[...] Honey & Clover Book 7 — art school students search for purpose and happiness [...]

[...] Honey and Clover, for not living up to all of its praise. That’s not the fault of the series — it’s a fairly good story with characters that I’d really like if some of them weren’t so aggressively wacky — but I feel bad for not liking it as much as I feel I’m supposed to. [...]

[...] readers praise the sense of nostalgia demonstrated in Honey and Clover, but I find the sense of time’s passage and loss in this series much more affecting. The [...]

[...] enjoy this series more when I keep two things in [...]

I was reading some of the other comments, and there’s just something about Nana that makes you want to KILL yourself. I guess it doesn’t help that I read it at a time when I was feeling very vulnerable, so now I’ve got some bad associations I’ll have to get over.

Give me Kimi wa Pet any day.

HC might be really intelligent and it seems like it wants to do the same thing, but I don’t feel as invested as I am in HC’s characters as I am in NANA’s. Johanna said it right when she said it’s not hitting her emotionally.

Okay, that might seem like a stretch, but here’s my thinking. They are common in that at the end, there’s a little reflection and ideas of the future. Both are nostalgic and wistful.

However, though Nana and HC both has that nostalgic feeling, Nana ALSO wraps us up in the story of youth. The characters LIVE in the moment, the emotions raw. They breath and cry and laugh and live, and in that way, the nostalgic feeling hits stronger because that kind of life feels to be really worth missing. I’m both happy for the moment and sad for the future.

HC, on the other hand, seems to be crying over the eventual loss of life as a student, instead of ENJOYING life as a student. I never feel as sad that such moments will come to pass. I do like it to a certain extent (it’s very calming), but sometimes it feels too wallowing for me. If only there were more good moments, like that Christmas episode.

I think I’d love HC more if it struck the same chord. It doesn’t have to be as melodramatic, as its calmness works for it, but if only it was more…living and less looking back.

[...] up my week of covering Viz high school shojo manga titles (well, Honey and Clover is art college, but same difference), here’s [...]

[...] Julie reads vol. 2 of Kiss All the Boys at the Manga Maniac Cafe. Johanna Draper Carlson reviews vol. 3 of Honey and Clover and vol. 1 of Kasumi at Comics Worth Reading. Connie posts a stack of reviews at Slightly Biased [...]

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson on the third volume of Chica Umino’s collegiate soap opera, Honey and [...]