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optimistic slice-of-life bright dramedy with a focus on the small stuff that we try to sweat and then leave to fester, self-doubt, body / self-image, petty problems, in the tangle of new love. Pop the bubbles and water the soil.

prefer the manga. Decent adaption, but stylistically adapted too cleanly, like not-all-but-most mainstream stuff post 2000's digi-paint era. Decent-enough translating and intertwining of Aruko's illustrative quirks into movement and set-pieces.
Both voice acting teams did a decent job as well, it's good, it's fine ! The whole endeavor just feels redundant to me, would still recommend to anyone interested who prefer watching anime instead of reading manga.

Sure, why not.

Decent light read, with enough quirks to give some solid humor and personality to the scenarios and gags. Ultimately nothing groundbreaking or new, but comforting without being cloyingly sweet or complete filler.

The story broadly touches on the topic of reciprocating love and companionship, mutual attachment etc., while letting everything else in the manga kind of just float around in its own amusing-ness in a comedic way.
Less down-to-earth, but more dazy dream-like, while still having a internal logic to why everything is happening.

I wouldn't call it slice-of-life necessarily, because of how condensed the whole story is. Rather than offering "Ma" or ... weekday intermediate moments, it uses its short length to just focus on the main components of the story, wrapping around into a dramedy.
A long winding way of saying it, but focusing on this aspect is interesting to me, because the manga still offers up the vibe and occasional gag that reminds me more of a airy slice-of-life story instead of a definite dramedy.

It reads as almost like a summary of the story itself, which to some extend is kind of refreshing. Considering how many Mangas, novels etc. just come off as artificially extending their story, whether that be with a rogues-gallery of introduced-then-underused characters, or too much reveling in their own melodrama.

It is a nice House-Plant of a manga, only have to water it once a week.

________

Homemade Apple Pie Type Beat.
Lonely, Lonesome(adj) antonyms: accompanied, inhabited, social, elated.
Found while cleaning up my bookmarks.

TL;DR: it's good, Far better than a lot of other manga I've read.

very minor generalized spoilers for the rest of the review.

The question of a piece of art aging well is always a loaded one, that includes having to engage with an understanding and egagement of historical and cultural context.

To answer that question is to ask if the problem is miscellaneous content or it isn't just a few tweaks, but the skeleton of "Stop!! Hibari-kun!" itself that is the problem. this is an issue that I find as a casual reader to be conflicted about.
I've found that as a reader, you need to ... add that context, read between the lines and weed through excuses.

The art is fantastic, knows when to go big and strong, and when to pull it back and go light and cartoon-y. The premise of the manga itself is simple yet solid, and most of the characters are at their core, interesting enough to keep me coming back.
Unfortunately the manga has a few cultural hang-ups for the time of its inception, primarily when it comes to handling the themes of gender and sexuality.
Not exclusively, for example, "how NOT to draw a person of color".

The dynamic of Hibari as a trans woman in the early 80's, often comes down to her either simply being a gag in-and-of-herself or groundbreaking for her time with a few asterisks added, which can become a bit muddy at times.

She is dealt sympathy from the author at hand, but more often than not, not enough to be treated with enough sincerity, that she often gets undercut as a joke. She is herself a great strong fun character, but is at times confined to the frames of a gag-manga, that just gives her enough footing to stand out as something more than just a "man-in-drag" gag.

I do not believe that this was done in some intentionally malicious attempt, certainly because it doesn't read that way, but that for the author at the time of creating the manga, this was "simply the norm" of handling a character such as Hibari. Which I don't know how to feel about that type of excuse.

I find it to be lazy, for some ignorance is bliss/past is past, but the consequence of this years later, is that the manga nowadays' leaves a bad aftertaste hanging on several occasions, like a noticeable stain on a white t-shirt that you really loved wearing.

I don't regret having read and finished the manga, but originally just giving it a 6 as a score, and then moving on, in this case, left me feeling incomplete when it comes to how I feel about "Stop!! Hibari-kun!".
There's a great video essay on the manga/anime called "Stop!! Hibari-kun! and Trans Representation in Anime" by Hazel, which has taught me how to better deal with my feelings on the manga, on a whole, over time. It has made me go back and reconsider my original review.
Here's a link for it: ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa6MK_boub0 )

So reflecting back on it now, I believe I've been too harsh on it from when i first read it. I'll at least give you that. It is still absolutely worth a read just for the art and characters.

More importantly, often the original question of aging well and standing the "test of time" is loaded with boiled down guidelines of weighing pro and cons, understandably so, because it let's the brain shortcut through unnecessary engagement with content/art that outweighs being voids of empathy and consideration.

So if there's One thing "Stop!! Hibari-kun!" still definitely has, it's empathy.