Forum - View topicREVIEW: The World's Greatest First Love: The Case of Ritsu Onodera GN 1
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Keichitsu0305
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Already bought my copy from Anime Boston (hooray for early release) although I wished I would've grabbed Love Stage as I loved the anime so much.
Yeah, call me a sucker but there's something...entrancing(?) about Shungiku Nakamura's work but not always in a good way. For Sekai Ichi, the scenes I enjoy the most for Nostalgia are when Takano lords over Ritsu at work and I wonder if Ristu is supposed to represent the disgruntled OL women reading these types of manga.
*sigh* Oh Yokozawa.  How I hated his guts at first because he always blamed Ritsu for everything. Which was partly true but still! Only now I love him sincespoiler[ he has the healthiest & progressive relationship in both franchises.]
And yeah, Nakamura-sensei still sucks as anatomy, different facial types, and panel composition. This is why Asumiko Nakamura, whose art style does this on purpose but with a stronger grasp on negative space, is more fluid and visually captivating. *shameless plug* |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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Very questionable art (too cliche, and the style definitely can not be universally liked); otherwise, I do not mind it.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
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It would be helpful if the review told us who Takano was. The first use of his name does not make it clear that he's the (twice) aforementioned lover, and we're never even given his full name, so it's left to the reader to figure it out. As presented, if you don't already know the story, he could be a rival co-worker doing better at learning the ropes or something. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Takano is the other half of the couple the series focuses on - I believe his first name is Masamune, but to be honest, it's really barely mentioned in the book as well. That's probably why it carried over to become an issue in my review.
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rizuchan
 Posts: 974 Location: Kansas |
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It's a little sad that rape is so pervasive in this genre that its just kind of accepted. I know when ecchi anime has a scene that's too rape-y for comfort the reviewers here tend to blow up about it (and rightfully so) but if we got worked up about rape in BL nothing would get a passing grade...
But I'm a giant hypocrite that loves Nakamura's manga anyway. My biggest issue, with both Junjou and Hatsukoi, is that the main couple is the worst couple. While my love of Sekaiichi Hatsukoi probably comes that I vastly like Takano and Ritsu's characters over Misaki and Usami, I got really annoyed that every time their relationship started making progress Ritsu would just suddenly decide he hated Takano again and they'd be back to square one. 
i totally forgot this was being released here, so I need to go order a copy now. Hopefully this will mean we can see the light novels and anime here too eventually. |
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championferret
 Posts: 765 |
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I just can't like Nakamura's stuff. I feel like she has a 'smarmy squinting asshole seme template' and an 'angry bug-eyed yelling uke template' that she just whips out for every manga she does. If I saw a page from any of her manga without dialogue or context I probably wouldn't even be able to tell which one it was. (Seriously most of the coves of her manga alone look like they could all be the same series, even...) Plus her art is just...bad, to me, and the rapey bs is not only eye rolling but just feels dated now. I have no idea why she's so popular and considered such a staple artist of the genre :/
Oh well, at least she isn't the worst in the genre. |
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asckj1
Posts: 46 |
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Good review *thumbs up*
I'm so so so glad I own the first vol. now. The story is really sweet. And as the reviewer rightly pointed out, its a very interesting to read through the story written from a manga editor's perspective. It probably would have made an interesting non BL story just well too! I loved reading through Takano and Onodera's past a lot. And I love how Takano is still so persistent when it comes to Onodera and how he's always thinking about him in one way or another. Looking forward to to the next volumes. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3950 |
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The art for the main characters looks almost identical to Junjo Romantica.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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Yeah. A female character gets groped by a male character in an ecchi title and everyone goes crazy. And hey, like you said, rightfully so. But a male character gets raped by another male character in BL and no-one bats an eyelid. There's absolutely no reason for rape to be pervasive in BL. It seems like the entire industry (not to mention the entire fanbase) hasn't seemed to grasp that one can tell a sensual and emotionally moving love story between two male characters without using rape (or the threat of it). |
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#aki
Posts: 1 |
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I love this manga, and it's one of my all time favorites. Back then, when it was criticised a lot, and rightfully so, I tried to figure out for myself why I liked it so much. Can only use words of one of her characters "To create work that can move you like this is amazing". Yes, it can move me, make me smile and my heart skip a beat. It's craracter driven story. Nakamura-sensei has talent to create craracters, with past and present, thoughts and dreams, troubles and worries, work and family issues, personality flaws, that somehow makes them easy to relate to. For example, first Takano's case chapter, where you can feel so well Takano/Saga's frustration and pain over [/spoiler]his parents divorce, and that they totally neglected him.[/spoiler]
I remember myself having hard time at work, and then reading Kisa's case chapter "it takes all my strength to do the same thing everyday. How long it's going to be like this, until I retire? No, I'll keel over before that. But I can't do anything other than this". My thoughts exactly, and that put me at ease. Also, his confidence issues so much resembles me myself, that it sometimes painful to watch, but even for that reason only I'll always like this manga. I also like her work for lines like "my world revolves around you, once and forever, this only thing please don't forget" (that's fom JR) About weak points. Well, I kind of like her artstyle, so that aside, probably it's that it's not going anywhere? I'm amazed by her ability to start a story, set interesting characters and storylines and then again got stuck into endless love rivals for one partner, then another and jealosy tropes for ALL her couples. Sometimes it's interesting, for example when spoiler[Kisa reflects on his past shallow self], sometimes it's just that. Why is this? No plan how your story going to end or this manga industry mentality to drag while it's dragging? Well, it's not doing this story any good. I wish she just made a beautiful confession scene (I believe she can do it) and then continued with them as a couple, and we could have season 3. So sorry, it's probably not going to happen. This countdown thing at this point is beyond annoying. Well, still it was enjoyable read to me. |
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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There are BL titles out there that avoid old-fashioned or poorly written rape tropes or the subject altogether. I search high and low for them. It would seem contrary but, there are also some that leave romance out of the equation too. There are also some rare titles where I have been able to get past some of their content. But, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi isn’t one of them for me. In fact it made me crabby. Maybe if fujoshi simply acknowledged tropes more I wouldn’t be irritated so much. I don’t mean deciding something is good or bad necessarily just honestly recognizing aspects. This title was recommended to me and I knew people fawned over it. However, consent issues did not come up when I was first looking into it. So thumbs up for this review! Though I wonder how much one could fault people since usually when someone does bring up such information the conversation just devolves into unhelpful semantics and defensiveness? I’ve seen it happen even when the mangaka makes the nature of encounters clear by calling it something themselves or through the characters. So instead largely no one says a thing. Or fans try instead to use other reasons almost like a code why someone may/does dislike a title. As a result, despite trying to screen books carefully, I am regularly still unpleasantly surprised when I pick up certain titles. I was told I must not like a certain BL title because it was “too explicit” just a couple of months ago. I would have laughed except the inability to recognize some people have no problem with graphic sex but, may feel differently because a title depicts forms of sexual assault, or due to certain context of such… it was just depressing. I’m not trying to make anybody feel bad if they personally like or are not bothered by something fictional either. It’s just frustrating and leaves a shadow over the genre as a whole when time after time I pick up books that I would have rather avoided. It is too bad since I like SuBLime as a publisher for their quality but, can count on one hand the number of titles from them I’ve enjoyed. You’d think I’d decide to give up but, something, maybe those small percent of titles I do enjoy has kept me searching for more. |
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Izu0
Posts: 195 Location: California |
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I can't wait to see the 3rd season this summer
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