Millennium Snow

Well, first off, I can say that I cried. That's something that should be taken with a grain of salt, however, seeing that I've cried watching Winnie the Pooh before. But I sure have a lot to say. I usually never read any manga that doesn't have an anime (if I watch an anime and like it, I'll read the manga-- usually an effective strategy because the manga is better so it doesn't ruin the anime for me). However, Millennium Snow doesn't have an anime, yet I found myself here. I am a massive fan of Ouran High School Host Club. After watching the anime (and beingquite depressed about the ending) I read the entire manga in three days, and since then, I've reread it countless times, each time crying my heart out because I just plain adore the series. This time, I couldn't bear to finish reading it, but I was still in an Ouran slump, so I decided to go see what Bisco Hatori has written other than Ouran. Because of Hatori being one of my favorite authors of all time, I had obviously heard of Millennium Snow before, but I'd never gotten a chance to read it. I got into it, and well, it was great. The story line is pretty good, and there are many relationships you can see between the characters and the character designs that you can relate to Ouran, if that's the connection you're seeking to find. Satsuki and Tamaki not only look similar (face, height) but have similar tendencies considering their flirtatiousness and the importance of their grandmas in both of their lives, while in different ways. Satsuki's grandmother also physically resembles Tamaki's. Touya's name is most similar to Kyoya's, while his appearence is a mix of Kyoya and Mori's appearence (albeit much shorter) while his personality is sorta a mix of the twins and the tsundere bad boy the club lacks. Hatori also mentions her love of detail and twins, which I found to be amusing. In terms of story, the love story wasn't developed too well and I found Chiyuki to be slightly bland compared to other characters, as well as much too eager to become immortal. Everything moved a tad bit too fast, and in the last volume, I found myself lost by the new arc and the sudden end. I feel like for this style of story, it would have been much better if the story had been dragged out a bit so that we could see the character development instead of strange and random time skips. The art greatly improved after the return out of hiatus, but the art wasn't my favorite to begin with, just extremely better compared to the first volume. The characters were fine, but I found myself liking pretty much everyone except Chiyuki. There were many questions still left unanswered that I wish I knew the answers to, but I understand why they were never addressed-- there simply wasn't enough time. However, I enjoyed it a lot, even though I was greatly biased by the author and her other works. Hopefully, you will too!

At first glance, the plot did not seem so interesting to me because of the typical supernatural romance between a vampire and a human. The first chapter seemed like that, but everything after that was very interesting. There is one underlying point driving the plot, the romance between the main characters, but even the side stories and complications did not hinder it. They were skillfully sewed into the story and I enjoyed them all. I did feel that the very last conflict could have been explained a little better, but the manga did end on a good note for me. The characters are wonderful. They areall distinguishable and different and likable despite their flaws. There are not too many of them and they are memorable and have their own histories. Hatori does a good job of exploring her own characters and making them real. The artwork got better over the course of the manga, but at the beginning I didn't feel as if it were any different from other manga. It is a plain kind of good, if that makes sense. This is a cute shoujo manga with a few dark elements relating to people's histories and such, and of course the supernatural stuff dug into that. I still liked reading it, though, and do recommend it to anyone who's curious.

TL;DR: If you've got a little time to kill and really enjoy paranormal romance shojo, go ahead and read this. It's mostly cute and sweet. The first half does have some glaring story flaws, though. For more detail, keep reading! I decided to read Ouran High School Host Club recently, and kept seeing ads for this in the back of those volumes, since it's by the same author. I'm really enjoying Ouran and the premise for this sounded interesting (I'm not "into" vampire fic, but have nothing against it) so I decided to try it. I almost stopped after the first volume, but thenrealized there are only 4 so I went ahead and read them. I'm glad I did because the last two were definitely better than the first two, and that's because the last two were done after a 10-year hiatus while the mangaka was working on the more popular Ouran and honing her skills. Art - the art in the first couple of chapters was just okay, and the faces were actually not good. But it quickly improved over the course of the first volume. And it was very nice in the last two volumes due to the artist's increased maturity of style. Story – One important thing to note is that this is VERY different in tone from Ouran. This is not a bad thing, just different. It has minimal comedy and is just a straight-out romantic drama. The story has a lot of rough patches mainly in the first half, which were removed or improved upon in the last half. The problems I had with the first half of the story were as follows. [NOTE: I give examples from the story that don't affect the overall plot much and I try to keep as vague as possible, but I will put a spoiler warning before them.] 1. The MC (Chiyuki) was CONSTANTLY getting badly hurt, usually by getting her head accidentally hit. It seemed like every other page. The whole premise of this story is that she has a serious heart condition that she could die from at any time. But she manages to quickly recover from injuries that in some cases would have been fatal to anyone IRL, much less a girl with a heart condition. (Hatori even poked fun at this in a sidebar once, saying that Chiyuki must have a very thick skull, probably having realized how far-fetched these incidents were.) [SPOILER] For example, her cousin tries to kill the vampire (Tōya) by throwing a rock larger than a bowling ball right at his head at close range. Chiyuki jumps in the way and gets hit in the head with it instead. There was no indication that the cousin slowed his momentum, and it should have killed her instantly. 2. There are some very contrived situations, some predicated on the fact that Chiyuki's parents were almost non-existent in the story--because no parents, unless they were pretty neglectful, would allow their daughter to do at least one of the things Chiyuki does. The story makes it clear that she did have parents who loved her and tried to give her the best care possible, though we don't really meet them that I can recall. [SPOILER] Chiyuki goes on an overseas trip alone with the two male MCs (the vampire and the werewolf). All three are teens and no adults or other people go on this trip. AND they get lost in the mountains and never make it to the ski resort but end up in an old abandoned mansion. Interesting plot-wise, but halts any suspension of disbelief. 3. Some very unsavory behavior from two of the males. [SPOILERS] First, the werewolf (Satsuki), who has a mild crush on Chiyuki, suddenly comes on to her. She tells him to stop, but he doesn't, and Tōya's bat familiar sees them and stops him. Later, a similar thing happens with Tōya but it's quickly revealed that there was an outside influence which caused it. Before this reveal, Satsuki is disgusted with Tōya for it, even though NO such explanation is ever given (or expected) for his own similar behavior. My only thought was that it perhaps is cultural, where females say 'no' when they actually mean 'yes' because 'no' is the proper thing to say. (This actually was true for a long time in Western culture, which is the reason for the woman's lines in "Baby, It's Cold Outside.") But that doesn't really make sense considering that Chiyuki has no feelings for Satsuki, and also that Satsuki was so indignant with Tōya for similar behavior. Second, Chiyuki's overprotective cousin actually ties her up to a pole in a room and leaves her alone there, to prevent her from interacting with Tōya. This is not only abusive and far-fetched but nonsensical; Tōya can fly anywhere, and also if she had a seizure and no one was there to help her, she could die. Hatori does express regret in the sidenotes of the 3rd(?) volume for having had the cousin do this. My only other issue with the story is near the very end, which was something central to the story's finale but was hard for me to understand. I'm not sure if this is my own fault, or a translation or cultural issue, or a fault in the story itself. [SPOILER, vague] Tōya finds out about something tragic that had happened with a much older vampire and his partner. Tōya looks more into their history, and finds out some things that better explain what happened with them. But it was hard for me to follow the explanation or the conclusions drawn from it, which is too bad because it is a catalyst for the story's finale.

This manga is a bumpy ride but if you're a fan of Bisco Hatori I'd give it a read! I picked this up because I'm doing a reread of Ouran right now and was curious about her other work. I think this manga is a really interesting representation of that - Millenium Snow comes with a couple of Hatori's older oneshots (one from the Love Egoist universe and another separate one), and the fact that she picked it back up after 10 years of hiatus is something you don't often see. In the last volume, she talks a lot about her planning process, and howshe had to switch things up when restarting this one because her loose planning that style that she used for Ouran just wasn't working out, which I found really interesting. The plot itself is nothing special (it's not super comprehensible, tbh) but I do find a lot of charm in all the characters. I'm a sucker for vampire stories, though, so I might be biased. I wouldn't go into this one expecting extended character development or a non-rushed conclusion, but I enjoyed it as a chance to spend a little bit more time in the Bisco Hatori verse!