Sayonara Watashi no Cramer
Farewell, My Dear Cramer

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Read this manga, and your feet will be itching to touch a football.

Sayonara, Watashi no Cramer is an experience, a journey. (P.S. This is gonna be my experience told. I can’t say how your experience will be. I can only hope yours is even better than mine, for I love this journey of mine.)The quality metrics are just as described in other reviews. Just this that, before I read the manga, I hated sports, be it indoor, outdoor or video games. And in this journey, I, and I guarantee that you will also, came to love football. I watched World Cup 2023 (though I was ... disappointed that there were fouls in every moment before my blood could get warm), my feet is itching to kick a ball around and I am gonna go in Japan and I am gonna support Girls' Soccer wholeheartedly. Japanese Girls' Soccer has so much potential. It would be a waste to let go of something so beautiful. And I am not even a girl or a Japanese. And this manga gave me the most awesome person I've ever meet. I want to go on the field and play with those girls in the manga. I so wish every person in the world would realise how beautiful football is and how much potential and uncultivated Girls' Soccer is.

So, I love this journey that I went on, one which I would like to take every time I'm given the chance.

Not in my life did I ever imagine that a conventional shounen sports manga could be so captivating. While I do enjoy sports mangas from time to time, I've usually found that they always fall into the trap of perpetuity, where despite the fact that the characters have been developed and their intimate aims and goals have been attained, the story goes on much longer than it should in order to push the characters to 'reach for the stars', ruining the pacing of its story and tarnishing the central narrative. (There are of course exceptions. E.g. H2) Sayonara Watashi no Cramer by Naoshi Arakawa (of ... Your Lie in April fame) perhaps deserves to sit among the best of shounen sports manga for its sheer craft, entertainment value and most importantly, character and narrative restraint.

Despite the lightness in Arakawa's approach to character, the numerous characters in the manga (which is not restricted to the central characters) have a surprising amount of depth. Even the supposed throwaway characters written for humour have surprisingly deft characterisation that renders them humane. The art is very competent. It looks incredible, it is dramatic in the appropriate moments and it creates a fantastic sense of movement which is essential for a sports manga. At the same time, one thing I found very valuable in this manga is that despite the fact that some individual players have a tremendous amount of talent and skill, it may not necessarily be appropriate to play in such a way at that moment - psychology, teamwork and tactics play a very essential role in the battles on the field. I've not seen such a depiction done with such skill and clarity in a shounen sports manga. It is incredibly good.

Most importantly, Sayonara Watashi no Cramer understands that it is not the plot that makes a sports manga worth reading - for if it were the game that was exciting, why not just watch it in real life? Why even read a manga about it? It is the characters that make the journey worth sitting through. This is beyond writing believable characters with depth, it is about making the narrative be about the journey of the characters instead of the goal or a vague plot. And following this story philosophy, Sayonara Watashi no Cramer ends in a strong and appropriate manner. It ends when the girls' inner journey has been completed. While this may make you yearn to read more if there were more (I did for sure), the power of the ending would be broken if it were to go on.

Perhaps my biggest and only criticism of Sayonara Watashi no Cramer (it is maybe more of a nitpick...) is though it touches upon brief disappointments and feelings of inadequacy in sportsmanship, it never truly goes in-depth into the despair one might feel, on the failure of the body to keep up with others, on the failure of the body in the face of age and ageing joints. Perhaps I wish it dipped a little more in the 'Ping Pong' direction and explored the nuances and difficulties that entail a life in sportsmanship would face.

Still, what Sayonara Watashi no Cramer provides is incredibly masterful. I would even go as far as to say I very much prefer it to Your Lie in April. For despite the powerful drama and nuanced characters and developments of Your Lie in April, Sayonara Watashi no Cramer is affecting without the over-sentimentality and dramatic twists. It is simply great storytelling.

Another Master Piece in the brewing from the author of "Your Lie in April". A sport manga needs to keep you engaged and hyped at key moments, which this author sure knows how to do proven in his previous work and proving once again he can capture the emotions of his readers in now a sports genre.

A cliché setting and start to the story, the difference is that its set in a high school girls foot ball team. What's great is that the speed in which the story is told isn't slow and at a good pace which allows for a good reading.
We have ... fantastic, colorful, and likable characters. Their growth and development throughout the series leading to exciting comeback moments are great to read.

The only problem I have is the art. The characters are hard to distinguish and I wish the character design was done to make it easier to tell whos who. Other than that movement of the characters and frames are spot on.

Its not a CGDCT manga. But, its a great Shonen manga! and its getting animated. A must read and then watch for Shonen Manga Fans.