#1 Mr Mallow Blue
mr mallow blue huh... this is the first manga i read fully in japanese (with some help from the fan translation for lines i wasnt 100% sure about) but despite that it was not a difficult read because the story prioritizes repetition in vocab for emotional emphasis and doesnt use particularly complex vocabulary... im very happy that i read it in this way since a lot of the charm comes from how the characters are navigating their own identity and view of the world which can be particularly difficult to convey adequately in translation.
this is very much a shoujo drama, the focus is the developing dynamic between the main cast and the main plot is directly influenced by how they feel about eachother and how much theyre (not) willing to admit it. i really do enjoy aoi (27 year old man who loves cute things who spends most of the story as a teenage girl) and minazuki (award holder for guy who loves throwing himself under the bus for the sake of others so much he developed an illness about it) and their insecure bumbling towards eachother has been a wonder to watch. you know it says something when a story has a yandere4yandere lesbian couple where one of them has hundreds of crossed out pictures of the other taped to her wall and i care about the moe boygirlfriend guy more.
despite being a bodyswap story between an adult man and teenage girl it does not care at all about acting insecure about its own setting and trying to cover it with atlus-tier no homo jokes. ostensibly discrimination does exist in their world but the writer cares more about the way those people are uniquely fucked up about interpersonal relationships rather than having outside pressure about their romantic interest be the main driving force. it has a nice balance of flashback scenes which set up the events that led to the establishing incident of the story, and the sequential main story of the cast trying to navigate the weird surroundings they found themselves in.
the art is beautiful, especially the color pages. the expressions are great, i really enjoy the combination of eyelashes and eyebags that the mangaka draws because it makes everyone look like theyre at the end of their rope, which is how i remember highschool feeling as well. it would be worth reading just for the art but luckily the story is a refreshing take on a tried and true formula too... the manga isnt finished yet, theres one volume to go and im excited to see where the road will end up... if aoi and minazuki dont end up together i will break something though