The Night of the Wedding

casandra29 Jun 9, 2016

6.5

STORY: The Night of the wedding is a manga I'd rate as average for a harlequin romance. The story is about a budding romance between lifelong friends which is very down to earth and I find it refreshing for a harlequin since many of them are more like romantic fairy tales that could never happen in real life. The only real issue I had as far as the story is concerned was the abruptness of the ending. I've mentioned in other harlequin reviews before that I understand that it is hard to fit a novel into a one volume manga and still make the story good and for the most part this manga does well doing this. The 2 main's growing together didn't feel rushed. It was only the last part that suffered.  Now as far as personal issues I had with the story, I had a couple. The first and largest issue, well really the only one of any significance was how the female lead didn't admit that she wanted the male lead and continually said they were just best friends. She talked to a co-worker friend about him and when she thoroughly denied liking him to her friend. Her friend asked to be introduced to the guy cause she wanted to find someone new to date... so the stupid female lead decided to take her friend with when she was going to meet him for dinner. The male lead was irritated she invited someone but was still nice to the friend and the female lead was irritated watching it and ultimately left before them because she couldn't handle it. Still, she assured herself that he would not date her friend... if she knew that the male main wouldn't be interested why bring her? Just to prove to herself that he wouldn't want to? Why? For her ego? Well she gets what she deserves. He decides to go on another date with her. This upsets her greatly and she is continually passive agressively asking questions about their dating when speaking to him. Both the male lead and the co-worker say it's not serious however she's already decided in her own mind that it is serious between them... It's the sort of tension and stress that comes from one character willfully misunderstanding... like they filter out anything that could potentially stop them from worrying in order to continually be stressed and upset. It drive's me up the wall when stories have characters like these. Still many Harlequin titles do this. However, at least in this one, they keep the willful misunderstandings within reason. She doesn't blame things on him that are really her fault and she doesn't throw temper tantrums like some of the women who have this willful ignorance in a few of the other harlequin manga. Still it is a pet peeve of mine, so I have to mention it. Other than these couple flaws though the story is decent. I ended up rating the story's content just slightly below average for me. The idea behind the story and the down to earth nature of the main character's relationship is like a breath of fresh air for harlequin manga. So despite what I just said. It has some good things to it as well. ART: The art in this manga is about average. It really didn't stand out too much to me in one way or the other. The backgrounds are drawn good and the characters are drawn well for the most part. However, If I was to complain about the art in any way it would be about the characters faces. In many manga I feel the expressions on the characters faces are more animated and go better with what their feelings would be at the time. In this manga however, the characters look good but their emotions are not very well shown in their expressions. I wouldn't say the artist isn't talented. I definately could not draw anywhere near as well as they do. However, if I compare it to some other manga it is clear to me that while these characters are not emotionless, their expressions are still lacking. Other than that though the art is good so I gave it an average rating. CHARACTERS: The Characters in this manga are decent. However, As you can see from the score there are a few issues still. The lead female bothers me the most. Her willful ignorance about the guy she likes to the point that she makes poor choices irritates me. However, she also has some good things about her that make her less annoying in my eyes. One of them is that she takes responsibility for her own part in things that happen. An example being when she introduces her friend to the male main character, when he agrees to more dates with her friend, although she isn't happy about it, she's not mad at the two of them cause she realizes that she was the one who choose to bring them together in the first place. Another redeeming quality of hers is that she doesn't freak out in jelousy when her date for the wedding party (the male main) talks to some women that come up to him. In many harlequin and other romance stories the women get stupidly jelous and snappy over these types of trivial things. However this leading female doesn't go there in this manga which is really nice. The male main was decent. The only thing that got on my nerves was that he was way too passive. If he actually had a thing for the female main why would he stay silent and furthermore stop himself after bringing her to a bedroom and getting her on the bed saying she should forget it and they should just be friends... I wonder what planet he comes from cause he's certainly not human. 2 passive people getting together never works out... but in harlequin manga land I guess they do. If I'm being honest, it's not that big of a deal though. The guy rates about average out of all the harlequin mains I've read about. OVERALL: Overall, This manga was a decent read. I think it's worth your time/money to check it out. It's not at the top of my list of harlequin's I like but it's still a good read.