Yukarism

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Seeing as this series lacks a review here, I decided to write my little thing on Yukarism. This won't be the most comprehensive review as I feel that giving people an understanding of the series is more important than presenting my own opinions
Yukarism begins in modern-day Japan with our eccentric and wondering male protagonist, Yukari Kobayakawa. He's a 17 year old author who writes novels about the Edo Period. The curious thing is, he doesn't research the period. He's lived in. The theme of reincarnation is used well in this manga and you'll see numerous crossovers and parallels to the Edo period as Yukari is ... thrown into the period as his past self. Now this is where the Gender Bender element is introduced. Yukari's past self works in the Red Light District so there's some hilarious scenes when he's in his past self. Added to this is the addition of other characters who share Yukari's memories of a past life except theirs are more instinctually based then memory based. The story presents these characters and there's an element of mysery as Yukari tries to connect the characters of his past life to those that have been reincarnated. There's a few twists here and there but it's fairly easy to follow.
Yukarism's art is good and the scenes that contain comedy are especially good with plenty of hilarious faces to accompany Yukari's bemused attitude. The area that the art falls down on is the more detailed drawings and especially far-away shots of characters. The characters themselves might look fine close up but they look almost unnatural when they're further away.
I quite enjoyed this manga and although the English translations haven't yet caught up and are quite outdated it's still worht a read. If you like Gender bending and a simple, unique and interesting story with plenty of comedy added in then Yukarism is definitely worth a try.

LOVED this manga so much I bought the 1st volume & am planning on buying the rest when they come out.
Read whole review OR just read the end & look @ the scores.


[STORY]
The story is very unique and interesting. It definitely keeps you reading.
When it comes to mangas and certain genre's there will always be similarities but it's the differences that make or break the manga & the differences in this manga make it.

It brings in not only the Edo period but also a supernatural element to it which makes it way more interesting. It's not a random supernatural element too,
like for ex: (NOT ... A MANGA EX) At some point in the past the English believed vampires actually existed right...? So it's like bringing vampires in past England to life.
What I'm trying to say is that it brings things that were said to real but wasn't actually real, to life.

Another thing that makes it interesting is that this is not only about reincarnation & memories...
The main character, Yukari (the story follows a male writer), can time-travel back to his past body & gets to interact with the people he once knew.

I find this to be pretty unique because usually with reincarnation mangas, the main character will either 1. Bump into their past self through time-travel 2. Never time-travel & they rely on their memories of the past to come back to them




[ART]
I personally thought the art was fantastic. I think an average rating for the art would be 7-8 but I gave it a 10 xD




[CHARACTERS]
The characters are pretty easy to connect to and like.
I really like the MC's personality & how he just goes along with the flow when he time-travels to his past body. He's kind of snarky & challenges people.
The rest of the characters are likable as well. (Although I prefer how they were in the past more than anything because some females in the present were hot males in the past haha)

The romance in the present-life is pretty mundane compared to the romance in the past life.
I wanna say that it's because the reincarnated characters become pretty typical shoujo characters but I guess that's a given because the mangaka wanted to focus more on the Edo period characters.




[ENJOYMENT]
Well..if you can't tell by now, I really enjoy this manga.




[OVERALL]
I really love this.
The reincarnation-time-travel. The Edo period. The plot. The characters.
I love it all.

I can't guarantee that you'll LOVE this manga the way I do (because I have a fondness for reincarnation & historical mangas/animes) but I CAN say with confidence that you'll like this manga & keep reading it.
If you HATE IT then I just...I just don't know what to say to you. xD

With that said, I'm well aware that my scores (for everything) are pretty high.
I think an average reader would give give this an overall score of 7-8 but mine will strongly stand at a 9.

The past comes back to haunt you. In the cases of the folks in this story, it does literally. Speaking of the past, Yukarism was one of the earliest manga I read, so it was sensible I returned to finish it after all these years.

Our protagonist is an aloof and reclusive young novelist who writes about the Japanese Edo Period whenever the urge strikes him, but he doesn’t know why or even care much about the stories. He lives life without worrying too much about school or ambitions. That is, until, he’s forced to confront his past. Things start changing around him and he ... starts having strange visions about a previous life. It’s not too long before the threads of fate start pulling in others who were previously connected.

The premise of this reincarnation manga is pretty cool, and I think it mostly delivers on that end. The writing here is very mushy, sentimental and maybe a bit cliche. But that’s as you would expect from a period piece and its target shoujo demographic. In its favor, the historical setting is fun to read along with and you can get what the author is presenting without any prior historical knowledge of this period or knowledge about reincarnation. You even learn some stuff as you read. And, the highlight is the historical side of the drama in this manga. Our characters past selves are intriguing and tragic, but sadly you can’t say the same about how they are currently. I didn’t like very much about their reincarnations, but it’s OK since they’re tolerable.

There are unfortunate points where the plot plods or becomes a bit hard to comprehend, but the ending volume does tie it all together nicely. The reincarnation and various other elements are used in a plot devicey fantasy context, but they contribute to the themes of moving on from the past rather than obfuscating the storytelling of this brief manga’s 17 chapters.