Honey and Clover 2

You know, yes.  I’ve decided.  I really like this series.  I’m going to start on volume 3 tonight.

Trying to read it is weird and unlike reading any other manga.  It’s sort of slice-of-life, except the lives are the students at art school, so it’s sort of different and slightly weirder… and perhaps a lot of people can’t relate to in the way you generally do in a slice-of-life story.  I said this last time, but it’s hard for me not to relate to it since I did go to art school.  I fear this may be the reason I like it, because you don’t happen across manga series on that topic frequently, but it’s also got good characters, and it’s more about the characters being friends than being artists, I think.  So that’s a good reason to keep reading, too.

The fascination with Hagu was played down in this volume for everyone except her guardian, the teacher at the school that the group of friends hang out with.  More prevalent this volume were the relationship between Mayama and Ayu.  Mayama still pursues his employer fruitlessly, and Ayu still pursues Mayama knowing this.  They do get an absolutely adorable scene together, though.

I was surprised finals came up that fast and some of the characters graduate.  Normally in a manga, any sort of time frame is ignored in favor of keeping all the characters together through the school year, but I like that the year is passing by in an extremely realistic way.  The characters don’t leave though, to be fair, so it’s doesn’t seem like it affects the story that much.

The chapters on final projects make me break out in a cold sweat of nostalgia, and I could go on at length about that, but won’t.  The mood and frantic desperation was captured perfectly, as was the fact that only two of the people you know weren’t staying up the night before to finish.  I imagine these are not things that are unique to the art school environment, though.

There’s lots of great stuff crammed in here, and some of it is very funny.  Mayama has some fun with the others when the characters go to an empty theme park (?) during the day and look at a giraffe, telling them that the giraffe was out of its element in the cold, and it was miserable and only there for children to look at, except there were no children in the park that day, etc.  There’s also a great twister scene involving two of the characters not willing to give up.  That entire chapter cracked me up, actually, from Hagu’s cooking to Takamoto’s surprise announcement to the drinking, everything.  For all the funny stuff, there’s also a lot of really touching moments to balance things out.  The first chapter has Takemoto visiting his family for the first time in almost a year and coming to terms with his stepfather.  As I mentioned before, Hagu and the teacher have a very tearful parting, and Mayama and Ayu have special moments together, too.  There was a great parting scene between Hagu and the teacher, and all the characters tried to help Hagu with her gift when everyone wound up digging through the grass all afternoon looking for a four-leaf clover.  They turn it into a memory by the end of the chapter, and it wound up being very… poignant, in a way that’s hard to do two volumes into a series.

I’m not sure if I even like him or not, but I’m dying to read more about Morita now, too.  He’s just an enigma.  Also, introduced in the last chapter and serving as some sort of narrator in the back of the book is the angriest-looking male poodle I’ve ever seen.  That poodle alone had me absolutely dying.

Bottom line: great series.  If I wasn’t sure before, I am now.  I love these kids and I’ll be sticking with them for a while to come.