Kimi no Iru Machi - the end of a manga

As of this week the final issue of the long spanning romance series, Kimi no Iru Machi comes to its conclusion.  The manga has been running for about five and a half years.  I picked it up in 2009, read it for a bit, put it down and didn't get back into it until 2013.  The manga was created of Kouji Seo, who also authored Suzuka.

    The story follows about 10 years in the ups and downs in the love life between Haruto Kirishima and Yuzuki Eba.  You can get a full-ish review of the series here Kimi no Iru Machi revisit where I go through a more in depth plot synopsis and my thoughts on the series.  This will be a bit of a wrap on that review.

    The series ended the way most of the fans anticipated and hoped for.  I ended up falling into a group of readers who would have favored the main character to end up with a different girl, but this was the forgone conclusion to the story.  This is a pretty banal and trite high school romance that turns into a semi entertaining one then back into a boring and played out college romance and merges into more of the same as the characters enter the job market.  Honestly, the last 100 chapters in the series could have been left out...and the ending really did seem phoned in.  But who knows, Seo has been busy developing his next new title, which kicked off immediately following the end of KNIM, called Fuuka.  Fuuka sticks in the same world as Suzuka and KNIM and features the daughter of the main characters from Suzuka.  Only one chapter is out and I find myself annoyed with the frequent fan service panty shots.  But that apparently it to be expected with Seo's work...much to my chagrin.  One would think this known manga-ka could get beyond cheap sales gimmicks?

    I digress.  KNIM wasn't that bad, it should have ended much sooner than it did.  I'm glad it's finally over and Fuuka may be decent...or not.  KNIM does officially end with an OAV to be released at the end of February 2014 wrapping up the series.   Regardless, Suzuka was a much better story.  Although, this below was the best part of the manga and the anime.