ふたりの恋愛書架

FUTARI NO RENAI SHOKA

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
2
RELEASE
July 12, 2014
CHAPTERS
14

DESCRIPTION

Kanako is a young woman who is running an old book store. One day, a customer comes in who shares her taste in books. He's a teenager named Akio, and he and Kanako quickly find that their taste in books is only the first of many ways that they fit together well. Kanako immediately realizes she wants him, and soon blurts out awkward things, like proposals of marriage and cohabitation. Despite their different ages and their awkwardness, it seems like their relationship has the potential to grow into something beautiful.

(Source: MangaHelpers)

CAST

Kanako
Akio Itou

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

AllFen
80/100
O que dizer de Futari no Renai Shoka, esse lindo romance, talvez um pouco rushado, mas ainda assim muito fofo.
Capa bem linda por sinal essa do volume dois. Enfim, vamos a review, que obviamente conterá spoiler, então não leia caso não os queira.

Futari no Renai Shoka conta uma história simples até, um romance que de certa forma pode ser avaliado como rushado e talvez até forçado, porém a execução da história e os passados dos protagonistas fazem na minha opinião esse romance não ser tão forçado quanto poderia ser.
Akio e Kanako partilham de traumas em relação a família e de um vicio por livros, a justificativa da paixão da Kanako por Akio pode ser meio boba, mas é algo que de certa forma é realista, pois sim, pessoas se apaixonam por outras pelo simples fato de elas as relembrarem momentos felizes.
Minha principal crítica ao mangá é exatamente ao tamanho dele, muita coisa que poderia ser boa, como a formatura do Akio, o desenvolvimento dos seus amigos, até mesmo a relação do casal principal, sinto que tudo poderia ser melhor trabalhado se a Kore tivesse mais tempo, infelizmente o mangá só teve dois volumes e doze capítulos.
Provavelmente muitas pessoas não vão gostar do mangá justamente por ele ter um final aberto, deixando que você imagine como foi o casamento dos dois e o futuro dos mesmo, isso é um problema? De certa forma sim, pois a coisa que você mais quer ver num romance é a concretização do mesmo, seja o casamento ou o pedido de namoro etc. Porém a relação dos dois é pra mim, tão bem encaixada e de certa forma, previsível, que o problema do final aberto acaba sendo reduzido.
Ainda que previsível, eu como digamos que apreciador das escritas da Kore, acho que se ela tivesse mais tempo, essa estória seria bem mais trabalhada, o que eu fiquei mais curioso é o relacionamento dos personagens secundários, como o Taichi e a Sakamoto resolveram se casar? Como é a garota que o Yuu encontrou? Fora que também queria saber como seria uma possível vida de casado dos nossos protagonistas.
Com o sucesso que Mahoutsukai está fazendo, quem sabe a Kore possa fazer uma versão 2.0 desse mangá, acho difícil? Sim, mas não é impossível, até porquê atualmente ela parece estar escrevendo só Mahoutsukai, então quem sabe ela tenha vontade de retomar essa estória.
Enfim, vamos ao final da review, eu recomendo esse mangá pra pessoas que assim como eu apreciam um romance fofo e não tem problema com finais abertos, na minha opinião os personagens são bem carismáticos, e com passados bem feitos, como disse acima, a leitura é divertida e não é maçante, a estória tem suas partes dramáticas mas nada muito forçado, além de ser um mangá curto que você lê facilmente em duas horas ou até menos.
Bem, essa foi minha primeira review, talvez tenha ficado um pouco ruim rsrs, mas tenham paciência, até pensei em fazer em inglês, mas não sou bom o suficiente pra escrever algo desse tamanho rsrs.
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ed3d
45/100
Thoughtful in all the wrong places
This review contains vague mentions of spoilers.

Thoughtfulness is something that I adore seeing in media. I love seeing characters slowly develop a sense of care for one another through the experiences that they share. Seeing this care being reflected in the writing as well just sweetens the deal for me. However, the presence of care alone does not make an enjoyable story.

Futari no Renai Shoka is a romance manga about two bookworms, Kanako and Akio, with a certain longing which they fulfil from one another. It’s a manga where you can almost taste the scent of a yellowing book from the premise alone, along with its rose-tinted, almost saccharine nature. It’s such a simple concept, and yet, I just can’t seem to like it.

This perplexed me. This manga looked like the exact kind of thing that I would fawn over for the next two weeks and parade with an 8/10 rating, and somehow, I couldn’t invest myself in this story. I mean, the cute scenes are cute and the funny scenes are funny, but something’s definitely missing.

Perhaps we should start from the beginning, around where Kanako proposes to Akio. The manga begins where our two main characters meet at a book fair and hit it off, before they meet each other again at Kanako’s bookstore and she proposes to Akio. The second chapter establishes that the two have a sort of familiarity with each other that they couldn’t find anywhere else, along with a shared trauma from their own upbringing, and that Kanako loves Akio from the bottom of her heart, before Akio agrees to hand her a marriage certificate in the future.

Maybe, I just can’t take this premise seriously. It’s a sudden and jarring way to start a romance story. However, there are other manga that I’ve enjoyed that decided to hit the ground running in its romance, no filler required. “Instant romance” isn’t inherently bad, and I was ever so slightly intrigued by its healing aspect as I was reading it, so it couldn’t be my main problem with this manga.

What about its execution? There are a lot of other promising manga that ended up disappointing me rather than entertaining me. As I’ve said before, it has the bones of a story that I would love, and yet it falls short. It touches on the kind of themes that I would adore but its execution does not intrigue me at all, and why is that?

To begin this section, its technical details are decent. The linework is clean, the panels flow well, and the style fits in with its contemporaries. I would say more about the art if I could.

The drama was handled decently enough. We learn more about Kanako's parents, and Kanako receives closure from her father. End of story.

I would say that this manga is thoughtful in all the wrong places. There is a lot of thought being put into the most saccharine and nostalgic parts of the manga, but it's this thought that is lacking in the most important areas. It's inconsistent.

This can be attributed to the short runtime of the manga at two volumes, along with a lack of foresight, but nevertheless it ruins a story that already has good bones. We’ve seen Kanako’s father, what about Akio’s missing parents? Why did the teacher in the second chapter disappear? Why is everyone so chill about this marriage? How does Akio support himself without his family? ~~(maybe his parents send him cash every month, but still, what happened to his parents??)~~

I could suspend my disbelief in some of these questions in order to prop up its already shaky narrative, but even so, this manga still fails in providing us answers for the most important questions.

The elephant in the room

Kanako is a young woman who is running an old book store. One day, a customer comes in who shares her taste in books. He's a teenager named Akio, and he and Kanako quickly find that their taste in books is only the first of many ways that they fit together well. Kanako immediately realizes she wants him, and soon blurts out awkward things, like proposals of marriage and cohabitation. Despite their different ages and their awkwardness, it seems like their relationship has the potential to grow into something beautiful.

Wait, were you waiting for me to address the age-gap? The age-gap marriage between an adult woman of unknown age and a teenage boy in his first year of high school?

I can’t just casually avoid this, huh? Alright then, here we go…

I do not appreciate this age-gap, especially when the marriage element is completely unnecessary in the grand scheme of things. This could stay as a story about two lost souls who find solace in each other’s presence along with a hobby they both share, and I would have no problem with it being completely platonic, but having it be a marriage story feels very out of place.

It’s also unnerving to see everyone in the story just go along with their marriage. Not even an “are you sure bro?” from Akio’s friends or a single adult in the story. The implication that age gap relationships run in Kanako’s family is also something I don’t appreciate. I mentioned earlier that I can’t take this premise seriously, and this is why: I feel dirty watching a broken person reel in some broken kid because “he can fix me”. It does not sit well with me, as much as I wanted to ignore it and see the story for what it was. I don't think this can be fixed with a longer runtime.

I really question the mangaka’s choices in creating the main pairing.

Conclusion

Futari no Renai Shoka is a manga with themes that should resonate with anyone that enjoys the comfort of books, but with the amount of plotholes brought on by a stunted development, together with some questionable decisions by the mangaka from the start, it is anything but great.

It's sincere, it's thoughtful, it's as gentle as can be. I just wish it was more than mediocre.

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