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This work is primarily meant as a didactic look into the world of real-life women-who-have-sex-with-women (and of some trans men) in Japan in the early 2000s. It is, by design, a slice-of-life which is intended to teach people about the world of what Japan calls "sexual minorities".

If you want to know more about the real lives of LGBT (well, LBT) people in Japan, it's a great read. And any straight or male person with a serious interest in yuri ought to read this, as a good corrective to thinking it's all endless sighs and blushing in girls' schools.

However, it suffers from:
- Not having much ... of a plot (it's real life, life doesn't have a plot)
- Being somewhat dated (it's around 10 years old, and it's been an eventful decade)
- Being somewhat remedial for people who already know a thing or two about LGBT communities
- A rather unconventional art style for people who are used to typical manga

All that said, I did come away feeling like I had a strong sense of the author as a person and liked getting to know her a lot, and I enjoyed reading about her and her friend's experiences. Those character moments are probably the best part of the book--character moments when her relationships can just be relationships without being Representatively Queer, and moments about the ways that two different people learn to be closer to each other and love each other. It works best when it shines as a biography rather than a lesson-book.

Which means, ultimately, that this book suffers from the society that created it. It's wonderful to learn about someone's experiences, but (at least at the time the book was written) the general public was sufficiently ignorant about LGBT people's lives that the author had to be a guide and representative and standard-bearer, instead of just a person speaking from her own life. I'd be curious to see what this book would say if it were written today, or ten more years down the road; but what I really hope is that ten more years from now, there won't be a need for a lesson book--people will already know.

Before anything else, Hetakoi is a superbly executed romance with frustratingly realistic and relatable characters and truly terrific art. If you read nothing else from this review, hopefully this alone will be enough to sell you on a series that finished six years ago.

As with most of my reviews, I don't intend to write explicit spoilers, but in talking about the thematic and character developments which made me both love and hate this series, there's always the chance I'll clue you in to something you wouldn't have anticipated before or otherwise change your reading of the work, so be warned.

Also, yes folks, there's nudity and ... even quite a bit of sex. That tends to happen in actual relationships. And it's an essential part of the realism the work is going for. So don't let that make you squeamish. (From the other angle, I wouldn't pick up this book if you're looking mainly for smut, you can get that elsewhere without having to read 1500 pages.)

So. The first thing to know about this manga is that the cover and the first couple chapters are not representative. It looks like it's going to be a harem series, but this is emphatically not the point. We don't even have a love triangle per se--instead it's a very earnest and realistic look at the awkwardnesses of young love, especially as negotiated by people who have way too many hangups for their own good. (Which I say as someone who is recognizing in some of the characters an image of my younger self.)

I suppose the first thing that made me become so attached to this manga was the surpassing excellence of Nakano-sensei's art. Her characters' faces, both in their usual and deformed versions, are continuously expressive and engaging--with clear line work that captures so many emotions in just a few strokes. The art does not skimp on backgrounds, either; both in establishing shots and throughout scenes, her characters are always grounded in a strong sense of place that adds to the emotional realism of the work.

The other thing that caught me is the extent to which I could relate to the characters. A few of them are certainly cartoony--the horndog boorish best friend, the excessively-innocent twins--but for the most part these are characters with real interiority, pasts that largely make sense, plausible emotional interactions with the events happening around them--between the art and the way the characters are written, it doesn't take long at all to feel like you're reading a story about people you can come to know and love. This is a romance story: it works only to the extent that you are emotionally invested in the characters, to the extent that you can imagine being in a situation like this, acting like these people do.

And in fact, this was one of the ways the series suffered for me, too. About midway through the series, there's an event that made me profoundly disappointed in the choice one of the characters makes. It made me want to quit the series entirely. This speaks well of the manga's quality--you have to be really invested in characters to feel so completely let down by them, and it's only artistic mastery that can achieve that investment. But it's also hard to see characters you have come to love and respect act in ways that are beneath them and that seem to ruin everything. Hard to watch, but all too obvious and natural and believable--this is largely not drama for drama's sake, but Greek drama, where human mistakes take the story in a new direction that reveals something profound about life.

So there is no love without tragedy, and like life, the story goes on after the tragedies of love. I chose to keep going with this, and to my total shock, the author actually managed to win me back around. And my reward for sticking it out was many more hours with characters I came to love again, and a whole rainbow of emotions. The twist takes us into mature (or at least maturing) emotional territory that's not often explored in romance manga, but deserves to be. Poking holes in naive romantic fantasies and a whole assemblage of stupid garbage along the way. In that sense the story becomes a coming-of-age story--a term I use with some distaste, as it usually means "nothing actually happens, but everybody's sad at the end"--but which is merited here, because this is not just about first love but about real love; it's about learning how to love like an adult, which is to say to love a person and not just a fantasy or a narrative; and it's about how to be in a relationship, not just how to dream about one.

All that said, I did dock some points because a few arcs felt like needless dragging-things-out. This probably could have been 8 volumes instead of 10. And there were times that I joined the side cast in rolling my eyes at the actions of the main characters, and times that I was frustrated to no end at the problems that could've been easily solved, just not being solved. (We aren't entirely free of drama-for-drama's-sake after all.) Still, I think my heart is richer for the experience of having read this, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to read thoughtful romance.

It's a tragedy that Nakano-sensei passed away shortly after this was completed, at only 45. I would have loved to see what she would have written as she continued to develop as a storyteller. But what an impressive work to have left behind!

NOTE: May contain spoilers. I'm discussing how the story develops thematically (which will likely give away some plot elements).
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Wow, a 7, huh? Way to take a stand, me.

First off, I haven't seen the anime yet. I gather (from reading its reviews, and from author commentary in the manga) that they go in a rather different direction. This work does not seem to be using the whole "bears" thing as a metaphor for systemic social differences (i.e. being gay).

Instead what you get in this series is a meditation on the nature of reality, and how a combination of upbringing and experiences can turn one's perception of ... reality completely on its head. And a study of how love sometimes can--and sometimes can't--bridge the gaps between one person's reality and another's; and what it means to inherit expectations, to deal with childhood trauma, and to live with soul-crushing guilt.

This is potentially really good stuff; and the fact that it's set against a backdrop of magical space bears makes it even better. Yay weird! Unfortunately, it reads like one too many head-fakes. Are the bears real? Does one person have a special insight into a hidden world, or is that person just delusional? Are metaphors intergenerational? (What about yuri ships?)

Part of this is an intentional effort to make the narrative ground constantly shift under the reader's feet. There's many layers of symbolism happening, and this is an interesting thing; unfortunately it jumps around just a little too much, enabling the uncharitable reading of a creator being indecisive or intentionally obtuse rather than making a carefully thought out thematic point. Don't get me wrong, it's not like you need to read it three times to understand what's happening; it just straddles the line between revelations that make you go "ahhhhh!" and ones that make you feel like you're suffering narrative whiplash.

I also--despite, c'mon, it's in the title--felt like the yuri angle was kind of forced. The love triangle is resolved way too easily; there's not any real motivation or story-evidence for the blossoming of romantic feelings among most of the characters; and anyway soon enough we're going to be more interested in sorting out what's going on in the world and in her mind than what's in her heart. Still, given the central thematic role that "true love" and "fated persons" play in this story, I could stand to see a little more evidence of actual love. (And don't start with me by saying that the manga is intentionally embracing yuri-romance cliches; that might be true and it might not, but that's not an explanation, just an excuse.)

Finally, I felt that the complicated backstory and character history just got out of control. There's drama, there's fate, there's karmic connections or whatever; then there's just too much.

So, ultimately, a seven: when a manga is trying (just that bit too hard) to do interesting things, and is carrying too much baggage from thinking about just how clever and deep it is.

I picked this up knowing it was on my plan-to-read list, but not remembering why. It's a quick read and competently executed, but suffers from not knowing what it wants to be.

The manga is in two volumes. The first is a fairly predictable timid-awkward-romance setup: a substantial age gap (25 vs 17) between a young woman who's older but inexperienced, and a young man who's impossibly nervous. It's a cute enough bit of fluff, but their interactions--and likewise their characterizations--lack enough depth to be really compelling. Haduki's character is being driven by the plot instead of vice-versa: when we meet her, she seems entirely content ... (modulo a tiny bit of existential despair) to live her single life, enjoying herself. (Screencap reading "Eating out is the best! Manga is the best! Being alone is the best!" coming soon to a meme-marketplace near you...) But her pushy sister sets her up with some rando high schooler, and instead of peacing out of there harder than a Buddhist monk, she... decides she's going to go with it? Even though she hates it? I don't think I'm spoiling anything to say that she does eventually fall for the dude (which is mysterious, since the law of manga is men this bland and boring should have either zero women or a harem, never just the one) but this change of heart isn't really well-developed. There are a couple gestures in the direction of showing that her old life just isn't appealing to her any more, but I don't really buy it; there's no internal struggle; and honestly, just... him? 70% of his dialogue is either an apology, a promise to do better, or simple greetings and exclamations. Nobody's getting hot under the collar for this.

Then Volume 2 rolls around and the work decides to reach for more serious thematic depth. Turns out the bland dude does have a deal: there's a reason he's so nice, and there's real effects (other than a lifetime of awkward superficial relationships) from how he got there. This has potential if developed further--not asking for Fruits Basket levels of drawn-out abusive melodrama, but the themes and ideas approached here deserve a little more than the rough sketch you get from the few chapters showing his POV. Maybe the manga could've benefitted from a third volume. I do respect the effort, though, because (unlike other works that try to claim a narrative weight they haven't earned) it makes a sincere attempt to engage and hints at some interesting ideas, even if they're resolved a little too quickly and neatly. The last volume also picks up another plot thread (with corresponding serious thematic issue) that appeared in the beginning but got basically dropped early on. In Kazama-sensei's defense, this was set up, and there is an attempt to address it, it just sort of feels tacked on to pick it back up at the end when it's been hiding under the rug the whole time.

The other thing separating this work from basic fluff is a level of complex meta-textuality. One which, having not read the author's other works, I don't actually understand; but nonetheless: an early plot development is that the protagonist's younger sister is documenting her relationship in a web manga. This web manga's name is one of the author's other actual published works. And a character from that work appears in this one; and ultimately there are other developments which take this beyond a simple in-joke into blurring the line between the narrative world and the real one. That said, I don't really get it, so I don't know if this is actually deep, or cliche, or just weird navel-gazing. But it is an unusual move and I respect it.

All in all, I don't think this is an outstanding manga, mostly because it can't decide if it wants to be exaggerated comic fluff or character drama; its plot and characters are both pretty weak; and it drags in parts. But I give it some points for at least making a sincere effort to engage with its premises and characters, even if its reach exceeds its grasp.

I'm a big fan of Morinaga Milk, but I think she kind of phoned it in with this series.

The art remains easy on the eyes, but the character design here felt kind of derivative from Girl Friends. Not terribly surprising (I think she may have been working on the end of that one at the same time as the start of this one) but Secret Recipe suffers from the comparison, if only because Girl Friends is so good.

In terms of characterization, again, Secret Recipe doesn't hold up as well. One heroine is just a little too un-self-aware, and the other just a little too brazen/idiotic, ... to the point where I didn't find them relatable or interesting. The development of their relationship seemed rushed and kind of arbitrary--which is maybe an unfair criticism for a two-volume series, but Ohimesama no Himitsu is a one-shot and did a better job of showing both sides come to care for the other. And yes, I know "but we're both girls!" is a trope in the genre, but the internalized homophobia felt a little too strong here (without being honestly explored as such). And the relationship--which (no spoilers, it's on the first page) is immediately very physical--seemed honestly quite a bit exploitative, to the point that I was actually uncomfortable.

That said, I'll happily read anything she writes, she's just done better elsewhere and I'd recommend newcomers to her work start with Girl Friends or Secret of the Princess. If you've already read her more famous titles and are looking for more, by all means check this out.

So here I'm about to pan one of the most-loved manga series of all time, what am I thinking...

I think the reason I have such a negative opinion of this series is because it is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels. But the largest is that it's a story of abuse, abuse, and more abuse; abuse as the default of human interactions; abuse carried through the generations; abuse that carries the weight of some kind of vast karmic mystery. And that's revolting.

Caution: while I will try to avoid spoilers, it's possible that I'll give something away as I will discuss plot in what follows.

It ... shouldn't take long for the reader to realize that this is one of those stories where incomprehensible painful circumstances are meted out to all characters indiscriminately. Our heroine Tohru is recently orphaned; and thrown out of her house by her grandfather, because his family doesn't like her. So she's living in a tent in the woods.

Cheerfully.

COME ON. This is a straight-up Stepford Smiler routine. If you ever meet someone who is this relentlessly cheerful under these circumstances, sleep with one eye open, because that is some INTENSE baggage, most especially to be dumping on a 14-year-old! With no support structure! Tohru's smile ought to be hiding profound psychological agony; Tohru's unrelenting smile should suggest to all that she has some serious unaddressed issues. But no, her principal characteristic is that she truly does love and forgive everyone, even when she ought to be torching the place. This also establishes early a central theme of the series, which is that extended family exists to torment everyone.

Soon we meet the other family that will be the focus of the series, a large, wealthy, extended family straight out of a semi-feudal society. Which is itself made up of a bunch of smaller family groups, all of which have been torn apart by a karmic curse that exists for Reasons and which pretty much everybody would like to break, but nobody knows how. (Don't worry, reader! By the end of the series, nobody will still know how--although the Power of Plot Compels It, so I suppose there's that.) We also meet the two live-in love interests, a pretty-boy sweetheart who's too shy to look you in the eye, and an Angry Young Man. Of the former: well, that shyness is largely because of the abusive environment in which he was raised, with inappropriate relationships and responsibilities thrust upon him immediately, and rejection by his actual family; to the extent that he's suffering from learned helplessness and unable to make his own decisions. Of the latter, we can at least say that he is portraying a much more realistic response to abuse than Tohru does: he's been threatened, made to claim responsibility for things that he did not do, physically abused, socially rejected, and generally tortured his whole life; and his response is, understandably, to inflict that pain right back on everyone else, physically or emotionally.

This is supposed to be a romance?

One can predict, from the genre, that the theme is a Really Tolerant, Persistently Loving Girl needs to come along and rescue one of these poor tortured boys with the power of unconditional love; but the reality is these folks don't need a girl(or boy)friend, they need a therapist. Well, actually they need the police; and child protective services; and then several therapists. Because these are not problems that one person's unconditional love is capable of solving. These are problems that will need to be reflected upon at length, until all three of these characters have learned self-respect and the ability to set and enforce safe boundaries, and have recognized the maladaptive coping mechanisms and expectations their lives of abuse have instilled within them.

Not to mention that it is not the job of the first attractive accommodating woman to enter the life of a troubled young man to perform all the agonizing emotional labor needed to Fix His Dark Brooding Past. (But five bucks what's going to happen...)

It gets worse from there; it's a 23-volume series and there's only one direction for the stakes to go. But suffice it to say that this is a series that normalizes phenomenally troubling interactions and presents them as acceptable. It's a series that promotes an acquiescence to horrific circumstances; and a seriously messed-up response of just accepting and forgiving and accepting and forgiving, in a way that's revolting to watch.

This is the principal reason for my low opinion of the work, and I've gone on long enough anyway, but I should add that aside from its bad social modeling, the book is largely just meaningless melodrama. Several volumes seem dedicated to side characters who serve no real narrative purpose other than to provide extra bodies to pair people off with. I suppose one could call this "character development," but the growth that occurs is largely arbitrary and implausible; it feels more like filler.

The art's good enough--not my favorite, and rather lazy and repetitive in many places--but passable. (Although of course Takaya-sensei can draw way better than I can...) But overall the series is an offensive, tedious slog.

I made it all the way to the end hoping there would finally be some questions answered, or that the inevitable happy end would be earned somehow. If you're hoping the same--well, better luck to you than I had.

I've hesitated to write this review because I'm not really sure how I feel about this book.

Have you ever had the experience of eating an entire bag of chips in one sitting? They look so tempting on the outside, and you just know that once you bite into one you'll be rewarded with that crunchiness, and saltiness, and all these big promises of flavor. Then you take a bite, and it doesn't live up to what you wanted; so you have another, and another, each time hoping that the next mouthful will finally bring you the satisfaction and joy that you anticipated; and you don't ... stop until the bag is empty?

This book is sort of like that.

On the one hand, it deals with some of my favorite themes (gender identity in love); but on the other it indulges in some of the weakest cliches (sibling-lovers, to ratchet up the "forbidden love" angle; overly age-gappy relationships, maybe also to increase the 'love conquers all' wrongness-rightness factor?) in a way that I think frankly detracts from the story. In addition, the basic premise--the title premise--Sayuri's sister being an angel--goes almost entirely unexplored for the majority of the series. It's kind of a story hook that immediately becomes a complete afterthought, and the real implications (or even the fact that there must be real implications) aren't even touched upon until the very last couple chapters.

So what we get is a fairly bog-standard slice-of-life between the standoffish and not-really-into-it depressive-withdrawn normie and the overly enthusiastic demi-human imouto. A combination of boring and exploitative. We don't have a lot of challenges to drive the plot, other than ones internal to the relationship (Sayuri trying to figure out how she actually feels and whether she reciprocates her sister's feelings). Later on, as she begins to develop some insight into this question, challenges do appear: first in the form of another character with an obviously sinister agenda--there's enough of a feeling of genuine menace that this had me seriously concerned for our mains--and then in the form of a rule change that imposes a time limit on the life whose slices we're being shown (and which might have just come from the publisher).

There is a nice romance between two side characters that does explore gender and the meaning of love between women. It goes through an ultimately satisfying arc that will probably leave you wanting to smack at least one of them repeatedly before it's over, but it is a rewarding story overall.

All in all, though, the overall feeling of the manga is a lack of direction. Roughly half the series is paint-by-numbers and can't really decide what it wants to be or where it wants to go. Then when we get around to exploring the meaning of the main conceit, the series is over in a flash, without a satisfying resolution (as far as I'm concerned) and without having ever really decided what story it wanted to tell. I must confess, though, that I read this all in one sitting, staying up far later than I should have. This was roughly equal parts serious dramatic tension and investment; and mindlessly eating the chips. But the fact is it did keep me up late wanting to see how it ends, so I have to give it points for that at least.

All that said, the art is pretty good, and it is a somewhat interesting story hook. So if you're interested in incestuous age-gappy yuri relationships with demi-humans, maybe give it a go?

Maybe a 7.5?

It's tough to review a work like this, because it's an anthology, and comprises two different stories, one of which will go on and intertwine with several others in other anthologies.

I am finding that I really like Takemiya Jin's storytelling quite a bit, though her artwork doesn't really do it for me. With no memorable backgrounds (understandable for an artist working, so far as I can tell, without assistants), not a lot of variation in perspective or angle, a lot of weight has to be carried by the character designs/drawings, where I find the work a little too angular and rough for my ... taste.

The story more than makes up for it. Okay, we're talking about some serious high-drama territory here; and there are no happy endings (well, no endings at all in this book--the story gets continued in several other anthologies) but I admire the way that the work doesn't shy away from showing realistic women: women who are people, with all the concomitant flaws, including using each other and lying to each other and themselves. I also very much appreciate the way this author can bring authenticity to a genre that's often very bound by its conventions and cliches.

Character-wise, I think these characters (at least for the My Beloved series) grow and develop much more in later anthologies--and until then, there's not a lot to say about them. What we see here is bittersweet youth and not knowing what you have until it's lost; character is less important than theme and story.

Overall, Takemiya's is a fresh voice which deserves to be read, but it's an early work and later ones will be stronger.

So first off this turned out to be WAYYY more porny than I was expecting. This is not necessarily a problem, it just wasn't what I was expecting nor what I picked up this manga for. Oh well.

Anyway, that aside, this one is a case of "it should have worked for me but it doesn't". And I think I know why--it's boring. The art is actually solid to quite good; our female lead's expressive faces are especially well-done; and the character they are expressing is reasonably well-sketched and engaging (if somewhat boneheaded and contrary sometimes). She seems real, to the point that she's sometimes ... unlikable, and sometimes self-sabotaging, if far too often self-deceptive.

But the story just doesn't seem to go anywhere. (Also the ending is just... awful.) I went in hoping I would finally get an engaging story about adult life (getting a little tired of protagonists in high school or below) but instead it just largely seemed to echo the repetitiveness of real life in a corporate workplace, complete with its arbitrary injustices, dangerous social politics, and awkward secrets. With cuts to lots and lots of (apparently good) sex. Between not actually getting to enjoy the (apparently good) sex myself through the medium of print, but also not wanting to go back to the exhausting corporate minefield, I was left with nowhere really to go, and no real excitement to look forward to.

For a work that engages with similar themes but through much more compelling character moments and a more developed plot, consider Dame na watashi ni koishite kudasai/Please Love the Useless Me.

Why am I writing another review for a series that already has like 30? This review will be different for 2 reasons: first, because of the direct contrast with the last anime I reviewed; and second, because I'm going to be focusing on thematic elements a lot more than previous reviews do. I'm not going to complain about the CGI (eh, it's better than Initial D) and I won't say anything more about the music after noting that the OP/ED are totally awesome. That said, there are going to be some SPOILERS in here, at least in a general sense, because I'm going to be ... talking about this show's thematic weight, and about how it works as rewritten history.

First, the contrast. Superficially this show ought to share a lot with my last review, the miserable Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid. I mean, it's action girls up the wazoo, right? And fan-service? And pick-your-favorite-waifu as though it were a harem show? But if you look past those superficial similarities, this show really shines by comparison. First, while I'm not going to deny the obvious shout-outs to people who've played the games or are interested in the historical in-jokes, there's surprisingly little sexy-type fanservice. I recall maybe 2 panty shots, and they're really quick flashes during action sequences, plus some obligatory breast size jokes (but fairly limited ones).

Even more importantly, this is a show that (despite its underlying concept being, well, kind of stupid) actually manages to earn the thematic weight of the occasional serious moments. There's an event maybe 1/3 of the way into the show that really comes out of nowhere--but is not glossed over like the uncounted attempted (not to mention the completed) rapes in Valkyrie. It's shocking in its tonal shift, but the show has the wisdom to stay with this event and devote serious screen time to showing the reactions of other characters over a fairly long course of time. Unlike Valkyrie, where this feels like a cheap, repulsive gimmick, here it adds a lot of weight to what the characters are dealing with. And it comes in a way that raises the stakes for the rest of the show. The show designers and writers had the guts to do this once: are we really going to be able to sit back and enjoy the Cutest Little Child Soldiers hanging around ganbatteing in class and eating ice cream afterward? Or are we going to think, wait, what'll happen in the next mission, is anybody really safe? Yeah, you're going to get a curry episode in the middle. You know what that's called? It's called tension relief. Even Evangelion had comic moments, you gotta spot the show an ep to let the audience relax before the next big arc.

On that note--we actually get serious arcs, with missions that span several episodes, and are clearly building toward something. Missions with goals and stuff. We have both progress and setbacks. During the course of the anime, it is not at all clear what the ultimate outcome of the war will be. (I mean, there's sequels, so you can probably guess that Our Heroes don't outright lose. Yet. But who knows what S2 will bring? And if the season ends with them on the ropes, the story isn't *over*, it'll encourage everybody to go out and fight harder in the game, right?)

Of course, the show does suffer from Cast of Thousands. I always take notes when I watch anime or read manga, because I want to remember everybody's names for later, and you usually don't have a lot to go on to tell them apart... well, these episodes took me over half an hour each because I was typing so much in my note file. I think I have a hundred lines of character summary and relationship mappings. Phew. Of course, that's because we're basically listing every freaking boat that ever showed up in the Japanese navy, which all have to be included so you can... buy the merch? Get more hype about the game? Spot your favorite shippuwaifu? Idk. But they're all in there, and if you aren't writing it down or already familiar, you're going to lose track.

The second angle I want to cover is history. This is both the biggest fanservice element (imo), but also where it gets a little... awkward. Particularly for the American audience. The conceit of the show is that our Cutest Little Child Soldiers are somehow karmically linked to the souls of battleships... of the Japanese Navy. Of World War II. Now you might pause a minute, and scratch your head, and recall that exactly one Japanese capital ship actually *survived* the War... and think maybe that doesn't bode so well for Our Heroes. This feeling will get even stronger when you realize that the missions in the arcs of this anime actually map shockingly closely to historical engagements and events. The last third of the anime is a really amazingly close retelling of the Battle of Midway (go read the Wikipedia page and then watch episode 11 and just try to disagree). That's when it dawns on you that the Abyssals--they really are basically the American navy, fulfilling many of the same roles... we even have a creepy demonic USS Yorktown as an antagonist. So my grandmother was in this navy, and now I'm emotionally invested in seeing their dark doppelgangers get whupped? Surreal.

This is also where it should get weird or awkward for the Japanese audience. Because to tell this story, moreover to tell a victorious story, or most of all an *uncomplicated* story, with this history, you need to make some pretty radical changes. Here the USN analogue is actually just a mysterious force that arose from the depths and are clearly the aggressors. And to square that circle of "IRL these girls all wound up dead lols" we throw in a different element in the form of our main character, Fubuki, who is pretty much the poster girl for Yamato-damashii (see http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapaneseSpirit). She's gonna try super hard and believe super strong and motivate the whole fleet with the Power of Friendship, and by Nimitz that's actually going to change things! This is a *simplification* that actually *makes things complex*, because those are obviously very admirable qualities and make her, and all of them, likeable and relatable characters; but in the process they create a historical narrative in which just a little more Japanese Fighting Spirit (and a little more strategic flexibility and anti-aircraft gunnery) would've saved the day. This winds up being uncomfortably nationalist: Japan the aggrieved victim; the eventual triumph of a particular Japanese national spirit and character; the sanitization and justification of Imperial Japan's role in the war--this is straight out of any Uyoku Dantai group. Decomplicating the original conflict complicates the work.

Complicates because, the political implications aside, it's a formula that works. Everybody loves to cheer for the underdog; we like our heroes to be obviously heroic and lovable and not have to carry the weight of the atrocities that go with real war on any side; the best baddies are of course the arbitrarily hostile alien force that Shot First. And it's a kind of intriguing reworking of history, too, because with a little more strategic flexibility and anti-aircraft gunnery, things really could've been quite different. At the end of the day, this show won me over, from the characters (even if I ran out of fingers and toes) to the historical what-ifs. It's just tough to keep an eye on the line between alternate history and emotional support for actual revisionism.

In any event, if you watch the show (as you should!), you may find it quite interesting to read Wikipedia along with. I know I did.