June 20th, 2017 
AstroNerdBoy Spotted Flower Chapter 20.5 #3 (Manga)
Spotted Flower manga chapter 20.5 #3 review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
NOTE: For the purposes of this and future reviews, until the characters are given names, since these characters are obviously from Genshiken (or Genshiken Nidaime), I will call the “not-Saki” character !Saki, the “not Madarame” character !Madarame, and so forth for all other unnamed Genshiken characters.
!Yajima proofs !Hato’s work, pronounces it good stuff, and states she will send it to !Hato’s editor, Endou. As a reward, !Yajima gives !Hato a breast massage. !Hato irritates !Yajima by asking if !Yajima would want to do something with a real woman. !Yajima tells !Hato that she’s not doing this ’cause she’s into girls, but rather because it is !Hato. !Hato apologizes, but !Yajima goes off over !Hato’s attitude.
!Yajima suddenly realizes !Hato is worried about so !Yajima assures !Hato that she doesn’t go for blonds. !Yajima asks if !Hato wants to call off meeting the others after Comifes. Since !Hato wants to see “her” for advice (implied to be !Ogiue), !Hato says that they’ll go.
!Hato asks for sex, but !Yajima rejects the idea until the draft manga is approved by the editor.
Thoughts/Review:
We get four pages with this part of 20.5, and Kio-sensei went someplace I didn’t expect.
!Hato’s Insecurities
Despite everything !Hato has done, I find it interesting that !Hato is still pretty insecure. Despite how much !Yajima cares for !Hato, !Hato still worries about their relationship. !Hato now has female parts, so maybe !Yajima would want a real woman instead. Hato was always an insecure kind of character in Genshiken Nidaime, but it seems those insecurities really haven’t left.
It is implied that !Hato is worried about !Sue. The question is “why?” In Genshiken Nidaime, there was no indication that Sue liked anyone romantically other than Madarame and to a degree, Ogiue. With Ogiue, I always saw it more about her fujoshi artwork than being into girls. That aside, Sue never really hung out with her fellow first year clubmates (Hato, Rika, and Yajima).
The only think that I can think of is Sue’s rivalry with Hato when both were doing things as part of Madarame’s harem. So maybe !Hato hasn’t gotten over that yet and thinks !Sue will come in just to be !Hato’s rival again.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Well, time to wrap this puppy up.
- You know, it just dawned on me that Endou (the editor) is a rare named character in this manga. !Saki and !Madarame’s kid being named Saki is the other one.
- I’m glad that !Hato’s character has managed to create something mainstream. And now for the big time with !Ogiue.
- I’m hoping we see !Ogiue. We haven’t so far, at least not that I can remember off the top of my head.
In the end, I liked Spotted Flower chapter 20.5 #3 as it continued !Hato’s journey in creating a mainstream manga, to say nothing of continuing to explore the character.
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Found the best looking manga cover ever, on a yuri of all things. “Bloom into You” Volume 2. They finally got the human artist/computer digitization combination right. The beautiful picture wraps around the outside and is included as a stand alone as page 3 interior. A tell for how well the computer has been used is tree trunks. They’re very hard to get right because of their randomness. These guys got it right. The two main characters are not the usual recessive-aggressive combo. Touko and Yuu are both strong and intelligent girls. Touko falls for Yuu, who hasn’t felt the fire of infatuation yet, but would like to follow the songs and cartoons of manga she reads. The phrase, “blooming into you,” recaps my own awareness of the bilingual pun Yuu/you. Doesn’t the Japanese language have an idiom about “blooming into” something or someone?
“Sweetness and Lightning” Vol 6 out now. Better and better.
That I couldn’t say. ^_^;
Gah! I don’t think I have that yet. ^_^;;; Thanks for the reminder!
Mr. Miyazaki carefully avoided using photos in his productions, but Mr. Shinkai (“5 Centimeters per Second”), Mr. Yonebayashi (“When Marnie Was There”), and now the crew at Seven Seas (“Bloom into You”) do NOT eschew photographs. Photos provide a feature that we still can’t get anywhere else — randomness. That’s one of the reasons Yonebayashi’s “Arriety” was such a big step forward, and Shinkai’s “5 Centimeters per Second” pushed the envelope so far; neither director disdains photos. However, Shinkai also always makes it a point to give us shots that you can’t get with photographs, like between the wheels of a truck (bogey) in a train and the shot following a bird as it flies around the peak of a sky scrapper in “The Garden of Words.” I’m looking forward to this next generation of Japanese “comic” art.
Are you talking about photos within the manga?
Not as an integral part of the story, but as the basis for background scenery. Randomness remains very difficult to capture without a photo starting point, and without randomness the visuals reek of robot. Trees especially give things away. The cover of “Bloom Into You” Vol.2 captures this elusive randomness extremely well. Major reason it’s beautiful. Even if yuri is not your bag of tea, take a look at this wrap-around masterpiece of a cover in the bookstore.
SaL Vol. 7 out!! Oh man, it’s hard to watch Kotori-chan fumbling love for her sensei. Of course, he’s clueless. Arg.
Man, I’m so behind. I need to buy that ASAP!