With Tokyo Ghoul I was interested in the series from the moment an anime adaptation was announced, but knowing that the anime went for an original story in its second season made me want to read the original manga all the more. Cue much excitement when Viz Media revealed that the series has been licensed for an English release and eight months later I happily have the first volume in my hand to flip through.
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Watching a recent episode of My Love Story I got thinking about how realistic and down to earth the series is being. Sure there are most certainly a few things that are a little on the crazy side, but for the most part it’s doing better than Kiss Him, Not Me for example.
Of course most of us read manga and watch anime and don’t really expect or want it to be down to earth and completely realistic, but in some ways I think it’s important to have a few series that break the trend of being completely sakura blossoms and overblown teenage feelings. Lets take a favourite series of mine, Say I Love You as a perfect example of what I’m going for here. The story is focused on shy Mei who has never really had any friends and certainly isn’t thinking of dating, but when she meets Yamato that slowly changes and the two of them must work through their problems, very real problems that couples have, if they wish to stay together. What makes this better is that the manga, given it has more time than the 13 episode anime, deals with a lot of problems that everyday kids go through at one point or another. I appricate the series a hell of a lot for this, especially author Kanae Hazuko who is heavily writing from her own personal experience.
It has to be said that I am a massive fan of Dusk Maiden of Amnesia and it quickly became one of my favourite stories, so when Crunchyroll announced that they had the the latest work from author Maybe I was definitely excited. Tales of Wedding Rings might only be 10 chapters in but already I can see some brilliance shining through in ways that only Maybe seems to be able to capture.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer is yet another example of a series where I experienced the anime first and then have read the light novel. This is of course due to the light novel scene outside of Japan not really existing until well after the original anime was a thing, but nevertheless we have it now! The Devil Is a Part-Timer is probably also yet another example of a series I like quite a bit more in its original form rather than as an anime.