August 18, 2009

Hoshi wa Utau by Natsuki Takaya

Hoshi wa Utau by Takaya Natsuki
Ongoing

Summary: Sakuya is a high school student with a dark past. During her birthday, a mysterious stranger comes to her house and brings her a present. Later she sees this stranger, Chihiro, and is enamored with him. Chihiro joins her high school and they become "friends", even though he treats her like a jerk. The story is centered around the Star Watching club that Sakuya runs with her friends.
Likes: It is really dark for a shojo manga. Even though it's riddled with teenage angst, almost to the point of being melodramatic, the story doesn't rely on its angst alone. This story explores a lot of themes such as abandonment and irresponsible adults whose children have to pay for their mistakes. Each character has there own dark secret and it's interesting to see when their pasts become a problem in the present story. Each story is different, yet they all have the same general theme of abandonment and mistreatment of children. Each of the characters is relatable somehow, despite their odd behaviors and quirks, the author makes us care about what is happening them and more importantly what happened in their pasts that makes them the people that they are when the current narrative is taking place. The artwork is beautiful and Sakuya is similar to Tohru in some ways, but very few of the characters are repeats of characters in Takaya's past works. This shows that she puts effort into making her characters unique.
Dislikes: The fragmented sentences make it hard to read and it's really repetitive at points. There is one character that bugs me, but I can't remember her name so I guess it doesn't matter.
Overall: This is something I don't mind reading continously. It's more grounded in reality than Takaya's other works, which is to be appreciated.

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