Cat Street

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Cat Street. Short and almost perfect Shoujo manga.

The Cat Street is the only 5/5 Shoujo manga i rated out of the 20–25 Shoujo mangas I have read from MAL suggested lists, Youtube recommendations, and random Mangakatana comments.

Story:
If you prefer minimal love polygon and dramas This may be the best option for you.
This story revolves on Keito who collapsed after a major setback in her life.
A tale about how healing can begin and how to taking things one step at a time and it's fine to make a few minor steps back but importantly you're moving forward.
The story of a warrior of her ... own life. Treasuring herself much more after losing so much.

Character:
Since I will be concentrating solely on the female lead, her portrayal is excellent. Her development and transformation are realistic to me since I can relate to my own. Everyone experiences hardships or trials at some point; but recovering from major ones is brutally difficult especially when you lost your own identity.
But the recovery is attainable just like Keito and many others too. You might not ended up doing the same thing again that you initially considered as successful but in reality success comes in many ways and that is the truth as the sun rises in the east.
Your talents are not wasted. You are you and the better version of you.

Art:
6 out of 10. In the entire total numbers Shoujo mangas I read mentioned above, I have also saw many not too attractive female leads. However, Keito is a simple drawn stunning young woman, she gave off the aura of an idol immediately.

Conclusion:
If you're looking for a story of someone changing for good in the Shoujo genre comics, but do not want them to be unduly drawn out or filled with unnecessary dramas and love triangles. This will be a good pick.

8.5-9/10 is when measured against all the mangas I have read.

This series started off strong, especially the first chapter which establishes Kieto’s career as a child star and the immense pressures put on her that led to her feelings of ostracization, isolation, and absence of normality. Seeing all that compound and then eventually break her after the betrayal of someone she thought was a fried made for a immediately engaging opening that had me curious as to where the series would go. And within the first half of the series, I genuinely enjoyed it. Even if it dipped into the melodramatic at times given how intense the characters treated innocuous developments, it was perfectly congruent ... with their histories. All of them suffered from a mental condition, negative social history, or traumatic experience that gave them debilitating difficulties which transformed what would be innocuous, to the average person, into a major obstacle that could ruin lives. Watching the characters find a sense of belonging at El Liston and with one another and use their new found confidence and support to confront their insecurities and struggles is inspiring.

Unfortunately the second half of the series comes along and is of noticeably lesser quality. For one, and this isn’t necessarily the manga’s fault, but the translation I was reading shifted scanalations for the worst. Unfortunately this series has no official English release and this was the only way to experience the series. The downgrade in translation consisted of all personality and character being drained from the dialogue, characters constantly talking like robots (just random shifts to third person and non-sequiturs), and repetitive and poor grammer.

As it concerns the manga itself though, the series really loses focus in the second half. I knew the series would contain romance, it’s one of the reasons I was interested in reading it, however it is incorporated extremely poorly. The main cast are certainly interesting enough and seeing how the introduction of romance between them could strengthen/fracture their bonds would be a worthwhile development. However enough time is not given to make any romantic developments feel earned outside of characters’ attraction to one another. Within the 36 chapters of this series, in which the romance is secondary, there are multiple confessions, a love triangle, and attempt to initiate and follow two separate romantic pairings. But there’s not enough time given to fit anything substantive, interesting, or exciting into any of the romances. It’s very superficial and hamfisted, especially in comparison to the narratives surrounding the anxieties and difficulties the characters face in their lives. There’s a harsh whiplash when you go from a good and earnest, even if at times clunky, exploration to how the characters try to deal with themselves and their place in society to the most bland, flat, undercooked romances. And alongside these pitiful attempts at romance that derail what was previously good (the friend group) about the series while introducing some really tired tropes.

Outside of the romance, the second half also struggles with how rushed various developments end up being. The lives of the characters change but, because so little depth is given to their new status quo, the changes feel like an afterthought, like set dressing. And again, it stands in stark contrast to what came before in that the characters felt more grounded and responsive to their environments because there was a greater focus given to how they engaged with and interacted with same which manifested in their various neurosis and quirks. After the timeskip, everything feels very divorced from the characters, making them less interesting as well as the narrative developments (so of which are just over the top) that follow.

The series ultimately feels like it should have ended sooner (concluding with volume 3 would have been satisfying) or been significantly longer (to allow time for romances to develop and be explored in detail, show specifics of the characters molding/being molded by their new states in life post time-skip, etc.). All that being said, I enjoyed the series overall and don’t regret reading it. Seeing the characters find both internal and external motivation in continuing on and not letting life pass by due to fear, rejection, or failure and was satisfying and ultimately conveyed well. I only wish the second half of the series had been executed to the level of the first.

Hmm, it does seem just like the most generic shoujo of all time. There's a lot of melodrama, forced confrontations, and whimsical breakups and makeups of all sorts.

While other series like Paradise Kiss do feature a lot of drama as well, it's also packed with actual bonding and relationships. In Cat Street, you're maybe shown just one or two chapters worth of compassion, romance, and bonding. Most, if not all of the chapters are ridden with melodramatic pasts, confrontations, and everything else.

Our main character, Keito is at the center of it all. Being an unconfrontational person in general, she's always being stuck between ... a rock and a hard place in multiple situations throughout the story where she gets bailed out due to good circumstance, friends, or just outright being lucky. Apparently she's an actor, but you're only shown perhaps one or two things she ever works on, and the motif and theme of acting with Keito is largely forgotten other than the fact that you're shown that "acting is her passion."

For anyone thinking that this would be an actual showbiz show like Skip Beat, you'd be sorely mistaken. Most, if not all of the series is melodrama nonsense.