melancholia

beautiful art (buy the manga!)
evokes bittersweet feeling
a lot of really interesting themes about life cycles and liminality

"Boys, "Umi" and "Sora," whose upbringing contains strange and wonderful secrets. Drawn to their beautiful swimming, almost more like flying, Ruka and the adults who know them are intertwined in a complex mesh..."

beautiful art and themes
some chapters are happy and some are quite sad
balance and respect for living creatures and cycles of nature, plus a super interesting tie between the mythic and scientific

"Possibly set in Meiji/late 19th century Japan, Mushishi is a series of related, yet separate short stories featuring Ginko, a mushishi. A mushishi or "mushi master" is a cross between a researcher/scholar/doctor/shaman who travels across the countryside searching for mushi in their ma

beautiful art and a very softly paced story
main characters are both very quiet and introspective
evokes feeling of summer

"
Meeting someone I know, in a strange place. After this summer is over, maybe we ... A short but beautiful story from the author of "Spirit Fingers!" "

same author as children of the sea, the art is incredible
kind of sad story that ties into themes of colonization and loss of life tied to nature

"A wildly imaginitive trek into the deepest realms of human beliefs and the mysteries of the universe."(this is not a useful description lmao)

slice of life story about a woman's life through her cat
very peaceful and slow paced, but has an undercurrent of uncertainty and anxiety

'So begins the first story in She and Her Cat, a collection of four interrelated, stream-of-conscious short stories in which four women and their feline companions explore the frailty of life, the pain of isolation, and the limits of communication."

not sure if it fits
kind of a spinning distortion of reality

"A rumor goes around school about an abandoned amusement park and a magician who lives there that can make someone disappear for good. Yoon Ai, a very smart girl in her class, struggles to feed herself and her sister everyday. She just wants to become an adult faster so that she can escape from the reality of her current situation. Her life changes as she meets a childish magician who asks her: "Do you believe in magic?&quot

it makes me sad but its so good. the art and composition especially

"Shiva, a young girl who loves to stroll about in the countryside, lives in a vacant village with her guardian, a wendigo-like gentleman. He forbids her from going outside, so she won't be cursed, but Shiva's curiosity makes her yearn for the outside world. What is this curse about?"

the art is so beautiful
each story is kind of a moral of excess. its a little gory

"Everyone has something they want, and Rin the match peddler is here to offer you your wildest dreams on a silver platter."

this probably isn't everyones cup of tea
kind of existentialist. and sad

"Yuri is just a normal girl in high school: she loves hanging out with her friends, she has dreams, and she has worries. But one day, she wakes up in a strange forest sheâ€s never seen before beside a man named Chihiro. As the two of them learn more about the place they suddenly find themselves in, and the oddly real dream they had of being abducted by aliens..."

the older shoujo/josei style is definitely not for everybody but I've read this 3 separate times and the story covers so many themes of adulthood and appreciating ordinary love ... i love it.

"Fed-up with a life of being under-appreciated and disrespected, Sumire Iwaya decides to change things when she picks up a young boy off the street and brings him into her house. Despite being total opposites, the two seem to complement one another as they try to carve out an ordinary life for themselves."