Disguise-Twenty17
Talking about this manga after having finished it is odd. Before reading it, I was captivated by its premise and almost ethereal first chapter. While reading it, its premise was a constant companion and the execution of the story in front of me brought me comfort in thinking it'd be well delivered. After reading it... its complicated. I don't think it broke its premise, or lied to me, per se. Its more like, it made me believe it would achieve more, and yet I'm not really disappointed with what I've got...? I'll lay my cards on the table: I thought this would be a coming-of-age story, givenits first chapter. But its more so a slice of life. And weirdly so, its one of the more sincere ones. To give an exemple of that, the arcs don't even make sense timeline-wise, and that's not addressed at all, lol! They have infinite holidays, classes, and (most of all), winters and summers, on what should be a single year of their high-school life. After mentioning the first chapter a few times by now, I should say it was a one-shot. And that makes a lot of things make a lot of sense in retrospect. It turns this manga into an example of how the industry used (now too, but way less so) to just want an story to be there. Manga was less self-justified, instead serving to justify a magazine. Less of a meal, more of buffet, if that makes sense. So maybe, and just maybe, this manga exists solely because of coincidence. Monthly Afternoon just happened to need a romance manga to fill their table of contents, and then they just happened to fish out for a well received one-shot from their archives. And then they just commissioned a story into existence. ... Now I sit here and I wonder if the author would've ever chosen to make that one-shot into a manga. Because he didn't. Truly, he didn't. He borrowed imagery from it, words from it, panels from it. But they are fundamentally not the same story. As artistry shows itself as business, I sit here forlorn, but maybe there's no need it. As Nazo no Kanojo X makes me think of other manga I've dedicated days into reading, and passion into understanding, as business decisions. As happening by, well, happenstance. I think it's also just showing us a very true face reality has. People do bet their resources and time into other people. And I don't there's anyone out there that could actually deny that love can also bloom there. As I said, I'm not really disappointed in its ending. Its a weirder feeling to describe. As I look to what I thought this manga would be, I'm left blasé, at mercy of my own imagination. But funnily enough, I bet into that first truly magical chapter, like those businessmen did in the early 2000s. Ueshiba made us believe in that version of the story. And its odd, but there's something really human there.
