Hm. The problem with this story to me was that everyone just jumped from this to that without enough transition. "Oh I'm happy!" "Oh I'm upset!" "Oh, you shouldn't be upset!" "Oh I'm sorry!" "I'm sorry too!" etc. In older brother's story we'll sometimes get a whole chapter of them, especially Naoto, processing his feelings, talking aspects over with others, thinking things through on his own, making attempts to understand Toudou's feelings, seeing Toudou's perspective etc.
And while I'm not saying I wanted things in this manga to be tediously drawn-out, I felt unsatisfied with many of the problems and interactions along the way because there was often too little of this. I get that Hokuto is younger and also seems to naturally act on his immune emotions without much thought, and that's fine...However, it felt more like a summary of events sometimes when someone would say a single line to him and he'd suddenly be behaving differently, without us seeing his internal process.
I wanted more of that from Suzuki, too. We got a longer and not very appealing sequence about him liking to tease Hokuto (that characteristic is always a turn-off for me anyway), but never really got to see his reactions to problems - was he annoyed, was he confused, did he reflect on his own behaviour, did he genuinely not worry much? etc. Again, it's not that I wanted everything dragged out, but sequences like the friend visiting or the fight between brothers felt shallow and rushed. Honestly, the friend visit probably should have just been left out.
There are lots of strong aspects to this story, it just lacked some of this in order to be properly satisfying for me - to make the main couple's behaviour feel properly nuanced and sympathetic enough.
Hm. The problem with this story to me was that everyone just jumped from this to that without enough transition. "Oh I'm happy!" "Oh I'm upset!" "Oh, you shouldn't be upset!" "Oh I'm sorry!" "I'm sorry too!" etc. In older brother's story we'll sometimes get a whole chapter of them, especially Naoto, processing his feelings, talking aspects over with others, thinking things through on his own, making attempts to understand Toudou's feelings, seeing Toudou's perspective etc.
And while I'm not saying I wanted things in this manga to be tediously drawn-out, I felt unsatisfied with many of the problems and interactions along the way because there was often too little of this. I get that Hokuto is younger and also seems to naturally act on his immune emotions without much thought, and that's fine...However, it felt more like a summary of events sometimes when someone would say a single line to him and he'd suddenly be behaving differently, without us seeing his internal process.
I wanted more of that from Suzuki, too. We got a longer and not very appealing sequence about him liking to tease Hokuto (that characteristic is always a turn-off for me anyway), but never really got to see his reactions to problems - was he annoyed, was he confused, did he reflect on his own behaviour, did he genuinely not worry much? etc. Again, it's not that I wanted everything dragged out, but sequences like the friend visiting or the fight between brothers felt shallow and rushed. Honestly, the friend visit probably should have just been left out.
There are lots of strong aspects to this story, it just lacked some of this in order to be properly satisfying for me - to make the main couple's behaviour feel properly nuanced and sympathetic enough.