Daytime Shooting Star

Okay, for those of you out there who are still trying to make a decision whether to read this or not, let me tell you one thing; this shoujo is not what you think it is. At least for me, definitely not. Right, now that that's said, let's proceed. I have finished this manga, and there really is nothing very unique about it. Also, the title 'Daytime Shooting Star' has little to do with the actual story itself. The plot chosen is actually a bit too cliche in my opinion, the forbidden love between the student and teacher, only that the author, Yamamori Mika-sensei, successfully made itdifferent by adding a few tweaks on it, but then in the end, there still isn't anything much to say. The story started off pretty good in the first few chapters. It tells the reader about Suzume, a country girl moving to the city where she made some good friends and experienced a few times heartbreaks. I can't say much about the story without spoiling it, but the manga is really good in the beginning. It does not only focus on the love triangle between Suzume and her teacher, Shishio, and her classmate, Mamura. Everything was nicely paced, until later at the middle, where it kind of gives off the feeling that it's rushed. One thing that might appeal you to read this manga though, might be the pretty and clean art. Yamamori Mika-sensei's drawing style changes from the first few chapters until the end. You could clearly see the changes, but it's not a bad thing. She gets better at drawing the characters, and at some point, managed to make me feel frustrated out of trying to decide who between the two main love interests, and the rest of the characters, looks better in terms of appearance. Although the characters may seem beautiful, the main characters do lack some character development. This, in my opinion, resulted in the somehow.. unrealistic (due to the lack of a better word) ending of the manga. Besides that though, the main characters; Suzume, Shishio and Mamura have nothing too special about them. What made this manga different from other shoujo mangas out there may be the fact that Suzume is a strong girl who doesn't cry all the time. There is also none of those 'flowery' scenes that normally appear in shoujo. And Suzume has her own flaws, like the rest of the characters. Even though she's not perfect, messes up and falls, she still has the courage to get back up and try her best. Shishio and Mamura are both also good characters. However, there is so little character development with both of them. Shishio let what happened to him and his previous lover happen again, and Mamura, although he did change, he lacks a good background. Not only that, Mamura lacks a good enough background story to explain his misogynist behavior. Since he was the main focus for a love interest in the beginning of the manga, Shishio had much more chemistry when compared to Mamura. Some scenes in the manga may be a bit awkward due to the lack of development and chemistry between the characters. I really enjoyed reading the first few chapters of HnR, but in the middle, I kind of lost the 'feeling' and everything started to crumble for me. Here, let me make it clear for you; I am not one of those hardcore shippers and I am neutral at this so I am perfectly fine with what Suzume decides to do and etc, as long as it has a good chemistry to it. HnR is the first shoujo manga that I read after a long time trying to avoid the genre, since the art and characters are quite nice, I'd give an overall rating of HnR a 7/10. But some scenes are just unrealistic and I have a very high expectation on this manga. Sadly, it was not satisfying enough. Looks like I'll have to resign from that genre again for some time.

How do I start talking about this particular manga? It starts out pretty typical – Suzume’s parents are transferring out of the country and she’s heading straight to her uncle’s place in the big city. When she arrives, she tries to get to her uncle’s place by herself and ends up getting lost because she has no sense of direction. There’s a kind man who helps her find her way and soon, Suzume finds out that the kind man is her homeroom teacher! And of course, she falls in love with him. And of course, there’s a rival for the teacher. And of course there’smisunderstandings. And of course she gains friends from misunderstandings. The story is pretty typical but the difference from most shoujo involving a potential affair between student and teacher is that both the main characters and other characters are actually active and try to get their goals instead of relying solely on the heroine who’s still muddling over her feelings about her teacher for most of the chapters. I really liked it, honestly. I really could relate to the main character because she’s flawed. She’s absolutely not perfect and makes plenty of mistakes in the course of the story. She’s not also painted as someone who’s completely awful either. There’s a good balance of both and you can see why people gravitated to her even back in her old country school – that’s what makes a good heroine. She doesn’t have to be perfect just… relatable and she has to have that little charm that draws people. The thing about this heroine though is that she is obsessed with seeing stars during the day. The story goes is when she was younger, she got lost. She looked up at the sky, while it’s still light, and saw a shooting star. And that’s extremely rare in itself. Because of this obsession, her head is in the clouds and often says things without thinking. It’s hard to really describe Suzume’s charm. Even the characters can’t explain it but it’s one of those things that I’ve naturally accepted. Now let’s talk about the beaus. The teacher, Satsuki Shishio, is charming and handsome, of course and is really a big dork. He collects manga but still is the idol of the school and the original star in Suzume’s eyes. Throughout the story, you can see he genuinely cares about “Chun-chun”, the nickname he gave to Suzume when he first met her, but there’s the obvious problems: He’s a teacher and she’s a student. Another thing as well is that he had a breakup with another lady – it didn’t work because she always traveled and couldn’t really be tied down to one place. As he starts to spend more time with Suzume, though, he starts to slowly cross the line the more he spends time with her – the harder it is for Suzume to stop her feelings. Do I like him? Personally, yeah – he seems like a very nice guy although he tends to hide his feelings a lot. But do I like him with Suzume? Well, I’ll talk about that in a bit. For Daiki Mamura, the other guy, is a completely different matter. He’s seated with Suzume in their first year together and he has to put up with her flighty attitude. Naturally, they become friends because of Suzume’s insistence and apparently, he doesn’t like girls. From what I gather, there are nothing but boys in his family, him, his little bother, and his father. Apparently, his mother had cheated on his father, consequently divorced, and never bothered to contact her sons again. I can understand his reasoning for it. It’s not a good situation, either way. Do I like him? Personally, he’s okay. I imagine that I would need to take him in little doses as he opens up more. Do I like him with Suzume? Well! Despite the fact that the story is very typical, there is a certain charm to it. Suzume does start to grow up and tries different things (like makeup, being more girly, and being shy when she’s so used to being open) and have varying results. The art is really nice but I kind of feel the two main beaus should have been easier to tell apart. I won’t say it’s the same face – it’s more of the same hair. Sometimes it’d go into random flashbacks or points of view and it’s a little confusing on who we’re trying to focus because it seems that almost all the guys have the same hair. The girls are clearly defined by their own personalities and history and I really do appreciate that! I just wish there was just as much variety as the girls. But that’s a nitpick. The real issue I have is that the males aren’t as developed as they should have been. Granted, Daiki is done fairly well and I really shouldn’t expect a miracle with his type of character. I think the thing I’m more annoyed by is the teacher’s character development. Despite the obvious that Suzume is way underage, his past girlfriend was added for unnecessary angst and honestly something that really shouldn’t have been brought up. The ex-girlfriend was a little annoying and it felt that the only people who actually cared about things like the law was the uncle and Daiki (but he only cared because it involved Suzume). I get the author’s trying to get in with that angst that it’s forbidden and that he has man pain from a past relationship. Perhaps if the girlfriend was written a little better and if his issue with the past relationship was written and planned better (mostly because it seemed like it was added in last minute as filler), it wouldn’t feel like she’s just a random character at all. Cause that’s what it boils down. If there’s a potential threat of a new lover, or threat of an ex returning, it actually needs to feel that way. There needs to have that feeling of “Oh, wow, they have history with one another!” There needs to have the actual feeling of danger between the couple’s relationship. Now, which guy actually was better for Suzume? This is the manga that actually does ask that question for us in a much better way than just being completely forward about it. Both male characters get enough screen time, so to speak, to actually be able make a fair judgement. Satsuki is pretty forward with how he is and actually has a lot more demands than one would expect from an adult man. And Suzume is only a teenager. Would she be able to fulfill his needs? The short answer: no. The long answer: Satsuki is very needy and very clingy. He has a problem with being able to let go and has difficulty with not knowing where the line is. He tends to flirt with Suzume a lot during the manga, especially when you know he knows she loves him. He tends to be very flightly and can’t really seem to want to settle (oddly enough, that’s the problem he had with his ex) down while Suzume is really simple, for right now, and doesn’t have a lot of needs. I won’t say Suzume isn’t mature enough for him, but that’s not exactly wrong either. I’m going to say that he’s not mature enough for her. He’s still very much into flings and doesn’t seem to care where the line is if there is one. Suzume needs a rock in her life that she can always turn to and who can help encourage her being the best. And someone who’s not shy enough to tell her no. Not only that, any time Suzume is on a date with Satsuki, she’s always so miserable. She always worries about him and he really doesn’t seem to give her a passing thought. Once again, she needs a rock. She needs someone who can assure her of her raging feelings and bring her back to Earth. All Satsuki does is just shrugs his shoulders and go, “Okay.” And that’s why I didn’t really like them together. On the other hand, Daiki is actually the ideal for Suzume because Suzume is really slow and she hasn’t had a lot of life experience but neither does Daiki. He is the rock that she needs, especially when they’re still growing up. Because he’s quiet, he listens. He becomes more aware of Suzume and why she reacts the way she does. He caters to her and he does genuinely cares about her. Not to say Satsuki didn’t – but as a man, he doesn’t seem like he’s not grounded on Earth enough to comfort her, should she ever come to him. Don’t get me wrong – Daiki still has plenty of ways to go before anyone can call him the perfect man. But I think that’s the charm of Hirunaka no Ryuusei. It’s not perfect and nobody is perfect but it’s those imperfections that makes it charming. It’s really not that different from any shoujo manga when you get to the bare bones – but because the author allowed her characters to flesh themselves out naturally, therein lies the charm. And you know, something like this is just about as rare as a daytime shooting star.

Regretted re-reading after all these years. Surely piqued my interest because of the art. Hands down for me. There's also a nice variation of character design and you can recognize them properly. Started strong, with female MC having a unique character unlike the overused weak type, but then ended up not facing the issues head on as opposed to how she's supposed to be. I appreciate how the author weigh in the consequences student-teacher relationship hence Shishio's path of action. The issue is with how the 2nd male lead was developed, it's shallow, his actions doesn't go well with how his character was built. I'd say thefinal chapter was forced when clearly the few previous ones shows how much the FMC still has strong feelings to her first love. Contrary to the popular opinion, it's not realistic at all since no one will definitely do what the FMC did on the last part. Overall, it felt like a tragedy, where you don't end up together even though you have strong feelings for each other, felt like the FMC chose that guy at the end just because she's in a commitment with him at the moment. I recommend reading Tsubaki-chou Planet by the same author to feel a little bit better after reading this series. Feels like this is how she originally wanted this series to end. So much similarity except almost totally remove the idea of other love interest.

I have read many many many many many shoujo mangas but Hirunaka no Ryuusei is somehow...different from all of them. Now let's go with the story. The Story over all was normal. Just a plain country girl,Suzume, who moves to japan to live with her uncle because of her Dad's work transfer. While making her way to her uncle's house, she stumbles upon a mysterious man who helps her find her way to her uncle's house (since he's a close friend of her uncle). Well it turns out that the mysterious man is actually her homeroom teacher. Pretty normal nothing bad really. What i really likedabout this series is the Characters. The characters were so real and relatable. To the point where if a character cries you cry with them. Or when they're sad or jealous you can feel their pain because everyone has gone through this stuff. And don't even mention Suzume. She is one of my absolute FAVORITE female manga protagonist. First of all, Shes isn't that sensitive. She's pretty tough. Not to mention when she makes a decision they actually MAKE SENSE. Mamura Daiki is suzume's classmate and first friend. tbh im pretty fond of him. and when he blushes ERMERGERD xD. His character development is paced well because he starts to be more gentle towards girls. Shishio Satsuki is suzume's homeroom teacher and he's rather very clumsy and non-teacher like. Towards the end of the story you start to see some character development in shishio. Shishio towards the end starts to try to be more "mature" which he makes a mistake on (not gonna say what). But overall, i have never seen a character like Shishio. Which is why i love him so much. The Art is REALLY good. From beginning to end. The details were very nice and my favorite parts were the emotional parts. They just set up the whole stage for the big smack down. I SERIOUSLY enjoyed this show. This show just had everything i loved and enjoyed in a bundle. I feel really sad that theres no more ;-;. Overall, i loved it. It reminded me a lot of whats happening to me in real life. Sad things, happy things, it was really relatable which i liked the most. If you havent read this manga yet GOOOOO!