Reviews

Flower of Life Volume 2 by Fumi Yoshinaga

misssusan's review

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2.0

2 much majima 2 handle

i know the 'man's fantasy' stuff is meant to be funny but uck. i don't need that misogyny in my fluff manga

sumiko is great though. :D someone who tells majima off! a girl after my own heart

2.5 stars

misssusan's review against another edition

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4.0

like 90% of this volume was great

i love hanazono and mikuni's friendship, i love how hanazono envisioned their fight as an old school shonen battle, i super adored everything that happened with sumiko this volume (nerdy girl goes shopping, acquired friends, still doesn't really like shopping! sumiko gets me). and yamane-san is super cool, i totally understand aya's friend crush

sadly however shigeru/mikuni. i do not and probably will never understand the appeal of teacher/student stories. still, it was a p short part of a otherwise excellent volume. 4 stars

zquill's review against another edition

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3.0

I continue to be a fan of Yoshinaga, but it's rough going from a series like What Did You Eat Yesterday? with its compassionate and realistic depiction of an average middle-age gay couple to one where the joke is that
Spoilerthe high school teacher is a flaming gay man who flirts with his students, and then THAT joke morphs into the teacher being a woman all along (who still flirts with her students) which distracts from the affair she's having with another married teacher on schoolgrounds
. I still found the style and "earnestness" I guess you'd call it of the manga, and I'll keep reading the series.

bluenicorn's review against another edition

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3.0

It's cute- not yotsuba cute, but high school kids sort of cute.

lilyghost's review against another edition

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4.0

Strange manga about a kid who has leukemia and is one year behind in school. He makes friends with a fat kid and his teachers are having an affair. Typical.

ladydewinter's review against another edition

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4.0

I remember that I tried reading this before, but since I had seriously misguided expectations when I did, I couldn't get into it at all. This time it was different. It's a great coming-of-age story, funny and moving and with lovable characters and Fumi Yoshinaga's great art.

ladydewinter's review

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4.0

Bought this in the oldest comic bookstore in the Netherlands :)

juliemawesome's review against another edition

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4.0

I didn't really know what I was jumping into when I started to read this. I chose it because it was written by Fumi Yoshinaga, who did Ooku (which won the Tiptree), and because I could borrow it through ILL. I guess I expected some interesting gender stuff, and I did get that.

So far, this series is about a new kid in high school. He's a year older than everyone else because he had leukemia. He has some weird teachers and some weird classmates. He joins the manga club, knowing not very much about how to draw manga. Except that he does, because he's very very good. He just doesn't know all the things like what tools to use and techniques and things.

At the very beginning, I had a little trouble understanding what was going on and who the characters were, but as I got into it, it was easier to understand. I will definitely read the next two volumes to see where the story is going. Especially as I have them right here already.

One thing I just realized is that there were no endnotes to explain some of the Japanese words or culture things. I really appreciate them when they're included. I only have a vague sense of what 'moeh' is, for example, and it would've been nice for the translator to tell me.

juliemawesome's review

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4.0

Well, it's clear now that this is not going to be much more than a typical school manga. But it's an interesting and well-done one.

In this volume, two groups of people make some doujinshi, a play gets performed about one of the manga stories, a study group is formed, and a few things like that. We get some backstory on the teachers too.

As for an overall arc, I assume the main character's going to resolve some issues with his family by the end of the series. And maybe they'll become sophomores.

juliemawesome's review against another edition

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4.0

More episodic stuff happens in this volume. Some girls go shopping. Everyone plans a Christmas party and stresses out when things don't go as planned. But then it all works out in the end. Or is that a spoiler?

Meanwhile, the teacher is up to no good!

The manga continues to be interesting, but now I do wonder if it's going anywhere in particular.

And it looks like volume 4 (the final volume?) is going to be hard to track down for some reason.