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Reading all four volumes in one seating was a wonderful surprise. This romance manga tackles delicate topics like family bonds, depression, fear of abandonment and how to handle the way feelings change over time. The tone is mature, intelligent and never goes for the overly dramatic, and both protagonists are given equal care and thoughtfullness.

One important thing that must be said right away: despite the pitch, there's no incest in this story. The manga makes it clear early on that Sena (the younger sister) isn't very good at labeling her own feelings. What she's feeling toward her older sister Yuuna is a mix of possessiveness ... and family love, peppered with a deep fear of being abandoned (both sisters were left to their own devices during adolescence by irresponsible parents). This confused feeling of love could have sorted itself out when Sena became an adult, but everything got bogged down into depression.

The linchpin between both sisters is Kiku, Yuuna's former lover and (still) best friend. As Yuuna is living far away, she asks Kiku to keep an eye on Sena, who became a writer but doesn't handle solitary life very well. While at first Kiku acts a bit like a substitute mother (much to Sena's annoyance), she makes it clear early on that she has feelings for Sena (she even asks Yuuna for permission to pursue her sister).

How is Kiku going to juggle between those feelings and pulling Sena out of the jaws of depression? What sort of dynamics did Yuuna and Kiku manage to build after they broke up? And, of course, is Sena capable of letting go of her attachment to her sister to develop affection, first for herself and then for someone else?

Without spoiling anything, the manga avoids the "she'll get better with the power of love" trope and goes for a much more realistic and grounded approach. Kiku's caring nature and patience will be stretched as she strives to resocialize Sena before there can even be any talk of love, and poor Sena does through the ringer for reasons that she doesn't really believe in at first.

The pacing is perfect, giving enough time for the characters to evolve while never dwelling too long on each step. This leads to a very satisfying and believable conclusion!

Rock is a Lady's Modesty is a powerful story that plays with a surprising number of topics, some with a light hand, some with a heavier hand, for an extremely pleasant mix.

The most obvious ingredient is the foundation of a rock band. It tackles some of the usual issues that go with it, like the dilemma of how to strike a balance between hiring nice people and hiring skilled people, the quest for your first gigs, and so on. But it delves a bit deeper and tackles more intricate questions, like choosing to be an instrumental rock band and dealing with the consequences, the way ... each instrument finds its place in the team effort…

The second important ingredient is how those girls are subjected to heavy pressure from their (mostly rich and conservative) families, their (private) school and their overall environment. It gives more than a nod to old shoujo stories from the 70s and the 80s with the hierarchy-based dynamics between students in the school and the way those girls are forced to hide their own sense of self to become "perfect girls" whose only goal is to find a good marriage in the end. Thinks S manga, but without the yuri element.

But our protagonists find a way to rebel against that trend through rock. And when they play, all hell breaks loose and they lose all restraint. The dynamic between Otoha and Lilisa has only two settings: in school they stick to their overly polite and artificial persona; in the rehearsal room they have no filter and interact mostly through aggression, as befits their music.

That sort of conflict-driven, yet fruitful, interaction is typical of how many rock stars behaved in big rock / metal bands in the 70s and the 80s.

So when these girls play, the anime puts a lot of effort to show the almost physical explosion of their emotions, their frustrations and the liberation of their true selves through rock and metal. Instruments are kicked, insults are thrown around and sweat is dripped!

This staging is greatly enhanced by the motion capture recorded with the talented women from Band-Maid and by a very good soundtrack (it takes talent to write instrumental titles that everyone can get into!)

I reeeaaaally hope that we'll have a second season. But even if we don't, this first season was a wild ride from start to finish, and it ends mostly on a satisfying note, so no regret!

For about three quarters of the story, Jellyfish is an interesting mix of CGDCT and serious topics, with each protagonist having a difficult past, ranging from insecurites to actual trauma. Although the tone remains mostly light and uplifting, it grounds the story and gives it depth.

Unforunately, episode 9 destroys everything the story tried to build. One of the character behaves horribly toward another… selfishness, egotism, borderline cruelty, take your pick. It could have led to an interesting redemption arc, except that the story decides that the other character—hence, the victim—is at fault. From there on, all characters are twisted to adapt to this new logic ... and nothing makes sense any more, until a happy ending that doesn't flow naturally from the story's premise.

Either the scenarists have a sadistic streak that they wanted to express in this anime, or their values are so messed up that nothing can make up for such a narrative dissonance.

At a glance, this is yet another short yuri romcom, and it'd be easy to assume that it's the predictable blend of nonsense and fanservice. Fortunately, it isn't. While it's certainly not groundbreaking, it's a comedy that keeps a consistent tone and manages to slip enough real emotions to make the ending worth its salt. It's also completely devoid of fanservice.

The protagonists are depicted as childhood friends who mostly interact through rivalry. Both are openly lesbian and successfully chain up conquests, but after one decides that the other stole one too many girlfriends from her, she swears that she's going to get even. The old ... cliché "they argue all the time so they must like each other" is there, but it's handled better than usual.

Roughly speaking, the story is divided in two parts, each filling one volume. The first one is mostly comedy, as both girls compete in various ways, directly or indirectly involving other girls and dating. The second one starts when one of the two girls starts to question her own feelings toward the other, losing all will to maintain the rivalry but unable to express it.

All in all, this manga doesn't really have depth, it doesn't convey any messages, but it's built on a solid duo of protagonists.

TD;DR : in spite of its good intentions and ideas, this manga suffers from pacing and length problems that spoil the emotions that should emanate from it. Fortunately, the anime adaptation corrects all its flaws while keeping the strength of its message intact. Go watch the anime, it's a masterpiece.

Kakushigoto is a slice-of-life manga about a widowed manga artist called Kakushi raising his 10-year-old daughter Hime alone. The twist is that he's writing "dirty gag mangas", so he's worried that, if Hime knew about it, she'd think less of him or be harassed at school. So he told her that he's working as a salary ... man, and keeps the lie going on for years.

The story

Most of the stories show Kakushi in his workshop with his assistants and his editor, usually worried about something related to Hime and flying off the handle as he panicks, misunderstands or comes up with some harebrained scheme to solve a problem that, more often than not, didn't exist in the first place. So yes, it's before all else a comedy.

But it has more depth than that. First, the relationship between Kakushi and Hime is a touching and heartwarming one. He loves his daughter deeply and would do anything for her, and she's a reasonable, level-headed kid that had to grow up a bit too fast after the death of her mother. Father and daughter built a very strong unit that no drama ever threatens.

Last but not least, the manga also shows a darker face in the first few and last few pages of each volume. Drawn in color, those pages show a 18-year-old Hime discovering her father's warehouse where all his previous manga-related work is stored. Why does she seem sad? How did she find out? Did something happen to Kakushi between the time where she's 10 and the time where she's 18?

The characters

Like most slice of life, there's very little change in the characters over the course of the story. Kakushi is extremely gullible when he thinks his daughter's welfare comes into play and that remains the main lever for most jokes in all 12 volumes.

Hime is so reasonable that she's even a bit bland, and she never expresses either anger or frustration. Although this, in itself, is a important aspect of her personality (there's something sad in seeing a child bottling up so much of her own emotions after the loss of a parent, and trying to shoulder responsabilities she's too young for), she doesn't play that much of an active role for a main character.

All other characters have very little substance and exist only to interact with Kakushi and Hime. This is really a story about two characters and no one else.

The length and pacing problems!

Seeing Kakushi and Hime interact is always a joy, in spite of Hime's relatively limited presence or impact in half the stories, and is enough to justify reading this manga. But I rated this manga 7/10, while I rated its anime adaptation 9/10. How come?

The manga is far too long for what it has to say. The characters never change, no character arc is ever solved, and most stories follow the same construction. In addition, the author heavily reuses frames, postures and faces throughout the volumes, so there's a big sense of repetition. Moreover, until the last volume you never see the "past" story (funny, heartwarming) finding its way toward the "present" story (sadder, mysterious).

All of this waters down the feelings that you could get from the manga. Sometimes I found myself bored seeing Kakushi panicking and rushing out of his workshop for the 100th time because of some worry for Hime, while I was impatiently waiting to reach the color pages to see more of what happened to 18-year-old Hime. In some volumes you can almost jump from the color pages at the beginning to those at the end without missing anything.

But the good news is that the anime adaptation solves all of those problems. It's much shorter, more compact, eliminates a lot of the gags that repeated themselves in the manga, and gets a far better sense of progression alternating between the past and present storylines.

I'm going to write this review coming from the manga, a manga which I liked in spite of its flaws, in spite of its disturbing aspects.

In a nutshell, the manga tells the tumultuous relationship between two very different high school girls:
- Yuzu is a deeply kind girl, capable of selfless acts but still immature and somewhat fragile emotionally. She also has some rebellious streak and is depicted as a gyaru at school.
- Mei is a very disturbed girl, who was taught to bury her own sense of self and to always behave according to her environment's expectations. She's shown to be talented, rigid and uncaring, ... but she's also self-loathing and cut from her own emotions.

Although some of those points aren't obvious at the beginning of the story, they explain most of the toxic aspects of their relationship: Yuzu perceives early on that Mei is in distress but the way she tries to help is often awkward, and her own feelings toward Mei tend to confuse the issue even more. Mei robotically acts according to what she believes Yuzu desires, but brutally backpedals as soon as it brushes her inner stuggle, or fails to understand the consequences of her actions. Yuzu is hurt, forgives, bouces back to action. Rince and repeat until Mei's truth is laid bare.

Unfortunatly, the anime misses every mark and re-interprets all of the protagonists' actions in a simplistic way that destroys whatever depth the original story had.

Yuzu is reduced to a dumb and klutzy girl. All the complex and toxic situations that happened because of Yuzu's and Mei's clashing personalities are turned into Yuzu's mere blunders.

Mei is no longer a tortured teenager unable to cry for help, and that hurts Yuzu to avoid acknowledging her own struggle… Instead, she's just a bright girl that harasses Yuzu for no reason, or as retaliation for the other girl's blunders (or shock value, or fan service, take your pick).

In other words, anime's Mei is just a "perfect" girl and everything is anime's Yuzu's fault. And because of that, the anime loses everything that made the story interesting. In a way, it's fortunate that it cut the story short and adapted only the beginning of the manga… Otherwise it'd have quickly become obvious that it had no story to tell, nowhere to go.

If it's not too late, don't waste your time with this pathetic excuse for a yuri story and go read the original manga. It's noticeably more disturbing, but the characters have depth, evolve and converge in a well-thought ending.

Virgin Road is a guilty pleasure. ;) See it like a B-movie: everything is over-the-top and flashy, with exagerated characters and mustache-twirling villlains, but it's obvious that it's aware of itself. But in addition to that, the author took great pains to provide in-story explanations for everything, even the apparently stupid tropes. Although you'll have to switch to the light novel to have the overall view of the story, the anime adaptation makes for a very fun, self-contained introduction. It faithfully follows the first two volumes of the novel.


The world

Power-seeking mages use the forbidden art of otherworld summoning to call upon very dangerous beings: Japanese ... people (also called Lost Ones). But there's a catch: during their summon, those Lost Ones get imbued with rare powers, but they tend to go crazy (whole regions of this world were destroyed by them). So the Faust (some sort of Church) founded a order of executioners to track and kill those Lost Ones.

Due to the presence of those modern-era Japanese people, some technological knowledge leaked into this world, turning it into a steampunk setting with a fun technomagic. If you can, pay attention to the text that quickly scrolls off-screen during spell casting!


The characters

The author loves having characters that lie, to others and sometimes to themselves. Sometimes it's obvious from the start, sometimes not, but it makes rewatching the series quite fun. Also, some characters from the main cast are villains, or at least unsavory individuals.

Menou (the Executioner) doesn't really have a defined personality and seems a bit bland? It makes her the only level-headed person in a crazy world, but it's also explained by something that happened in her childhood and has real, even crucial, consequences in the story.

Akari (the Lost One) looks like a walking trope? She's stupid, has no survival instinct and keeps claiming to love Menou for no reason. By the end of the first arc, it's obvious that it's an act (at least part of it), and strong reasons progressively come to light.

Momo (Menou's assistant) is "annoyingly girly" and "cutely jealous"? It's quickly obvious that she's not just a tsundere, but a full-on psychopath… and a frighteningly competent one at that (only her need to please Menou keeps her under control… most of the time).

And so on.


The story

It feels like a long tabletop RPG campaign, with arcs that focus on a given place, a villain and a plot, with some continuity linking them. It's never complicated but it's a healthy blend of mystery, big combat scenes with cackling villains, and small breathers to develop the characters.

While it's technically an isekai, it's really not what the story focuses on (although Menou's recurring dream is probably a clue that it might change in the future). It's all about Menou investigating and dodging nefarious plots from the Faust (the Church) and the Noblesse (the nobility), or investigating dark secrets from the past, while getting headaches from the other characters' shenanigans.

The overall feel is more on the fun side, but sometimes the violence level jumps noticeably, especially in the second arc.


The ending (or is it?)

By the end of episode 12, the second arc is concluded but the overall plot is only starting (the original light novel is still being published), making it a satisfactory ending, if a bit open.

Since there's no second season on the horizon, my advice: go read the novel! The English translation is closely tracked by Yen Press. The story keeps getting both darker and funnier, and the author is very good at always keeping things in motion, never repeating the same tropes, coming up with new deranged behaviors for the characters, and so on. And the main cast is surprisingly interesting.


Is it yuri?

Within the scope of the 12 episodes, in spite of the all-female cast, no.

Akari and Momo keep saying that they're in love with Menou, but there's no romance. Menou never shows any sign of reciprocating (remember that her defining trait is… not to have a defined personality of her own). She cares for Momo and is grateful for her service, but nothing else. She's troubled by Akari, due to unclear dreams that may or may not be memories, but she mostly sticks to the persona she fabricated to befriend her, and protects her so that her power doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

If I had to sum it up: Hinamatsuri is the art of spending 19 volumes with almost no story, like a huge slice-of-life manga, and letting most important moments happen off-screen. It's a frustrating read, because all the ingredients for a great manga were there. But the art is beautiful and expressive, and a few of the characters are really admirable (not the main, though).

The background, explaining where some of the main characters come from? Completely glossed over, just a few words near the end of the story, to provide motivation for the finale scene. No character is ever curious or asks questions.

The reason for ... the "psychic girls" and friends to have been sent here? Forgotten immediately. Understandable for Hina herself, but the others conveniently arrived in circumstances that allow them to drop their mission and focus on ordinary life.

The yakuza? Mostly used for jokes. What little story there is absolutely does not require them.

The psychic powers? Serve no purpose whatsoever. Just a few running jokes, and one-off stories with no repercussion.

The characters

First, the main ones: Hina and Nitta. They're arguably the worst of the bunch. Nitta is weak and incompetent as a yakuza, indifferent as a father, and has no evolution whatsoever. Hina is passive and lazy. In the first half where she's of middle-school age, she spends her days in a couch, doing nothing, feeling nothing and wanting nothing. It's a bit better in the second half, where she's three years older, as she has some agency, takes some initiative and worries about others, but it doesn't amount to much.

I still fail to understand the point of Hina as a main character. She barely does anything, has almost no emotion good or bad. Her only defining element is her very strong psychic power… which has no use in the story. The "father and daughter' dynamic with Nitta never goes anywhere. So what's the point?

Where Hinamatsuri shines, it's with the rest of the cast. Hinamatsuri is, at heart, a slife of life manga about life choices and trajectories. Hitomi, Anzu and Mao do have remarkable trajectories. All three start with no agency, either because of their age (Hitomi) or because they don't have anything (Anzu and Mao). Opportunities come their way, and they're good enough to grab them, leading them on unexpected paths.

The manga doesn't lack in variety: Hitomi's achievements are all about money and business, Anzu's are about family and having pride in her own accomplishments, Mao's are about martial arts and devotion to a cause.

The story

As I said above, there's very little story to speak of. The manga tries to come up with one near the end, in order to have a conclusion, but it lacks any punch, both because of the lack of build-up and because nothing is changed for the main characters afterwards (they just keep living their lives as before).

But what's most annoying is that the most pivotal moments tend to happen off screen. A character has a crisis-of-faith moment where they have an important decision to make? Off screen. A important discussion happens? Off screen. That happens far too many times.

Conclusion

On one hand, the manga is far too long for what little story it has to offer. It's just slice of life, a bunch of kids finding their own paths in modern Japan in spite of incompetent adults.

On the other hand, once you cast aside the two useless main characters, you keep coming back to see Hitomi, Anzu and Mao grow and evolve. The three-year timeskip is a godsent, making them older and having more agency.

I'd love to see someone edit and trim down the 19 volumes by removing all those pointless elements. At least half of the manga would be gone, and we'd have a focused story on three girls crafting their own success stories. As slice of life go, there are few characters that I came to like more than Hitomi and Anzu!

The same author as Aritoto, using the same dynamics in a yuri story: some sort of wager/competition between a normal/average girl (Renako) and a seemingly bright and untouchable girl (Mai), written from the point of view of the former, and with the latter trying to make her fall in love. But the similarities end with volume 1. Starting with volume 2, it throws romance away with the garbage, goes straight into harem territory, and all chararacter buildup flies out the window.

The first volume is mostly standalone, since it has all the features of a complete story: a premise, a development, a crisis and a resolution. ... On its own, although it gives any sort of serious topic a wide berth, it's actually quite a nice read. The romance isn't firmly established at the end, but it closes all plot lines.

In a nutshell, each following book is about Renako cheating on Mai (or being coerced to do so) with another girl from their own group of friends. Of course you can argue that it's not cheating since the romance isn't official (it's even the point of the story), but the novel still tries to sell the relationship between Renako and Mai as a budding romance, and has to rely on twisted logic to justify each situation using Renako's "kindness" and Mai's "tolerance".

A harem story is, by essence, incompatible with any form of empathy or trust between characters, and has to rely on contrived comedy to make the characters behave the way they do. Renako is supposed to be kind, if grumpy, but there's no way someone kind would do what she does for any extended amount of time. And the same goes for the other girls. What the novel says is kindness, is in fact a mix of cruelty, spite and selfishness.

Of course, if you like a full-on harem story, why not, switch off any reasoning or emotional centers in your brain and enjoy the ride. But if you like a romance story, stop at the end of volume 1. The author shows, just like with Arioto, that they don't have any skill to write a long-running story with any semblance of consistency. Arioto's follow-up volumes are still at least nice to read because we see the romance alive and developing, but WataNare is just piling up inconsistent behaviors to conveniently generate drama and harem situations.

I had some hopes with this manga, because it really tries to have both a developed story and a romance that starts early. Unfortunately, it's marred with extremely toxic behavior from both protagonists that makes their relationship's development unrelatable as well as unrealistic. The problem is that the manga tries to cast a positive light on those behaviors.

The protagonists

On one side, there's Chiwa. She's supposed to be an adult, but she has the emotional maturity of a grade schooler. Every meaningful interaction she has is done through crying or shouting. When there's an important discussion to be had she either runs away or refuses to ... talk. She handles every situation badly, and never learns. In many occasions, her behavior with her husband borders on emotional blackmail.

On the other side, there's Hokuto. He's a successful businessman, with a cold and calculating demeanor. Some tragic events in his past do explain his emotional immaturity, but the main problem is that, although he keeps telling Chiwa that he loves her, he keeps mistreating her, both physically and psychologically. He's always forcing his decisions on her without a hint of empathy… decisions about jobs, but also about their couple and even about their sex life. He's borderline sociopathic.

That last point is one that poisons the whole story. In almost every bed scene, he forces himself on her, it's shown to be painful for her (but she has to "get over it" because she loves him). And by the end of the story, there's a secondary character that reflects that he's still single because he's gentle with women. Are we supposed to understand that mistreating women is acceptable? This manga certainly seems to think so.

By the end of the manga their relationship clears up, but the author still has no idea how to depict a working relationship, so she resorts to the old cliché: they're always arguing, so they must be in love.

Conclusion

As for the plot itself, well, it's based on good ideas, but the author certainly bit more than she could chew. Many important developments happen off screen, and on several occasions a mystery is claimed to be solved… but the details aren't given.

Overall, I'd call this manga "toxic marriage" instead of "happy marriage". It's very painful to watch those two characters hurting each other every time, never communicating (otherwise most of the artificial drama would vanish!) and unable to make their good intentions a reality. Which makes the ending all the more difficult to believe.