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“The Time Milk Wound the Spring” is a bizarre collection of short stories, centered around an enigmatic little girl named Milk. Milk possesses a flair for imagination as well as a bit of a cruel streak, most notable when she muses to her father about possibly boiling the child her mother is expecting in a pot, if not tossing it into the washing machine. The jealousy that often manifests itself in only children expecting a new sibling is taken to the extreme by Milk. When the child is born however, Milk is most accepting of it, even loving. That is because the child is in ... fact... a large dinosaur. Or at least that’s what Milk would have you believe as the page turns to an image of her walking through the city with her new “brother”. This kind of quirky surrealism is what you should expect when reading this manga.

The stories that follow are equally as odd; from Milk’s boyfriend becoming pregnant from an innocent kiss after Milk told him “if you kiss someone you’ll get pregnant!” to people disappearing off the face of the Earth due to Milk forgetting them. Each story places the little girl into a position of immense power and control over her environment, concluding with the titular story in which the world literally stands still with only Milk left to wind the springs of the great machine that powers the world.

The art style of “Milk Wound the Spring” is not overly detailed or messy. Each page is composed of simple, yet effective imagery which helps to tell the odd tales in fewer words.

In terms of characters there is really only Milk as a constant. She embodies the innocence of childhood, the wild imagination that can often only exist when one is naive to the world around them. We see Milk’s childish thoughts and ideas manifest themselves to shape the world; controlling others and her environment as well. This is a somewhat disturbing notion in and of itself. When one has turned the last page however, one still doesn’t really know if these tales actually happened in the way that Milk described or if it was all in her imagination. It seems that she may perhaps have been utilizing these fantastical stories to deal with her own changing environment. The issue of her mother having a new baby was solved when it turned out to be a dinosaur. The nervousness and confusion of her first romantic relationship was avoided when her boyfriend became pregnant from a kiss and had to leave. The coming of adolescence was brought to a halt as the earth stood still. On the second to last page Milk admits that she may have wound the spring a bit too much. “Time started moving faster” and her dress was becoming too small for her, her legs growing longer. Her mother assures her that it is because she is growing up. Milk however is having none of that. “I made like I was impressed, like a good little kid...but what really happened; only I know!” And thus she continues to use a childish rational to explain the world around her.

“The Time Milk Wound the Spring” is a quick read, flavored with bizarre surrealism and the wacky imaginings of childhood. The idea of a young girl desperately clinging onto her childhood is executed effectively with simple, poignant stories that read like fairy tales or bedtime stories. It’s worth a read if you’re looking for something a little different from the typical plot-based manga or school-life comedy.

Special A is for me, the definition of an average shoujo series.

Characters:

We have Hikari, an initially refreshing female lead with a certain wide-eyed innocence and a strong desire to defeat her eternal rival Takishima Kei. Hikari’s got fighting spirit, something that is so often lacking in shoujo heroines of late. On the other hand she’s incredibly dense, a trait which becomes all the more prevalent as the manga progresses much to my chagrin. An important plot device is that the students in the SA class are the crème de la crème of an already prominent school for the wealthy. We are not so much ... as shown, but rather told that these characters are of high intelligence. Of course they all get high marks on exams but when it comes to basic comprehension skills in real life situations our characters often come up shorthanded. What was once endearing in Hikari becomes stale after one has read through several volumes of Special A. Other than Hikari, the rest of the cast is fairly stock. Kei is appealing in that smirking bishounen sort of sense but his character falls ultimately flat. Maki uses her other characters as means to extend the series, adding multiple couples to the point where almost no one goes single in the end. Even the conniving Yahiro who acted as antagonist in earlier volumes is reduced to a rather underdeveloped love interest for Megumi. When all’s said and done the characters don’t feel fleshed out enough despite the manga’s length.

Story:

Again, this is the definition of an average shoujo. Pure hearted girl attends wealthy school, oblivious to her long time rival’s affection for her. Misunderstandings and shenanigans commence as the two try to work out their feelings for one another. Expect lots of competitions between the two and the repeated use of the running gag of Hikari being ranked number 2 to Kei’s 1. Special A, aside from being a tad on the melodramatic side also relies heavily on comedy. There are many absurd situations for which one would have to put aside their sense of disbelief to enjoy. I myself got a few chuckles from the slapstick comedic elements featured during many of the competitions. In later volumes however, there are a lot of plot twists featuring conflicts that feel quite forced. The issue with Finn for instance, in which Hikari discovers that the “Prince” is actually a girl and is more or less imprisoned for discovering the secret borderlines on silly and needless. In this instance an absurd situation is used for the sake of drama and plot device rather than for light-hearted comedy and it fails to hold any kind of believability. Ultimately there are several arcs which could have been cut out entirely without much of value being lost. Perhaps if Minami Maki had skimmed the series down by removing clunky side plots with no real impact on the story, this manga would have been a little more enjoyable for me. As it is however, Special A dragged on and on, repeating similar jokes, similar conflicts and similar interactions between Hikari and Kei. When the series came to a close I was left unfulfilled and a little bit disappointed that a manga I had once enjoyed had become so stale and repetitive.

Art:

Minami Maki’s art is decent enough. It just doesn’t really stand out. Her character designs are often a little too similar and there isn’t a ton of distinction. Not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. I’m actually just thankful that she doesn’t draw eyes in the same style that another famous mangaka does. Aside from character design, Minami’s backgrounds go almost unnoticed. To her credit, the little stick figure drawings so often used in moments of humour are quite hilarious to look at. She’s good at utilizing simple sketches for slapstick comedy.

Overall:

At its best this manga is mildly amusing and heart warming in that “doki doki” shoujo manga sense. At its worst it feels redundant, silly and utterly cliché. Special A is a fun series that just started to run out of steam and ideas long before it finished. It’s nothing outstanding in terms of art, story or characters but it’s not particularly bad either. If you’re looking for a nice light-hearted shoujo series to pick up and you can look past a certain amount of banality then by all means go for this one. If however, you’re after something a little more substantial and semi-realistic you’d be better off picking up a copy of NANA or Honey and Clover.

For the record I don’t consider 5 a bad score. Merely average as it was meant to be used for.

"If I wanted to, I could go anywhere...somewhere that's not here."

Undecided is the story of a man and his journey from a rocky childhood to an adult life of ambiguity. That man is in fact the author of the story in question, Byungjun Byun, who has described Undecided as "a portrait of myself". This cityscape portraiture focuses on the lives of the various people who inhabit it. The stories are often quirky, shocking and highly imaginative. One features an alley cat who falls in love with a human while another focuses on a group of children who calmly attempt to slice up the body ("like ... dissecting a frog") of one of the children's sisters who has committed suicide. The longest of these tales of human nature is the second story which combines both elements of Byungjun's character focus: a damaged child and an "old man with nowhere to stay".

The second short focuses on the lives of a young girl and an old man, both simply going through the motions of life. We are introduced to the old man, cooped up in a messy apartment watching a seedy porn video (no pun intended). His life seems bleak to the reader from what we have been presented with. There is no allusion to a job, a family or any type of passion in this man's life. He is merely watching the clock tick, waiting for some kind of purpose to unveil itself. That or salvation. The young girl faces a different struggle. She too is lost in the empty cityscape but unlike the man she has something else to hold on to. That something else is a desire for revenge. After witnessing the murder of someone she loved, Yeondu's world deteriorates into a bleak city life in which her only motivation is revenge ("If I meet them by chance, I'll kill them. That's the only reason I'm still living"). After running into each other on the street corner, our two characters begin to discus, well, life.

Yeondu tells the old man (whose name is not given) that her memories of childhood and of her friend are fading. All she remembers was that it was a happier time. The old man tells her that it's all in the past. "Could you forget your wife?” Yeondu asks. The old man replies that he has already forgotten much of who she was. All that remains is a memory of her smile. This kind of selective memory is prevalent of human nature. We tend to idealize the past much like both the young girl and the old man have. That horrible vacation where you were sunburned and irritable becomes a relaxing getaway years later as you flip through a photo album.

"Write me a letter when you get there"

The story switches gears when the old man refuses Yeondu's request to visit him at his home. He's going on a journey, a final emigration to "a place we can't go together" which he calls Tahiti Island. The old man views "Tahiti" as a utopia, a warm and tranquil place far removed from the desolate city life of crumbling apartments and cheap porn videos. Of course, this man does not have the means to make a trip to the literal Tahiti. The final pages of open up to a shocking conclusion. The old man has embarked on a final journey to an idealized paradise that may or may not exist.

I chose to focus on mainly the second story of Undecided because I feel that it encompasses many of the themes presented in the other stories, particularly the damaged child; the man without a steady path to follow; the theme of power over one's own existence and the emphasis on past events rather than present. Each of the stories that make up Undecided has a new take on these issues and is strong enough to be a stand alone story. Byungjun maintains a consistent style throughout despite the stand alone nature of many of the stories. The use of cityscape as means of conveying the desolate and harsh nature of reality, the use of symbolism, the emphasis on personal human struggle as well as a distinctive artistic style do much to bind Undecided as a cohesive work.

Byungjun manages to successfully execute a rather personal collection of stories without totally alienating his audience. Undecided is as much a portrait of his own life as it is a narrative on human nature as a whole. While Undecided is no masterpiece of Manhwa, it is certainly an interesting read which will leave you with much to contemplate.

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

I started watching this show with no preconceived notions whatsoever; only learning of it's less than desirable eroge origins after looking into it a bit more. My initial reason for watching Nanatsuiro Drops was plain and simple: the character design. Yes, very shallow I'm aware. I happen to be a fan of Noizi Ito's work and had become intrigued when I saw some of her illustrations in one of her art books. Oh how wrong I was.

Nanatsuiro Drops is a magical-girl, romance anime adaption of UNiSONSHIFT's adult dating sim of the same name. The initial premise is quite cliche: Boring male student ... (Tsuwabuki) encounters magical girl (Sumomo), shenanigans and romance ensue. However this story has a mild twist: Tsuwabuki accidentally drinks a magic potion (conveniently occurring through a mix up of cans between himself and another individual). The result of said potion is Tsuwabuki's transformation into a small stuffed lamb doll who is referred to as Yuki. Conveniently, the only way for Tsuwabuki to transform back into his human form permanently is if he aides Sumomo ("his chosen girl") in collecting the Seven Stardrops, all the while hiding his true identity from her. Tsuwabuki transforms to his human form only on a new moon, allowing for some time to confess his romantic affections for Sumomo later on in the story. Nanatsuiro Drops is full of such convenient plot twists; Sumomo just happens to be incredibly advanced in her magical spells with little development or indication of improvement she simply manages to cast spells, the only explanation being the fact that her mother was a brilliant mage. There is no basis for Sumomo's development as a magical girl other than her lineage and we are not provided with a sufficient answer. To make matters worse, the mahou-shoujo element of Nanatsuiro Drops begins to fade into the background as the story progresses; it is ever present but feels somewhat tacked on as the focus shifts to the romantic relationship of Sumomo and Tsuwabuki. As the story progresses, the increasing plot twists become both predictable and incredibly convenient to the point where the story begins to lose any shred of believability or originality it may have initially maintained.If you want something on the lines of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha or Card Captor Sakura, with likable characters and a plot that can be taken somewhat seriously you should probably opt out of sitting through the meager 12 episodes that Nanatsuiro Drops has to offer.

The music for Nanatsuiro Drops is quite mediocre, much like the anime as a whole. The light-hearted girlishness of the OP is fitting and serves to not offend the senses. The BGM is slightly flowery, not really my cup of tea, but again very fitting for such a cute anime.

It is in the character department that Nanatsuiro Drops truly fails in. We are presented with Tsuwabuki, a boring drab male protagonist who possesses anti-social tendencies and who's personality seems to be on par with that of a dish-rag. He is the epitome of the generic male lead: apathetic outlook on life paired with interchangeable characteristics. Sumomo, the main female protagonist can be viewed two ways: either you see her as a super adorable "moe" type girl along the same lines as Mikuru from TMHS (minus the chest of course) or you see her as the incredibly whiny, weak willed sorry excuse for a protagonist that I perceived her to be. Don't get me wrong, this girl is cute as hell but her consistent crying throughout the series is most irritating after a while. She cries in nearly every episode, a strange notion considering the fluffy, cookie-cutter nature of the story and the world around her. One would assume she wouldn't have much to cry about but that seems to not be the case. The other characters making up Nanatsuiro drops are standard fair: a rival that morphs into a friend by the end of the series, a supportive "no questions asked" type best friend, a young and attractive male teacher who conveniently is also Sumomo's uncle and a vast source of knowledge on the seven star drops...you get the point. The only positive thing I can really say about the characters is the fact that the minor characters were not heavily involved in the story. By this I mean we were spared the melodrama of a love-triangle that would have ultimately made this show even worse than it already is.

For such a short series, it sure became tedious to watch fast and I had to force myself to sit through the rest of the episodes. I just couldn't get into this. It felt like the target audience was somewhere along the lines of young girls around age 10-12 looking for a feel-good story to sink their newbie anime teeth into, so to speak. A strange notion considering the eroge origins of Nanatsuiro Drops. Despite it's origins however, NanaDrops is refreshingly innocent, representing a simplistic and highly idealized take on love and relationships. Despite my very low rating, I would definitely recommend this to a younger girl just getting into anime or someone who just wants some mindless fluff. If you're looking for anything more than that however, you are sadly out of luck here.