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review 2017-12-10 02:05
Arisa (manga, vol. 10) by Natsumi Ando, translated by Ben Applegate
Arisa, Vol. 10 - Natsumi Ando,Andria Cheng

Midori arranges for Tsubasa

to be killed by an explosion in Rei's house, but Rei saves Tsubasa because they both care for Arisa, and he wants Arisa to be saved. Arisa sneaks into the hospital to see Rei (and Akira? my notes are confusing). Tsubasa finally learns more about what happened between Arisa and Midori: Arisa was the King, at first, but got depressed because everyone had started complaining that the King only granted easy wishes. She couldn't bring herself to grant a wish with a stolen test answer sheet, so Midori took care of this wish in her place. Then, when she was sad that her mom had chosen to go on a trip on her birthday instead of staying with her, Midori pushed her mom so she'd break a bone and have to stay at home. Despite all of this, Arisa says she's going to stay with Midori on her own.

(spoiler show)


This volume made me so angry. I hate all of these characters. Hate them.

First, Tsubasa and Arisa's mom.

"You really are boring." WTF kind of mother says this to her child? I can't believe that stupid story about Arisa and Tsubasa's mom preferring Tsubasa was actually true.

(spoiler show)


Next, Arisa. I understand that she

felt abandoned by her mom, who seemed to prefer to be anywhere but with her daughter. However, that wasn't a good justification for her decision not to tell anybody about what Midori was doing. The volume with the flashback to Tsubasa and Arisa running away when they were younger showed that Arisa was capable of going against even her own twin when she felt it was necessary, so why didn't she tell anybody about Midori's actions? She could have stopped everything early on, and yet she chose not to. And ugh, the wish. She knows Midori is capable of killing people, so why did she wish for the King to get rid of her?


Like Arisa, Midori felt abandoned by his mother, who literally left him. And again, that isn't a good excuse for what he did. I'm probably supposed to feel more sympathy for him than I do.

(spoiler show)

 

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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review 2017-12-10 01:54
Arisa (manga, vol. 9) by Natsumi Ando, translated by Andria Cheng
Arisa, Vol. 09 - Natsumi Ando

Arisa wakes up but appears to have amnesia, because of course. Rei is

shocked she's awake even thought he hasn't gotten rid of Tsubasa yet, so Midori knocks him out to keep him out of the way. Then Midori visits Arisa and says something to her (reminds her of her secret) that prompts her to go back to class with all four phones. She says she's going to protect the class, but then she sees Tsubasa and acts like she hates her, like the things Rei said about her being afraid their mom preferred Tsubasa over her were true. Tsubasa goes to Rei's house with Midori and Midori kisses her and then knocks her out with a pill and ties her up.

(spoiler show)


WTF, Ando? I don't care what Arisa's secret is, it can't possibly be worth

hurting her twin and setting her up to be offed by the King (the wish she transmitted on the phones is pretty unambiguous, considering what the King has done up to this point: "Get rid of my twin sister."). I'm also annoyed at the indication that that stupid story about Arisa being worried their mom liked her sister more might actually be true.

(spoiler show)


I know I said this in my comments for the previous volume, but Tsubasa is an absolute moron. By this point it should have been crystal clear to her that Rei wasn't the King, leaving Midori the only candidate. And yet she went to Rei's house with Midori as her only backup.

And as far as the pill went, WTF Ando? You had Midori

drug Tsubasa via a pill he forced into her during a kiss. Are you kidding me? Besides the general grossness of the whole situation, I want to know how something that knocked Tsubasa out that fast didn't affect Midori in the slightest. He had to have had that in his mouth for at least a few minutes.

(spoiler show)

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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review 2017-12-10 01:45
Arisa (manga, vol. 8) by Natsumi Ando, translated by Andria Cheng
Arisa, Vol. 08 - Natsumi Ando,Andria Cheng

Tsubasa worries about the King hurting Midori and is faced with a choice: going after an injured Midori or getting her classmates out of a trap.

She chooses Midori and then races to the abandoned warehouse where the class is supposed to catch the murderer. He's there, but he gets stabbed, possibly by someone in the class. Rei collapses, and while Tsubasa gets help, Midori asks the King to help the class get rid of the body. Readers are told that Midori was the King all along and Rei was helping him because he thought Arisa was afraid that their mom (the parent she'd been sent to live with) liked Tsubasa better than her. Tsubasa's true identity is revealed to the entire class and she gets locked up with the body. She escapes, and Arisa finally comes out of her coma.

(spoiler show)


Uuuugh, I can't believe there are four more volumes of this to go.

At the moment, my theory is that Midori found out some dirt on Arisa and got her to allow him to use King Time for his own amusement, or maybe he just found out her password and began pretending to be the King without her permission. It would understandably have shocked her that someone who was so close to her would abuse her trust like that.

Tsubasa is an idiot. If Mariko, Akira, Rei, and Shizuka all aren't the King, that literally leaves only one suspect, Midori. And yet she still trusts him. The series could be over by now, and yet...

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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review 2017-12-10 01:39
Arisa (manga, vol. 7) by Natsumi Ando, translated by Andria Cheng
Arisa, Vol. 07 - Natsumi Ando,Andria Cheng

Tsubasa arranges to meet with "K" at the place Arisa and Midori went to on Arisa's last birthday. Since Tsubasa doesn't know where that is, she's forced to ask Midori. She's shocked when

she goes to her and K's meeting place only to find Midori there, but he says he was told to be there by Rei Kudo. Rei then takes over the class, supposedly on the King's orders. He says he wants them to be the best class ever and has them all working themselves to death for fear of being erased by the King. He even starts a fire so that he can force the class to save people.

(spoiler show)

After that there's a bonus manga: How Takeru met and fell in love with Tsubasa. He initially thought she was a delicate princess of a girl (totally his type) and later found out otherwise.

Tsubasa continues to plunge ahead without thinking things through, and she also continues to make assumptions. For example, she assumes that K, Rei, is the King because he (at this point, the King is almost certainly male) was the one who suggested that Arisa start King Time. I'm still convinced that the second King is Midori, but Rei is pretty messed up himself. Then again, so is approximately 90% of the cast (and that may be a low estimate).

The fact that the King doesn't have magical powers kind of ruins this series for me a bit. He isn't supernatural, some kind of low-budget Light Yagami, he's just a messed up middle schooler who can absolutely screw up. And he honestly doesn't seem to be that smart, either, despite what Ando wants readers to think. It's just that the other characters are so foolish that he seems brilliant by comparison.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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review 2017-12-10 01:31
Arisa (manga, vol. 6) by Natsumi Ando, translated by Andria Cheng
Arisa, Vol. 06 - Natsumi Ando,Andria Cheng

Tsubasa kidnaps Shizuka to take her to an outdoor party, hoping that making new friends (Tsubasa's friends from her real school) will help her get over her desire to get revenge on Arisa. It works, at least for a short while.

Unfortunately, the King tells Shizuka Tsubasa's secret, and Shizuka has a meltdown and uses all three of her phones to wish for Arisa (the real Arisa) to be erased from this world. However, instead of granting her wish, the King opts to grant the wish of the person with the fourth phone, that the King get rid of the person with the other three cellphones. Akira grabs the phones and gets hit by an ambulance. Shizuka decides to go to an orphanage to get away from the King and the temptation of King Time. Before she leaves, she gives Tsubasa the URL to a chat room showing a conversation between Arisa and someone named "K."

(spoiler show)

Then there's a long flashback to Arisa and Tsubasa's childhood, and an incident where Tsubasa tried to get her sister to run away with her after their parents decided to divorce.

My reaction to this series is just one long frustrated scream. Ando consistently overdoes it with the characters' craziness. It makes it difficult to believe the moment when they supposedly snap out of it, like here, when

Shizuka magically got over her murderous rage.

(spoiler show)


And the chat room convo just made me shake my head. In no way does it prove that Arisa was the King who got Shizuka bullied and injured. I can easily imagine a scenario where someone close to Arisa logged in under her name and had that convo with K. In fact, I strongly suspect that "K" is Rei Kudo and that "Arisa" is Midori. It's likely that Rei spoke to Midori thinking he was Arisa.

The flashback to Arisa and Tsubasa's childhood just proved that Tsubasa has never really taken the time to think things through. She somehow thought that 5000 yen (which currently works out to about 44 USD) would be more than enough for her and her sister to have fun for a day and then get themselves a hotel room for the night. Granted, she was a kid and probably had no idea how much things cost, but still. Even back then, Arisa was the one who took care of things when her sister's plans didn't pan out. That doesn't bode well for the rest of the series.

 

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

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