Natsu no Zenjitsu

One more season to visit Hokkaido: a stronger desire to see sunflower fields

This is quite literally Honey & Clover but with some more mature themes.

Let's count the similarities:

• Great pacing! I'll be repeating this point in the context of other things a lot
• Setting is both art college and making art / finding a job afterwards is an important plot driver 
• Tetsu is like...Mayama...quite a lot
• Mori is like Morita...also quite a lot
• The mangaka girl is sorta like Takemodo, hard to tell since she only gets 1 chapter of back story
• Arika is only similar to Rika in that they're both older women, personality is quite different. Arika's friend is pretty similar to Nomiya's female coworker haha. 
• Hanami serves the same function as Hagu 

My only grip...and it's not even really a grip, with this series is that Tetsu and Arika's ship is foreshadowed to sink before it was formed. Tetsu is literally enchanted by Hanami before Arika's character is even introduced "orz I can't really be mad about how the ship sunk because their breakup dialog / scenes were so touching: Tetsu's desperate attempts at resisting / holding on was so heart wrenching, but also because his feelings towards Hanami was so pure. Overall so beautiful @_@ To use a weird analogy, the last couple of chapters is like when a big rock is thrown into a calm pond, lots of ripples spread, and then the water surface comes to a rest again. 

But as beautiful as it was, it's still so tragic seeing Tetsu realize, resist, act, hesitate, and finally find peace as he finishes drawing Arika's face. It was a very slow death, the author put in so many hopeful events in-between that I was almost or rather willing to be fooled into an ending that I want. Perhaps a theme is the impact of the difference between what's thought of and what's said. Not sure if that makes sense. 

I totally sobbed myself to sleep the night I finished this. Honestly I wouldn't know what to do in the same situation, in either Tetsu or Arika's shoes. It's easy to see as a reader of it happening in a manga since you can see both character's thoughts, but with that omnipotent power removed, how do you decide? Maybe it's not as hard as I imagine...since my decisions to break up with past boyfriends have always been solid once the turbulent process of deciding has completed. Did the previous sentence even make sense?

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Was listening to the "Where do we begin" podcast before starting on the manga. The first episode was on continuing after infidelity, really interesting to hear from real life couples instead of reading about fictional ones haha. I'm not sure if I'll react in a "right way" if I'm ever in a similar situation. I can imagine the thoughts that will be in my head, but can't imagine the emotions that I'll feel at all.

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Amazing post on Vonnegut and a different perspective on mental health