Back to ExtraList's Profile ExtraList's Profile

If you had the chance to erase your painful past, would you take it?

This is a short story that explores the emotional impact of malicious rumors and a person's attempt to move past them by going to study at a distant college. The story's brilliance, however, comes from the fact that our main point-of-view character isn't the one I'm talking about. We explore that character, instead, through the eyes of someone very different in terms of personality and mindset, getting to see how someone like that would perceive the situation.

Furuya Nagisa managed to showcase a realistic, heartwarming relationship between an introvert turning a new ... leaf and an extrovert wiling to look past his cold exterior.

Despite the romance tag, major emphasis has been put into developing a realistic friendship before anything else. And that's honestly something that you don't find often in this genre, let alone executed so brilliantly.

The art is also very good, with great character and background details. Furuya Nagisa also has an eye for good panelling and especially for expressive facial features. For the genre this manga belongs in, the art is heaps and bounds better than what you'd find in other similar stories and compliments the story well.

What some readers might not like is the significant lack of romance in the first half of the story. While shounen-ai as a genre is known for its slow and methodical buildup of character relations, the progression of friendship to romance is slow enough to deter a chunk of the audience from finishing the story. But if one approaches this with the mindset of looking for a story about people finding each other in a time of emotional need instead of a "love-at-first-sight" plot then the manga becomes far more enjoyable.

Overall, this is a must-read for anybody looking for a short, heartwarming slice-of-life(esque) story about an unconventional relationship between polar opposites.