Author/Editor: Hajime Taguchi
Publisher: Gen Manga
Rating: WARTY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is reward aplenty!
After the last Gen manga I read. I determined not to read any more because reading backwards is just annoying and not worth the effort unless the story is brilliant, and the last one I read was far from brilliant. Quite the opposite in fact. Unfortunately I forgot that I still had one more Gen manga in my reading list, so here I am a-Gen!
This one started out a lot better. The artwork is sparse and clean and looks really good. The stories, however, were a lot less than satisfactory. I quite liked the first one, although I have doubts about a high school girl going unsupervised to get new eye-wear, and then taking the first pair of glasses she's offered without even having an eye exam!
The story turned out to be allegorical - about how we see the world, and that if we want to see the beautiful, we also have to accept that we will see the ugly. It’s not either or. So it was really trite, but harmless. Unfortunately, that was the best story in the bunch.
The next was a pointless and vacuous tale about an ignorant school girl becoming frightened that she was dying because she got her first period. Okay, so two stories about high school, so maybe this is aimed at a high school audience? No! Before long, we’re getting a rather graphic story about a guy who has sex with an expensive sex doll. Seriously? Who, exactly, is this collection aimed at? And why are there so many images depicting the PoV of looking up some young school-girl's pleated skirt? The cover will amply illustrate this, but there are several more inside.
I got about three quarters through and the stories continued to be either obnoxious, or childishly simplistic with some fairy-tale moral, and I honestly couldn’t stand to read any more. I can’t recommend this one and now I really am done with Gen manga for good!
