Hanakimi 15
Posted: December 26, 2006 Filed under: Hana-Kimi 12 Comments »Ah, the end of my Hana-kimi marathon! Hooray! I can write about something else now! Probably a lot of Dragon Ball or Fruits Basket! Haaa…. yeah. I want to get to the point where I clear up my backlog and don’t have to do big slugs of series, just so you know. Though in some cases, big slugs is awesome, as it was here. But I like the idea of variety better than huge enjoyment of one particular series.
Anyway, if Mizuki were a man, she totally would’ve woken up with an erection at the beginning of this volume.
This one’s largely about the tension between Nakatsu and Izumi after Nakatsu asks point blank if Izumi loves Mizuki. Given the reaction Nakatsu had to Nakao suggesting he go undercover as a girl at Saint Blossom, I don’t think Nakatsu would take Mizuki’s secret well… but on the other hand, it seems very cruel that he’s both Izumi and Mizuki’s best friend and Izumi doesn’t feel he can confide this information to him. I was quite moved by how deeply upset Nakatsu was in sharing a love interest with Izumi throughout the entire volume. Again, a real strength of this series is its strong characters, and though Nakatsu is not my favorite, I think he’s probably got the most personality out of any other character in the series, and the fact that I constantly feel sorry for him shows some power in how the characters are written.
Ho-hum, we also get track stuff re-introduced in this volume, and I have a feeling that’s going to take over next volume and maybe the volume after that. That’s the last thing I wanna hear about, quite frankly, and I don’t care who they drag into those plots. With the way that Sano and Asahiya’s relationship has been progressing, I have a feeling I’m going to get some payoff in maybe two more volumes, though. The shoujo does like to tease though, so I’ll probably have to wait until halfway through volume 23. Grr.
There’s a really great scene in this volume where Sano cops a feel and after both he and Mizuki freak out about the social ramifications privately for a few pages, the last line of dialogue on the matter is Izumi thinking about how flat-chested Mizuki is.
Also ranked up with one of my favorite scenes in the series so far is where poor, lovestruck Nakatsu is struggling with the Izumi thing, and Nanba and Umeda run into him walking down the street. Umeda complains loudly about him blocking the street, and after a few loud complaints, Nanba smirks and whispers what’s up in his hear. Then there’s a panel of them both standing nondescript in the background smirking silently at Nakatsu. True perfection.
Anyway, yes, hitting six volumes of this series at once was an excellent idea for my enjoyment of the series. I wish I had more, but I also wish we weren’t getting served a big boring helping of track meet next volume.
Well, I just want to say that I also love reading Hana Kimi. I live in Thailand. Well, right now, we are stop at Vol.17, but in Japan, it has already finished so do you have any idea what volume does this comic stop??
I think it’s 23 volumes long. Sounds like you don’t have very much more to go ^_^
It’s 23 volumes long, plus a special extra chapter which recaps what all the characters have gone onto after graduation. In my opinion Hisaya Nakajo gets a little lazy toward the end and her art shows it. Sano becomes less pretty :( and he is damnably cute at the beginning. Still. There are some great scenes in the later volumes, which for the sake of not being a wet blanket I shall remain silent about. Keep reading ;)
All I need is the promise of payoff and I’m good. So it sounds like it’s not all hand-holding til the end? For some reason, I really have been desiring these escalated romances in my manga lately, even if they are series which I know aren’t meant for that type of thing ^_^
I can kind of understand what you mean about the art. When I looked through the artbook, I was a bit put off by some of the later images. Mostly that had to do with the fact she was using really terrible computer stuff to color them, but the art wasn’t all that great anymore either.
This manga is awesome and the story is really addictive. I’m only on volume 6 now. Can you spoil for me and tell me if Nakatsu ever finds out Mizuki is a girl and how does he react? The series really sparked my interest and I started reading the manga to find out Nakatsu’s reaction in finding out that Mizuki is really a girl. Will he be mad, happy, sad, or what and is he going to end up with Julia?
I can’t spoil it for you unfortunately, because 15 volumes in Nakatsu still hasn’t figured out if Mizuki is a girl or not ^_^; I’ve got two more volumes to read, but it’s at a part in the story where there’s going to be a track meet and some plot with Sano’s brother, and I hated the last section of that so much I want to make sure I’ve got a lot of the series saved up so I can read some good stuff after suffering through that.
Pairing Nakatsu with Julia is something I hadn’t thought of before, and it somehow fits.
I fall in love with Hana-kimi and now i’m reading vol8….. can anyone know what happen during the last vol23… i really want to know first b4 continue…plzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
`i love hana kimi a lot.. the hana kimi on ABS-CBN 2 starring ella chen and wu chun… they’re so cute especially wu chun.. pls support and watch hana kimi.. it has a very good,.good.,story,..promise!!!=)
I’ve heard a bunch about the drama, it’s one of the only ones I’ve considered watching. I kinda want to finish the manga series before I watch it though. I just got the last volume of the manga today, so I’ll probably marathon the last eight or so volumes together and move on from there.
It was really a great asianovela…Ella’s acting was really good…The whole drama was cute but the ending really sucks…haha
I finished Hana-Kimi the other day. If by pay-off, you mean seriously erotic scenes, well, it doesn’t happen. Though it does get a bit more racy towards the end – a condom even appears at one point. For what it’s worth, I did enjoy the ending a lot. It’s a little different from the endings of similar stories, which is probably one reason why I liked it. However, the fact that it is a little different might put you off. The only way to find out if you’ll like it is to read it.
Yeah, I still need to finish this series. I’ve been sort of dragging my feet about it because I suspected the story drags its feet a little before getting to the ending, but I ought to polish it off next time I take some time off.
I can’t recall what sort of payoff I was wishing for when I wrote this (it could have very well been sex, sometimes I get unreasonable when it comes to the hand-holding series), but I think I was more wishing for the two main characters to sort of… acknowledge each other? I can’t remember if it had been resolved by the time I stopped reading here, but I think that Izumi and Mizuki hadn’t actually discussed Mizuki’s gender or admitted their feelings to one another? I think I would be okay with the two of them being a couple.