Papillon 2
Posted: July 30, 2009 Filed under: Papillon Leave a comment »Miwa Ueda – Del Rey – 2009 – 6+ volumes
Actually, I quite enjoyed the continued positive force behind this series. I was a bit sad that the energies shifted away from the boy she liked and towards… well, a rather obvious target. Actually, I quite hated that, because it seemed like the series was better than that and wouldn’t go the obvious route. It was drawing me a picture though, and I should have known it was inevitable.
Student/Teacher. Yeah. At least he’s an intern, and not really a teacher at all. I guess.
Ageha’s transformation continues for the better, and I was so glad that all the characters supported her in all her serious efforts to better herself. She feels self-conscious since she sees it as moving more towards being like Hana, and there’s a completely ridiculous subplot in this volume involving her mother and Ageha thinking that her mother doesn’t love her and only loves Hana and only likes her when she’s more like Hana… whatever. The resolution to that was as unsatisfying as the plot itself. But aside from that, everything about Ageha’s changes has been great.
The sibling rivalry is still present, and Hana makes a couple plays to take the boy in question away from Ageha. Hana also proves to not be the big bully you would expect her to be, since she turns down several opportunities to “cheat,” so to speak, and really mess with Ageha. She also reprimands people for talking badly about Ageha. I like that Hana is actually not as bad as that type of character normally is.
Aside from the whole… yeah, teacher/student thing, I really like this series. It’s an unusually positive shoujo drama, and a lot of the usual character types and situations are reversed, which makes reading it pretty fun. I’m looking forward to picking up the next couple volumes.
