, Kei declines to go any deeper into underlying psychology, even when she ostensibly tries to with Natsuo's prison visit. It's just: "maybe people who commit crimes and people who don't aren't fundamentally different". NO SHIT SASUGA. Meanwhile, she goes out of her way to make sure we know that Yuuya didn't notice Momo's scars during sex, and she spends multiple entire chapters making absolute sure we know Kiriya is nothing except a goddamned ordained saint. (If you forgot who Yuuya is, don't worry, you're not alone. And I love Kiriya.) Sure, she fails to explore lots of things in the back half, but still.
some examples of bullshit overhearing:
186 last page
227 last page
234 last page like wow
272 weirdly this is kinda the least shitty one but still, jeez
some examples of bullshit melodrama:
89 hito about to slap rui then just caresses her cheek hahaha
the entire second half
240-whatever when natsuo is deciding who he wants to be with and right before he names them kajita skrrrrrrts
270 when Hina finally admits to herself she loves Natsuo and two pages later gets yeeted into a coma
as promised but 2 months late: below are my handwritten notes from my third reread of the manga that I did when I started writing the main post. enjoy this glimpse into the depths of my personal insanity at your own risk. you were warned
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