Slightly Biased Manga

I think it was a good idea to take so much time off from this series.  I remember just loathing it, and I dreaded going back for the rest of the volumes.  Plus it’s stalled indefinitely, so I knew there wasn’t going to be a resolution anyway.   But after marathoning both this series and Hana-Kimi, I really think reading in chunks is the way to go.  It certainly pulled this one’s ass out of the fire.

The thing I remember most was that I absolutely could not deal with the characters.  I still think that both Risa and Riku are cardboard cutouts with no personality, but I at least got a great deal fond of the others.  I think the main thing that saved this series was that I jumped right back into “The Second Hand of Time” story right as the action took off and all the boring character stuff was out of the way.  I actually do like the plot of this series, but the thing I disliked was that it was always sidetracked by really stupid character interaction.  But here we get quite a nice and ethereal action sequence where Dark has to enter a painting with Riku to try and save Daisuke.  The fact that Dark is told outright at the beginning that he is never getting Daisuke back by the creepy, creepy Satoshi also adds an extra incentive to the story, because you kind of do wonder if the two will be separated.

This is sandwiched in between the school play rehersal stuff where we learn a bit about the legend the entire story arc is based on, plus we get to see Satoshi play Dark and Dark (as Daisuke) dressed in drag.  Neither seem to like this, and a lot of these types of scenes are pretty funny due entirely to Satoshi and Dark, who are both probably the best characters.  Dark gets quite a bit of development over the next couple volumes, and it made me like him a lot more.

There are definitely still some romance elements that are played up A LOT.  Dark and Daisuke have swapped women, and everything’s a lot more serious.  I kind of prefer this to the comic hijinx of what was going on in earlier volumes… or maybe I just forgot that it was always like this and I’m being more tolerant now.

At any rate, I did enjoy the series quite a bit more after reading this story arc.  It continues in the next volume!