Evergreen Volume 4 Manga Review

***SPOILERS***

Niki and Hotaku go on their date to the festival. When they kiss, Niki suddenly realizes Hotaku is her half-brother, for whom her father abandoned her to return to because of Hotaku’s heart condition. This causes her to flee, filled with confusion since she’d blamed her half-brother for her father leaving her and then dying. As such, she’d not only fallen in love with the person she hated most, she fell in love with her brother. Hotaku is clueless, but then is crushed when Niki treats him coldly at school. Sugou learns of Hotaku’s depression and gets angry about Niki’s method of dumping his friend, but gets reminded that he’d dumped On-chan in a similar, harsh fashion.

While Hotaku is depressed, Sugou shaves his head as sign of a new beginning, then pays a visit to On-chan, cluing her in on Niki dumping Hotaku. Hotaku decides to go up to the mountain home of his grandmother, where he’s shocked to see Niki there. Niki explains their true relationship and how there’s nothing but blackness within her because of her hate and rage. As such, she asks Hotaku give her this home in lieu of giving her their father back. Hotaku flees and informs his mother he’s giving up the mountain home, angering her.

Sugou and On-chan get together to visit the devastated Hotaku with no success. On their way home, Sugou opens up on his true feelings for On-chan, leading them to become a couple. Hotaku’s mother is still angry over her son giving up his inheritance, but she’s shocked when she learns the daughter of the woman who stole her husband attends school with Hotaku. A storm comes up, leaving Niki trapped on the mountain, so Hotaku somehow knows she’s in danger and goes to rescue her. A lightning bug shows them the way out, which Hotaku attributes to their father. Niki and Hotaku reconcile their past, and Hotaku’s mother accepts Niki as a person. Hotaku and Niki come up with a scheme to avoid letting the school know the true nature of their relationship as they are no longer a romantic couple.

Review:

And so this manga comes to an end, and I hate it, not because the story isn’t interesting, but because the final volume falls apart and leaves the reader with a big “S” burger.

I knew Niki and Hotaku would be related, but I was hoping that maybe they’d only be cousins. Making them half-siblings just irritated me to no end. At least as cousins, the incest ick wouldn’t have been as strong, but I probably could have swallowed them being in a romantic relationship, providing said story around their relationship was strong enough.

However, there’s no romance here. Instead, just as Hotaku’s and Niki’s romance advances to a kissing level, suddenly, she’s crushing his feelings (rather than tell him the truth of what she’s realizes), leaving him a mess, and then, “Yeah, I’m your half-sister and I’ve hated you all my life. Now get the frack out of here!”

So here I am, enjoying this first time love romance story through the first three volumes (and into this fourth volume) when suddenly, “BOOM! You’re brother and sister! You fail!” That sucks and irritated me. I’m left thinking, “So just what the heck was the purpose of this manga?”

Takemiya-sensei is a gifted storyteller. We see that in Toradora!, which is an awesome tale of how unrequited love leads to love in the most unexpected of places. So there was purpose with Toradora! from the start. But with Evergreen, I’m struggling to find a purpose to the story.What did Takemiya-sensei want to say regarding a half-brother and half-sister finding each other, falling in love, then discovering they were siblings? I’ve no clue.

I suppose the reason I can’t find a purpose to the story is that the manga gets cut off in volume 4. I don’t know what happened, whether it was lack of sales, or Takemiya-sensei just had no place else to go with the story. Regardless, the abbreviated story really harms the manga in my opinion. After getting Niki and Hotaku to couple status, then bringing everything to a very unsatisfying end just doesn’t do it for me. There’s no way I’m rereading this manga series.

There is a positive tale in the romance story between On-chan and Sugou. However, the abbreviated nature of the manga hurts their story too, but not as much as the Nike and Hotaku story. It would have been interesting to see how On-chan and Sugou progressed. Well, at least I was wrong about my thought that On-chan might have some romantic interest in Hotaku.

Although the manga is cut short, I guess I can cite the fact that this manga does actually have an ending as a positive thing, even if said ending isn’t satisfactory.

Moving onto the Seven Seas side of things, Japanese honorifics are included in the adaptation. There’s a couple of color pages. There is a page with final thoughts from artist Kasukabe-sensei (though for some whacked reason, Seven Seas spells the name Caskabe on the cover of this volume). And there’s a final, 4-koma strip on the inside back cover. Otherwise, there are no additional extras.

In the end, I found that Evergreen volume 4 brings what had been an interesting romance manga to a completely, unsatisfactory ending, thanks in no small part to the fact that the manga is rapidly brought to an end.