Ane no Yuujin

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This manga is most probably not the most revolutionary thing you will ever read in terms of plot, story, narrative or characters, but it is fairly enjoyable.

Its artwork is by far its biggest selling point. The front cover is so beautiful that I could be looking at it for hours and I want to have it as a poster on my wall. So are the three postals that came with it (at least in Spain's edition). The regular pages are consistently beautiful to look at as well. The panneling does its job, it's not confusing at any point but it isn't really innovative either. Having ... only read this manga by Battan, one could say that she loves to draw smoke and steam. Whenever Kyoko appears she's having a cigarette and if she's not on page, the characters will be somewhere cold having steam blowing out their mouth. It's not a complain, but something that caught my attention.

As for the story, without coming into spoiler territory... This is pretty much a WLW story. I haven't read as many of these as I'd like in order to have a clear reference for comparison, but I wouldn't consider this to be especially interesting. There are three arcs: Ruri's relation with Kyoko, Natsu's relation with Kyoko and Ruri's thoughts on Kyoko, three and six years later. There are two plot points that made me clench my teeth a little (page 38 and Natsu's ending), but apart from those, I did enjoy what I read.

As for the characters. They're nothing to write home about either, but they do their job. The big star is definitely Kyoko (the sister's ~friend~). She's supposed to have this cool and sophisticated aura around her... and she does have it, thanks to her gorgeous design. It does buzz me off a little that every character says how good she smells, considering that she's a chainsmoker, but that's me thinking out loud. As for the other main characters, we got Ruriko, the younger sister, and Natsu, the older sister. Both of them have a crush on Kyoko at some point and they tell their story with her and reflect on how she affected their lives, but I couldn't say much more about them.

I got to read Spain's edition, made by Ediciones Fujur. It's a somewhat new publisher that has released about four different titles and seem to be doing a great job so far. I bring this just because I want to highlight J. Agustín Izquierdo's wonderful translation.

TL;DR: do you want a WLW story with beautiful artwork? Read this manga.