Ikoku Nikki
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This is my second time reading the manga: the first time was a spontanious and random action, as I found the cover art interesting and decided to give it a go; the second time, which is now, I decided to read it with the intention to give it a honest review.

[Might contain SPOILERS]

"I hated your mother from the bottom of my heart. And I hate the fact that those feelings aren't going to go away even with her dead, so whether you're related to her by blood or not, I don't think I could get any more emotionally attached to you as some random ... passerby kid, but... you're a 15 year old kid. It's not right for you to be in such an ugly situation. That, at least, I'm sure of. You deserve something more beautiful."

Asa just lost both of her parents in an accident, and as a result, ends up living together with her aunt, Makio. Broadly speaking, the story just follows the life of these two as they start to live together, but as I read that piece of dialogue mentioned earlier, I instantly understood what kind of manga I was reading, and was very much happily surprised by the discovery.

The dialogue and relationship between Asa and Makio is the core of the story. In the first chapters, Asa doesn't really know how to feel about the death of her parents. Makio, on the contrary, clearly states that she hated her sister, so she really isn't sad about what happened. Both characters feel real and very well witten, especially Asa's line of thought about her new "adoptive parent". Makio, who is a writter herself, has a very charming and calm way of speaking, despite her sorta clumsiness in other aspects of life, such as cleaning or cooking. A part of the story that I really like is the way that the death of Asa's parents isn't ignored like in a lot of other mangas. The struggles and problems that arise from losing your family, your home, and having to adjust to a new, completly different reality, are constanlty dealt with by both Asa and Makio.

The art is great. It's not the best I've ever seen, but it suits perfectly to the kind of story we are getting. There are a lot of pages that are beautifully drawn, so you won't get bored.

Overall, Ikoku Nikki is a very good read, especially if you're looking for some mature story. This is my first ever review, so I hope you could find it helpfull.

Ikoku Nikki is by far the best, the most relatable real life growing up/ slice of life genre manga out there right now.

Characters: Every character has a strong personality, a reason why they are in the story, and the struggles and messages they are meant to convey to the reader. The network of relationships is nicely intertwined, and best of all - the characters have the subtlety and nuance you would find in people in real life, making them easily relatable. One wonders how Yamashita-sensei manages to integrate all of this into the minimalist conversations that happen, and why other mangakas are not doing the ... same. There is a depth to each character, and areas across all of them that the reader can connect with.

In particular, the character development of Asa, the protagonist, is nicely captured across the chapters. Her growth is shown, not told, which is amazing. It feels like we are alongside her (and other characters) as they progress in life.

Concepts: Manga/ anime have a tendency to either overplay on stereotypes or if meant to reflect reality, focus vastly on one realistic theme and exaggerate greatly. Ikoku Nikki, however, brings forth modern concepts in the most natural way. They float in on quiet stories, nonchalant responses, character self reflections. Everything is shown, not told. You know the manga is talking about concept X without the concept itself ever being mentioned. It’s amazingly well written.

(Plus points that concepts normally not addressed in manga are addressed in this manga, with no stereotypes at all. You can sense a calm acknowledgement of this and that concept rather than superficial opinions or stereotypes being forced. I can’t spoil what kind of concepts, but please read it!)

Art: The loose style of illustrations perfectly matches the mood and storyline of this manga.

Overall: A very well-rounded manga with emotional depth and clarity, and a good sense of the times it is being published in. I have revisited this manga over and over again to dwell on its words and muse on the concepts it shows.

I honestly really liked this one in the beginning, but after a few chapters it fell off in my opinion. A lot of questions were being raised in the manga and not one of them were properly answered throughout the manga, like literally it lead to nothing and I could not give my own interpretations to the questions or the plot points. I was waiting for some closure to the story but I didn't receive a lot except for one plot point which was concluded properly but it was still a bit predictable as to where it would lead.

And personally, I find the reason ... why the main character (the aunt) hates her sister to the point where she doesn't even feel sad about her sibling's death a bit too cold hearted. I thought this aspect of the manga could have been better explored and talked about in depth but the author is so vague about the sisters' relationship. Their dynamic could have been showed to us except we're shown the same snippets over and over again.

The dialogues felt a bit pretentious and cheesy at times when the main characters talk about their feelings, it doesn't feel organic but feels like a bunch of intelligent words strung together to make some sense. The characters in this manga are good, mostly they were enjoyable. The main female character who is a teenager was pretty well written because she was immature at times and actually behaved like a teenager.

The artwork was probably the best part, I could differentiate between the young and the present versions of the characters and it was a good bonus for the manga. There were no complaints from me about the artwork.

The manga had a ton of potential to be extremely good but unfortunately it lead nowhere. 6/10