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| Topic | Jeff Zero & Leonhart in Different Houses: Trails of Arcadia Edition [JZLF] |
| LeonhartFour 10/08/17 10:22:03 PM #185: | Anyway, in manga news, I read the latest chapter of ReLIFE. It wasn't anything special. Seemed to be more of a transition chapter that segues into the next arc. A bit of a breather episode after the last several chapters were so intense. I'm going to try to pin down my feelings on "My Wife is Wagatsuma-san" by writing them out. Let me start off by saying I like it. The time slip aspect makes it pretty unique for a slice of life romcom, but it's almost entirely a gimmick/plot device that happens whenever it's convenient (and almost always for laughs with regard to the timing of when they begin or end). Like, if you're into the sci-fi aspect of time travel/time slippage, there's none of that here. It hasn't even been explored how or why the protagonist can do it. Maybe it will be at some point, but I'm not expecting some in-depth, profound reason. It also seems to flip flop back and forth between the future being easy to change and being hard to change. Sometimes there's a butterfly effect type thing where one event radically changes everything, and sometimes when the protagonist feels like he's utterly screwed up everything, nothing changes. Part of that is the nature of the love interest, Ai Wagatsuma. In many ways, she's the ideal woman, almost unrealistically so at times, but she's ridiculously inscrutable. The entire overarching plot is the protagonist trying to figure out how she fell in love with him in the first place, but she's very hard to read. Even when the protagonist feels like he must have done something to make her hate him (and even when she outright rejects him when he asks her out and very clearly friend zones the guy), in the next time slip, they're still happily married. She's a really good character though, partly because she refuses to go along with the flow at school. She stands up for the "losers" at school, and she's willing to give anyone a chance and help them out, even those everyone else has shunned. Like I said, she's unrealistically perfect in many ways, but she's kind and goodhearted, so it's hard not to like her unless you just have an outright distaste for the trope. I think I'm starting to see why this dream girl would fall in love with a seemingly average guy though. Part of the thing with him getting these views into the future is that it spurs him on to do things that he would normally never do otherwise, and he's slowly been growing from a reticent loser into a good guy who does what he can to help people when he sees what they're headed toward in the future. His character development has been pretty solid. As far as most of the rest of the cast, they're okay, I guess. Most of them are losers on purpose the way Sunohara in Clannad is, although they don't quite have the same charm he has. Unfortunately, they play up the "LOL teenage boys are all perverts" trope a bit too much, but they've had a few arcs with some minor characters that have been surprisingly poignant and heartwarming. The only other major recurring character who I'd say is good is the rival to the love interest (a.k.a. the girl who cosplayed as Haruhi Suzumiya). Like the love interest, she doesn't go along with the flow either, but in a different way. She doesn't care if people like her or not, and she's blunt and honest to a fault. Honestly, I'd probably get along with her better than I would the actual love interest, but whatever. I'm not the protagonist! No one will read that, but I feel better for writing it since it's helped me organize my thoughts about it. --- ... Copied to Clipboard! |
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