Dec 21, 2018
"... that was something"
Those were literally my words as I finished reading through Kimi no Iru Machi, or A Town Where You Live. This manga is completely different to anything else I've ever read in the sense that it just keeps on giving. While I was originally worried that they managed to extend a standard high school romance for over 200 chapters, my expectations were completely and utterly thrown out the window. We see the main characters start off as annoying and naiive teenagers, and then to young adults, which seamlessly evolves into a story about actual, 20+ year old adults. Color me with a
...
shade of fuckin orange cause if that isn't a departure from what we're accustomed to I don't know what is. The even bigger surprise is that this style of storytelling works amazingly well. We grow attached to the likeable cast of characters as we've literally seen them go through the trials and tribulations of adulthood, things that pretty much everyone can relate to. I was right to assume that there was no way they could have made a 200+ chapter manga about a high school romance without it feeling drawn out because that's exactly what didn't happen.
I can't emphasize enough of how great the beginning chapters of the story are, which set up the framework of the characters and how they evolve yet stay the same as the story progresses. This is a shame since the anime adaptation of this decided to throw the entire arc out of the window, which makes the characters' decisions seem nonsensical at times. While the first few arcs are without a doubt amazing, I can't lie and say that the story is consistently superb through the duration of the series; it has a good bit of misses and other parts that may drag out too long, however rest assured many of these inconveniences are tied together by the end. If anything you'll be so invested in the characters that you'll just breeze through the iffy-bits.
Speaking of the characters, they carry this story immensely. The closest example that comes to mind when thinking of this would be the cast of Friends; which consist of a variety of likable, but realistic characters. The characters in Kimi no Iru do a LOT of stupid shit, and you're going to rage. But the thing that separates them from other manga is the fact that a lot of their decisions are understandable and can have a variety of perspectives justifying why they may or may not have done something. The cast feels remarkably human in the sense that the story sets itself up to feel like they are living in their own worlds, minding their own business, as opposed to constantly revolving around the MC. SPEAKING OF THE MC, I was generally surprised by how down-to-earth, unique and absolutely stupid he was. Note that the last one is actually a really good thing. We see so many times in other manga that the main protagonist does absolutely no wrong doing, the general framework of their stories set this up. However, our MC is portrayed as a confused dumbfuck in a world full of clusterfucks everywhere. He makes mistakes frequently, but not only are there consequences to those mistakes (yes "friend breakups" can ACTUALLY happen in a manga), but he does the wise, and realistic thing, of learning from those mistakes.
There's not much to say about the art other than it's fantastic. There's a noticeable improvement as the series progresses, with highlights being more accentuated, shadows being more detailed and the characters and setting just looking drop dead gorgeous.
Overall I can fairly say that this is one of my favorite manga/stories ever. The character development itself is a reason to read this just because of how close you get with the characters .
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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