The story beings
with first year high school student, Haruto Kirishima, who lives on the
countryside outside of Hiroshima, having to deal with a troublesome guest. Before school starts an unwelcomed guest
moves into his families’ house, Yuzuki Eba.
Yuzuki is the daughter of Haruto’s fathers’ childhood friend. She has decided to move from Tokyo to get
away from her family and will be spending her high school career living with
Haruto’s family instead. This situation
causes embarrassment with Haruto, who doesn’t want anything to do with the
spunky and helpless Yuzuki. Due to his
overwhelming sense of helping others though he can’t leave her to her own
devices. This causes problems as he
worries over everyone thinking they are a couple, particularly his love
interest Nanami Kanzaki. Soon though
everything smoothes out to some extent and Haruto has some mild success with Nanami. When he confesses to her she balks and
doesn’t give him an answer right away. By
the time she gives him her answer he may already be falling for Yuzuki. Drama ensues, with a lot of back and forth
between the three of them. Nanami tells
Haruto that she can’t be with him as long as he has any feelings for
Yuzuki. Just as Haruto and Yuzuki are
about to begin dating for real she decides to move back to Tokyo, unexpectedly.
At first they
agree to a long distance relationship, but misunderstandings during a school
trip to Tokyo between all three again causes Yuzuki to cut off all ties with
Haruto. With Yuzuki out of the way Haruto
and Nanami are finally able to date.
Before long though, attention is again shifted to Yuzuki as Haruto
discovers a note from their last meeting telling him why she has cut off all
contact. He interprets the note as a cry
for help and rashly decides to transfer to Tokyo to finish up his high school
career. Nanami reluctantly stops dating
him, as she understands his deep seeded love for Yuzuki. With some trouble In Tokyo Haruto discovers
that Yuzuki left him to begin dating a guy she went to middle school with who
had a crush on her. To make matters
worse the guy is one of 2 friends Haruto has made since moving to Tokyo,
Kyosuke Kazama. Neither of them knew
that Yuzuki and Haruto knew each other and vice-verse. To make it even more complicated Kyosuke has
less than a year to live. Haruto doesn’t
back down however and challenges Kyosuke for Yuzuki’s love. In the end though, Yuzuki tells Haruto that
she doesn’t want anything to do with him, completely disrupting the only reason
he moved to Tokyo.
We then find
Haruto as a freshman in college, most of his friends from Hiroshima, Nanami
included, decided to move to Tokyo as well to get the whole gang back
together. Haruto has started dating the
other person he first made friends with, Asuka Mishima. With Yuzuki out of the picture for good,
Haruto and Asuka’s relationship blossoms, until Yuzuki’s little sister begins to
disrupt that union and brings Yuzuki back into the picture. Haruto must make a choice once and for all
who he wants to be with. Yuzuki, with
their long and checkered past, or Asuka, who brings him happiness and support. With everyone so close now what will his
choices mean for his circle of close friends and for his future.
OK, so I started
originally reading this manga when it first came out, back in 2009. I stopped reading it though, for some hazy
reasons. I decided to pick up the manga
again after watching the 13 episode anime that aired in Japan in the summer of
2013. I think part of the reason I
stopped reading it originally was due to much of the story being pure garbage. I kept forcing myself through the manga to
see how it related to the anime and what was changed. The anime for Kimi no Iru Machi pretty much
starts with issues 81 through 142 of the manga, then references previous
episodes throughout its 13 episode run.
There are some side characters and story arcs that were not included in
the anime, but you pretty much get a play by play. Once I got to that point I had already
ingested 142 issues of the manga so I stuck with it out of just seeing it
through. At the time of this writing I
have caught up with the series and am waiting for issues 253 to be
released. I still really don’t like it.
Haruto is a sack
of shit. It’s hard to really like him
when his flaws are his only good points.
He’s inconsistent, flighty and downright disagreeable. Through the course of the series, which
covers so far about 6 or 7 years, he has caused quite a lot of trouble for
everyone around him with his half hearted pursuits. The main woman of his attention, Yuzuki is
also quite annoying. She’s a bit of a
brainless princess and has a flat personality. Aside from these two main characters not
being to my liking there is an unnecessary amount of ecchi material in the
comic. There were whole chapters I
skipped due to this fact. It got
annoying when every 20 chapters or so all the female characters are going to a
bath house…with barely any plot and story development. But whatever, you gotta make the readers
interested right? Spend that cash? Just another check mark for the sad state the
manga/anime industry in Japan has gone to.
I like more
realism in my romance stories; too many of the plot lines in Kimi Machi are
tired, played out and ridiculous. An
example, in one issue Yuzuki brings up the idea of Haruto being concerned about
premature ejaculation with all of their friends and thinks it has something to
do with his mental health.
Seriously? What a waste of time…
Anyways, the manga
is really not worth that much investment.
You do get a pretty good idea of everything by watching the 13 episode
anime. If you want to see what happens
from there, then start with issue 143 of the manga. I’m going to keep reading it…I don’t think
Kouji can squeeze too much more out of this series and I’ve invested so much
time into reading all of it that I should see it out to the end.
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