Back to BlondieLottie's Profile BlondieLottie's Profile

Lately I've seen that Keiko Iwashita's works have gained quite a bit of notoriety. And while I must admit that she is a mangaka with an outstanding drawing style, the structure of her stories is, in my opinion, very weak (something that also happens with other mangakas such as Wataru Yoshizumi or Io Sakisaka)

Leaving that topic aside, let's analyze her most famous work: Living no Matsunaga-san. The story tells us about Miko, a 17-year-old teenager who, due to certain family circumstances, is forced to live in her uncle's boarding house. There she will meet several characters with whom she will relate and, little by little, ... fall in love.

The manga started off quite well, it had a very well-done balance between comedy and romance; however, from volume 4 onwards, the story loses a lot of strength. Maybe it's just me, but I feel that from that volume onwards, the author ran out of ideas to explore.

The relationship between Miko and Matsunaga is... peculiar. I don't mind the age difference as long as it's handled well (she's 17 and he's 28); what bothers me most about the main couple is the large amount of conflicts they have due to lack of communication (something that is more noticeable in the final volumes). As for the other characters, Ryou was interesting, as I think he complemented Miko more in several sentimental aspects compared to Matsunaga. As for the rest of the cast, I summarize them as follows: charismatic, but forgettable and lacking a good arc.

Living no Matsunaga-san is not a bad manga. However, it is a manga that goes from better to worse over time.

I'm not going to lie, My Sweet Girl is a manga which I started reading with high expectations due to its fairly similar theme to Hiyokoi; However, this manga is considerably worse executed.

Tsugumi is our protagonist: short (very short), insecure about her "bony body", she feels ugly and has serious trust issues. The truth is, when we are introduced to a protagonist like this I always look forward to seeing how she develops (her development of her, surprisingly, is somewhat rapid but, at the same time, inconsistent). She is nice most of the time, but on many occasions she tends to err on the side ... of hypocrisy.

Sena, on the other hand, is the male protagonist of this story: tall (on several covers they make him look like a giant), outgoing, kind, and seemingly perfect (prince charming of any shoujo). This character started off pretty well; Unfortunately, his jealousy problems regarding our protagonist's childhood friend began to displease me; At the same time, Sena was being too insistent.

The rest of the characters are uninteresting, the protagonist's childhood friend who was part of the "bone club" (and who is in love with Tsugumi) was moderately interesting, but is discarded too quickly. Tsumugi's best friend, a fan of "Honey Magic" (Mahou Shoujo) had perhaps the most boring arc in the entire story. Her drama and her regrets seemed forced and put into the story more than anything to fill out. Tsugumi's rival... we barely know about her during the story (she was overweight and the topic of her is very poorly treated). A forgettable rival in general.

The story itself begins with our protagonists at 15 years old, then they turn 16... so far so good. When they turn 17, the forced jumps begin, since out of nowhere we have the ending where they are 18 and, a couple of dialogues later, 27. The time jump is too abrupt and accelerated.

Even though I seem very negative about this manga, there is something good that I must admit: this manga does not demonize sexual activity in adolescence. We all know that adolescence is a stage of self-discovery and the fact that they have addressed this topic (surprisingly in a respectful way) is greatly appreciated.

Overall, this manga reads quickly and is very engaging for the first 15 to 20 chapters. Unfortunately, from there, it begins to decline in my personal opinion.

Anyway, I encourage anyone to read the manga and draw their own conclusions. Since I don't consider it to be a bad read, but rather that it has a mostly mediocre execution.