New Manga Spotlight – Konya wa Tsuki ga Kirei Desu ga, Toriaezu Shi ne, Shoujo Fujuubun and Shimanami Tasogare

Konya wa Tsuki ga Kirei Desu ga, Toriaezu Shi ne

Two chapters so far. Ah love, that sweet nectar which all seek to experience. And truly there is nothing more romantic than gathering up your courage, inviting the girl you love up to the roof, taking her by the shoulders and proclaiming with all your heart “I want to murder you.” Yes this isn’t some nice little tale about true love but rather something darker. Our protagonist is in love with a girl he’s been friends with for a long time. The love looks to be clearly mutual but he can’t seem to gather the courage to confess. However one night he tries to stop a man assaulting a girl and is infected with some kind of virus. On the plus side he gains immense supernatural strength for short periods. But on the negative side he is now feeling massive urges to kill people and his feelings are directed strongest at the love of his life. He finds himself daydreaming about strangling her with her own intestines and stabbing her to death. It’s still up in the air to where this is going but so far I am liking it. The changes in the protagonist from a demoore cleaning addict to a dangerous psychopath is a good sign and one his classmates are becoming aware of. There are also hints that maybe the girl he loves is infected with the same disease. I am really quite interested to see what happens with our disturbed couple.

Shoujo Fujuubun

Two chapters so far with this one. So our protagonist is cycling and happens to spot a terrible car accident which involves preschoolers. However he manages to notice that after the little girls friend gets hit by a truck, she takes special care to save her game on a gameboy she was playing before running over to help her friend or even reacting to it. Unfortunately for him the little girl knew he noticed her odd action and seems to be targeting him. It looked to be hint that this girl is some kind of demon aiming to keep him silent. The end of the second chapter is quite creepy but it is still up in the air about what this story is really about. The artwork is great and we have a college student in the lead instead of a high school student. It looks like these two are going to have some kind of partnership which will likely involve this little girl creature harvesting souls. But that’s just me spitballing here. Besides we have Niso Issin here, author of the monogatari series whose heavy on dialogue and light on sense. Perhaps this may turn out to be a back and forth talking battle between a weird little girl and an aspiring author.

Shimanami Tasogare

After recently moving to Onomichi, Hiroshima, high school student Tasuku Kaname is thrown into despair at the possibility that he may have been outed for being gay. Convinced his life is over, his despair turns into shock when he sees a woman jump out of a window of a nearby house. Tasuku races to the house in a panic only to discover that it’s a public meeting lounge owned by the woman he saw before. Tasuku comes face to face with the woman as she walks past him unharmed, but not before she implies that she had been watching him from afar. Confused, Tasuku follows her up to the top of a steep hill where she offers to briefly listen to what’s on his mind. Although Tasuku doesn’t go into too much detail, he later accepts her invitation to come to the lounge to meet others with similar troubles.

So by pure bad luck our protagonist is found out to be gay by his classmates after they search his phone history. The main bulk of the story seems to be about homosexuality and the problems that come with coming out of the closet. Getting ostracised and disowned or even coming to terms with it yourself. I would like to think that homosexuality isn’t quite as discriminated against as it was in the past. Though who knows how its viewed in a traditional heavy society like Japan. The good thing about this series is that it treats how this discrimination works. It’s not some in your face kind of obnoxious level where you have some ignorant jackass practically shouting utter bile at him. Instead it’s a much more subdued and insensitive level. The kind of discrimination you would expect in real life. Our protagonist finds a bit of a safe haven in a lounge that has others with problems like himself and an enigmatic person who may even be somewhat supernatural. The series may go beyond just homosexuality as there do seem to be other residents in this lounge with their own stories to tell. I think it’s nice to see this subject dealt with in a more serious manner rather than the heavy homosexual caricatures present in anime or the blatantly fan pandering nature of BL.

Some Quick highlights

Good Night World

This has more chapters than usual with about ten chapters out. It’s about a group of players who live as a loving family in a virtual online MMO. They each do this to escape their dysfunctional family but are completely unaware that they are genuine family in real life. So we have a family who ignore each other in real life and focus on playing an MMO so they can play fake family with some other MMO players while all of them being completely unaware that the members of their fake family are in fact their real family in disguise. It’s confusing but you will get it when you read it. It’s strange as these people cannot get along with each other in the real world yet unknowingly are the perfect caring family in the virtual world.

Fire Punch

This is a cautious recommendation as I feel this title is trying a little too hard to be edgy with it’s so far one chapter. It does have it’s interesting points and reminds me of Attack on Titan in both good and bad ways. The idea of a frozen world where the protagonist has control over fire and wishes to take revenge on an oppressive military regime has me somewhat interested.

Criminale!
This is pretty much a harem with some pretty eccentric characters. It gets points for having the girls have genuine negative traits instead of good traits disguised as bad ones. Otherwise it’s pretty standard.

~AidanAK47~