Ohayou, Ibarahime
Wake Up, Sleeping Beauty

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In a way you could say that this story at first feels very familiar. Its very reminiscent of "The Secret Garden" with the main charcter appearing in a new splendorous mansion where they meet a person that has been locked off the rest of the world due to their condition that their parents neglect to properly take care of. It's pretty obvious to anyone reading, that the plot will resolve around the mc helping that person go out more, experience the outside and achieve their long lost happiness.

Despite the "predictability" this story has about itself, the events are very diverse. It explores love, friendship and ... most notably family relations from the perspective of children, parents as well as grandparents concentrating on many emotions that are hard to convey to others and that we often keep to ourselves. It also deals with parting and death of loved ones. Another very important aspect of the story is the problem of defining oneself and establishing an identity. When found in a place where no one really knows you can you even know yourself? The self exploration is really beautifully done. With how likeable and complex the characters turn out to be it's hard to not drop a tear at the turn of events and how they come to resolve their feelings. It's an amazing story definetly worth your time, the one that you will end up thinking about for a while.

This shoujo manga has such an incredible premise. It is mind-boggling to me that this never got an anime adaptation because the concept is so intriguing and the romance is so wonderful. The characters are great and have very human flaws that you can sympathise with. The drama is gripping but never feels too overblown. There is a part of the story in the middle that does get a bit out there with a sort of silly antagonist. They were the only character that I feel didn't get enough depth but it doesn't overstay for too long. Everything else is wonderful and the art is ... gorgeous.

I don't want to go in depth because I feel like this is manga that people should go in with minimal knowledge.
I highly recommend you read this one!

“Genuinely disappointed,” is not the feeling I thought I would get after finishing Ohayou Ibarahime. And this disappointment doesn’t stem from sky high expectations either, I came in hesitant but cautiously optimistic. The reason I'm disappointed with Ohayou Ibarahime is that it is an excellent manga with poor execution, be that the stunted characterisation, the inconsistent pacing or the baffling narrative decisions at times. While there is some amazing stuff in here and the art is excellent, I have trouble recommending this without some caveats.

Characters: 7

The manga contains a plethora of characters, more than you might expect for a manga of this length. While ... the quality of the characterisation varies, overall the likability and development of the cast is fairly good.

The main duo in this manga, Tetsu and Shizu, are both likeable and receive great development. Tetsu is a selfless and determined high school boy who isn't your typical male lead. He's short, gets emotional and scared easily, and criticises his own actions often throughout the manga. I liked Testu because of his flaws, and his development throughout the manga makes sense and is honestly heartwarming to see. Shizu is a lot more complicated, but as to not spoil anything I'll just say she is abnormally quiet for her age and doesn't have the best social skills. Her development is fairly formulaic, but it is handled with enough care that it works as the crux of the story. The romance between them is pretty standard but it's good to see and acts as the culmination of their character arcs.

The problem is with the side cast. With a cast of this size for such a short manga, I was rightfully worried that the characterisation would be spread thin amongst the supporting characters. For most of the manga the supporting characters are no more than shallow archetypes with uninteresting backstories. The weird thing about this manga is that it chooses to flesh out multiple characters at the end. It feels tacked on and ruins the natural pacing of the ending. There is only one character I would consider to be poorly written however, that being what you might traditionally call a "villain." I won't spoil their character, but their motivations are strange and at times contrived, and their backstory feels extremely inorganic. I'm not against focusing your writing on the mains, especially for such a short manga, but when the story tries to have emotional moments with the side cast it just falls flat. However, since the main characters were so good, the side cast wasn’t nearly enough to ruin my experience with this manga.

Story: 5

The story is by far the weakest part of Ohayou Ibarahime. The premise itself - that of a high school age boy helping out a girl with a mysterious illness as their romance slowly develops - does not play out as expected, which I was intrigued by. While the romance is certainly central to the story, the narrative includes many subplots, each of varying quality. While the quality of the subplots were on average fine, they ruined the pacing. In particular there is a soccer subplot that does flesh out Tetsu's character, but is far longer than what was required and as a result takes away more than what it adds to the story. I found this subplot in particular to be hard to get through.

The story also includes many plot twists, again varying in quality (are you noticing a theme?) which range from very interesting, unsurprising, and straight up baffling. There is one plot twist in particular involving a character called Mirei which not only removes some emotional weight from the story but also introduces many questions with no answers.

Now, I probably haven't made the story this manga out to be something very good so far. But the story does starts to pick up around the middle of volume four, and really peaks at the start of volume five. At this point the manga focuses completely on Tetsu's family, and the conflict is extremely intriguing and well written. This was the point in the manga that I glimpsed something truly amazing in Ohayou Ibarahime, and I was a fan. Unfortunately, this period did not last for long. For me the brief amazing moments of this story were not enough to make me invested.

Art: 9

If there is one thing that I can wholeheartedly praise, it would be the art. The manga consistently looks great and has a high level of detail in nearly every panel, especially in the characters. Full page drawings always look great and aren’t overused for dramatic moments. I would also like to praise the character designs. For this specific manga the character designs are more important than normal, so it is good that it is easy to tell the characters apart and the designs fit the personality of the characters excellently. Overall the art was of a very high quality throughout. The only bad thing I could say about it is that there weren't any panels that blew me away, but even that's just a personal gripe rather than criticism.

Enjoyment: 6

On theme with the manga, my enjoyment was extremely inconsistent. Volumes 1 and 2 I was vaguely intrigued by, volume 3 I was quite bored, volume 4 and the start of volume 5 I was very interested, and the rest I was disappointed in apart from the final couple of chapters which were sweet. My enjoyment mainly stemmed from the conflict surrounding Tetsu's family and his relationship with Shizu towards the very end. I won't lie, I didn't cry or even tear up once during the experience, but there were heartwarming moments and when I was enjoying the manga I was pretty engaged.

Conclusion

So, would I recommend it? The truth is that it depends. I can definitely see some of my friends enjoying this more than I did, and the plethora of high scores for this manga show that people definitely are. Even though I would say to avoid this if I've described something that you wouldn't like, it's so short and the highs are good enough that if you're on the fence about whether to read it or not you should give it a go. Ohayou Ibarahime isn't likely to be a story you'll forget, for better or worse.