Manga Review
Howdy y'all, and welcome to month two of our year of Manga reviews over this little corner of PokeCommunity. This month I was personally having trouble making a decision between a fair few different manga that I was considering reading or revisiting for the purpose of sharing my love with y'all. However, in the end I took on a series by recommendation from one of my fellow mods - Sapphire Rose - who entreated me to give one of her favorite childhood series a read if I couldn't make up my mind once it was all said and done. That series - though a bit short, and sweet - was called Arisa.
'Time passes whether you're hating people or spending it with friends. Isn't spending time laughing with friends better?'
See, it's hard to write reviews for Psychological or Mystery series without really ruining the entire plot for the people who might pick it up after. The best I can do for you is lay out the groundwork for the series as a whole, namedrop a few people, and hope that you'll decide to take an evening and give it a go. And I do mean that literally, as with only 48 chapters it's not going to take you much more than that. I managed to get through Arisa in about 4ish hours in between some musical selection changes and becoming distracted with my YT recommendations - so if nothing else, I can safely say that even if you find yourself at the end of it all feeling a bit bummed or unfulfilled you'll at least be able to leave knowing you've not lost too much of your free time to it. However, I don't believe that you'll come to that conclusion either way if you are to give Arisa a chance.
The series starts out by introducing us to our main character - Uehara Tsubasa, a seemingly generic anime protagonist who gets into fights, has bad grades, and struggles in school. It also wastes no time in introducing you to her near-identical twin sister, Arisa who is of course the polar opposite of her sister in all three regards. These two girls have seemingly been separated for the last three years due to a divorce between their parents, but have kept in touch regularly through letters that they've sent every so often detailing the events of their lives. Uehara tells of her troubles with school and with her grades, and Arisa tells of her love life, how much she loves her new class which she's been named the president of, and a number of other small things including how much she's missed her sister since the separation. This all leads up to the point where after having finally managed to find time to meet up with each other, the two decide to pose as the other and see what their respective school lives are like.
However, at this point we only get the view of Tsubasa who is going through her "A Day in the Life" while getting to meet all of the love interests, all of her sister's friends, and even gets to see how well respected she is in the eyes of the faculty. The older sister remains envious of her younger sister's school life, detailing the events of her day once the two manage to meet back up at the end of it and tells her how lucky she is - which... does not go over well. See, Arisa has a secret. And despite spending a single day in the girl's shoes, Tsubasa is completely ignorant to that secret up to the point where her sister takes up a seat on a windowsill, mocking the girl for being unable to see what she's actually going through.
Sonoda Arisa... is a traitor.
Tsubasa having no idea what this means, or what possible reason there could be for her sister to attempt to take her own life decides to continue on with the charade of pretending to be Arisa. The girl continues to dress up and take part in school activities, growing closer to the friends she'd never had before, all the while unraveling the secret of "The King's Game" which rules the class which Arisa had been so proud of before.
Now... I won't lie to you - it's not a terribly complex series. The characters aren't anything groundbreaking, and even the defining traits of the MC only come up once every 7 or 8 chapters. However, it's got just enough going on and just the right amount of subterfuge by the cast as a whole to make you tilt your head each time someone new comes into the spotlight. However - perhaps aided by the fact I only took a few hours to read this - the story itself is quite streamlined. For some this might be a good thing, but for others it could be a deal-breaker if you're more interested in the investigative side of things rather than just "x thing happens, y is revealed, z is 'deduced'". There's not really any moments where I found myself asking why someone did the thing that they did, but there also weren't any moments where I was really caught off guard by someone doing something either. I'd pretty much figured out why things were going on and who was doing them within the first ~dozen chapters or so and only actually got thrown off a single time for a couple of chapters.
The art itself for the series isn't bad. The character designs are rather generic and a couple of times I found myself looking at a panel/series of panels and wasn't really sure who was being talked to. But that does help to ground it a bit more in reality, despite these seemingly supernatural things going on all centered around class 2B. All in all, I'd give the series a low 7/10. It kept my attention well enough to make it all the way to the end, and I didn't dread turning to the next chapter each time nor did I find myself searching out what chapter I was actually on at any point. It was an enjoyable little read, and I don't regret picking it up and adding it to my list.
Feel free to share your own thoughts on the review or the series below, and look forward to next month's review which I'm sure will be a treat ;)
