Musunde Hiraite

Re-read this to see how my opinion on this work has changed, and here are my thoughts for the series. Definitely a case of rose-tinted lenses here. The manga is not stellar in any manner with cliche settings, characters, resolutions, art. But the overall package into which Minase Mayu bundles everything up makes Musunde Hiraite a surprisingly pleasant read. The constant shifting of focus back-and-forth between characters while still pushing everyone forward is reminiscent of Durarara if I wanted to make that comparison; a perhaps better comparison would be to call this a more classical variant of Tsuredzure Children. MusuHira explores these characters as lost younglambs caught up in their traumas, wistful pasts or uncertain relationships. Through very adolescent romance scenarios, these middle- and high-schoolers grow just a little more comfortably into themselves. The art is nice with Bakuman-like large dark eyes with straight bangs + neat or frizzy short hairstyles - the occasional ecchi shots with panty flashes are undesirable which I'll just attribute to editors saying they wanted them. Nothing too stellar, but definitely nostalgic art which delivers emotional peaks with well-made two-page spreads and large panels. But yes, very standard tropes used and very typical exaggerated seishun-ppoi emotional outbursts and resolutions. Yet, the way these storylines for the characters are tied together (musubi hehe) is not unpleasant. I enjoyed rereading this, and while I will update my score to better reflect the series' quality (9->8), it's still a nostalgic work and personal favourite. It's a casual read I can recommend for travel/weekend binges thanks to its arc-by-arc segmentation.

Oh man this is SO GOOD. Musunde Hiraite is a manga about the love stories between a group of people that are all connected one way or another. Some are siblings, some are friends, some are childhood friends. All of them have found love at the same time but every character have their own struggles to own up to their feelings for each other. I feel like the quality of this manga is so high with the art making scenes very impactful and heart warming. The characters were all well developed even those that are only side characters. It's interesting that the author decided todo a volume 8 to conclude the stories of those side characters as well leaving no holes unplugged at the end of the manga. This is a great read. It is super fluffy but at the same time provides a lot of depth through the experiences of some of the characters. I feel like the way the author shuffled around the different stories to make a continuous volume was done quite good as well. For example she would do 2 parts of 1 couple and then 1 of another but it all transitions flawlessly. Some scenes are funny, some are cute, some are tense, but overall it is a quality romance story with a good ending. It definitely deserves a better anime than the 1 minute ONA per episode thing that's out there.