Tsuredure Children

Think of your first romance anime. Or your first romance manga—anything of the sort. Then throw it all away. Cliches are a recurrent element in stories—and the thing is, you will never be able to get rid of them. They are cliches for a reason, and their existence proves to be essential in composing a story. Most writers and enthusiasts of literature believe that there is no thing such as originality; everything exists from being based off of something, with just some modifications to make it stand out from the rest. Of course, it is fairly common to see overused tropes in the like in a subcultureas wealthy as the anime culture—which is the embodiment of Japanese animation and the counterpart to Western graphic novels we encounter today. Content creators are always expected to bring something fresh to the field, so as to not drown in the deep ocean riddled with gimmicks and twists to the usual elements of a story. It has become so that gimmicks are the only things that the norm, and people aren't expecting as much as a good story anymore. But what if you go back to the basics?—keeping that heartwarming feeling and simplistic vibe of a typical romantic comedy? Tsurezure Children originated as a web manga in Pixiv by an artist known as Wakabayashi Toshiya, and it consists of several short stories consisting of a boy and a girl—and the gradual buildup to their romances. It is filled with all your usual character archetypes; you have the couple that are too shy to admit their feelings to each other, you have the clingy childhood friend who is also part yandere, you have the senpai and the kouhai, the couple who feels that their love is unrequited—any of the sort, within several 4-koma strips that result in a form of plot progression or character development between them. To be honest, Tsurezure Children is nothing new—but isn't trying to be one, either. The series works itself as a big tribute to the celebrated and most successful tropes in terms of characters, settings, and plot progression, placing them in true-to-life scenarios mixed with a prolonging and subtle twist mirroring that of misunderstandings—the defining trait of a romance manga. From my perspective, Tsurezure Children is a reflection of the ideal high school life—moreso the high school that you always see as the typical setting in an anime or a manga. It stands as a reflection of my nostalgia from my early days of watching the rom-com slice-of-life stories you see on TV, gently pulling my heartstrings with moments that invoke positive and warm emotions. Ah, the innocence of youth! This series would be an escapist work in its prime—celebrating on the joys of scenarios to dream of and characters to love with. Think of your first romance anime. Or your first romance manga—anything of the sort. Then throw it all away. And relive the experience all over again.

I can't believe this manga is as highly regarded as it is on here. This manga was nearly the same for its whole 212.2 chapter run. The story for each and every single pair is almost always about misunderstanding, being embarrased to reveal their own feelings and doubting themselves. That's it, nothing else. All of these issues could have been solved in around a dozen chapters at the most, but apparenlty people stop talking to each other literally the moment someone else interrupts them (which happens all the goddamn time in this manga). The art is pretty poor as well, many of the characters look the same, thefacial reaction shots look exactly the same on each character which make them look even more similar then they already are. This is the kind of manga that's as wide as the ocean (chapter-wise) but as shallow as a puddle. None of the characters feel real, none of these relationships feel real. All in all it was a waste of time and I don't really know why I even kept going. The characters, like I said, most of these characters are pretty similar, but I would be lying if I said they weren't enjoyable. Some grew to be my favourites and I dreaded reading others chapters. However because all of these characters had more or less the same kind of story that they went through made this a moot point in the end anyway. The longer I read, the more I started hating all these "characters". Would definitly not recommend, unless all you want to read is the same stuff just told with different characters for 212 chapters.

I binged this series both in Anime and Manga. The Anime served as a good reason to read the Manga and so I did. The manga initially struck me as a collection of of Romcom short stories. Then as I tried to explain it to a friend I realized something. The character development was next level. You can not just talk about your favorite couple. Mainly because everyone they interact with almost always has their own story going on. This isn't a romcom about a couple trying to get together. It is a story of people going through high school together. Trying to hook up,trying to learn what dating is, trying to excel in life. You can't talk about just Akagi and Ryoko, because Ryoko befreinds Erika. Erika is struggling with herself and is friends with Ayaka. Ayaka is dating Takeru, and they are learning about relationships together. Takeru is a friend of Noro, who has a thing for Alice. Alice is considered weird and loves Takase. However, Takase is struggling to confess to Kanda and all kinds of misunderstanding befall them. Kanda is also good friends with Yuki. Yuki is a kind hearted, jokester and is in love with Jun. They experience a relationship trying to break each other out of their shell. The. List. Goes. On. These character grow and experience their own stories and interact with the stories of others. Making this whole thing not about just two people. It's a very interesting read with happy endings all around. Give it a read and you won't be disappointed.

tl;dr: A series of solid interlinked romantic stories that work well together. This manga is a series of a lot of interlinked stories that show a variety of different romances. And by a lot I really do mean a lot as by my count there were 20 stories by the end of the series, though not all of them end in proper couples. The stories on their own are a mixed bag. A couple of them are really great, mainly Ryoko/Masafumi and Jun/Yuki. And only a couple of them I would consider especially weak. The vast majority of them I'd say are only decent, which Iwould say mainly stems from the fact that they're generally pretty simple and try to be pretty realistic over having any forced drama, major twists, or anything like that. However, the manga ultimately feels like more than just the sum of its parts due to how well the various stories complement each other. Twenty stories going on at the same time may seem extreme, but they're very heavily interlinked. The characters that are being focused on in one story are side characters in others, which prevents there from being an overload of characters. Progress that occurs in one story, pushes progress in others, which allows things to flow much more seamlessly. Though there very much are distinct stories, they often blend together incredibly well, which is especially evident during major events such as the school trip, athletic festival, or cultural festival. Furthermore, handling it this way works really well in terms of pacing, because while normally such simple stories would begin to grow dull and the story would need things to spice it up, by allowing the focus to swap around, it allows for there to be stretches in character's relationships where nothing happens or things move slowly by just focusing on those characters less for those stretches, which results in the stories being allows to be simple and realistic while keeping the overall narrative interesting. I would also like to note that this is a 4-koma, and as is generally the case it is humor focused, and there is a decent amount of good humor, but it also does have solid storytelling outside that. In my experience, how that's usually handled in 4-koma is that the manga starts off with every 4 panel set being humorous, but as it goes on it'll start hitting large portions where it drops the comedy and gets serious. This manga never really does that. Pretty much every 4 panel set has a punchline. This punchline is often something as simple as the character's internal reaction to the situation being shown, with it thus not being all that funny, but it's still somewhat amusing nevertheless. This greatly enhances the lighthearted tone, wherein even when things are going badly, it still doesn't feel dark at all, rather the feeling of watching these innocent characters slowly stumble their way through these various romances seems kind of adorable. The art quality was decent overall and was especially great at having character's facial expressions showing emotion. The style was a mixed bag. It worked well in that it wasn't too realistic but not too unrealistic either, which allowed it to be both cute and grounded. However, it felt like character designs were somewhat of an issue, in that far too many characters looked overtly similar, especially with the girls, and with the small panels and constantly changing point of view amongst so many characters it got somewhat confusing at times.