Mikage

The story of a few girls who head to a... well, some sort of revision school that doesn't exist here, after failing university entrance exams. I didn't enjoy it as much as the similar Hidamari Apartments, although I bought it on the basis of that similarity. This story is more focused on gags, which is fine, but I felt at times that the larking about was hampering any actual story, with some pages mostly consisting of emoting and yelling. There were also some places where the writing seemed clumsy or very stiff, and it's not clear whether that was in the original, or an artefact of poor translation. There are translation notes in the back, but as these things often are, they're a bit uneven. As usual, they mostly focus on specific words, which can be readily looked up in a dictionary (or one of the many websites happy to explain manga terminology) or just guessed at, whereas I find the main challenges are usually cultural references or jokes that don't make sense without the right background.

It's also got a similar issue to Suzunari, in that while there's a few girls with crushes on the protagonist Nanako, which is only mildly tiresome, her brother also has a distinctly creepy attitude towards her.… (más)