Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan - Reviews

I adore this manga! Honestly one of the best. 

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it. Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan is an amazing manga. The story is deep, the characters are really great, and it will never fail to kick you right in the feels. It's very well written, and the art is pretty as well. Yeah, it's short, but in only 8 chapters, it completely sucks you in. I highly reccomend everyone to read it, but be warned, it's a very bittersweet story.

It has been quite a while since I last read Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan. I read it multiple times and each time it hit me just as hard. the flawed yet beautiful characters make you question your moral compass. It's a manga that stayed with me, hence why I highly recommend it.

Some people have traumatic and unfortunate experiences that warp all their future experiences, but we all have to live with melancholy mixed in to our daily lives. At its core, this manga is a series of life lessons on how to find happiness despite the pain. Be straightforward and honest with others and with yourself. Accept your hatred and negative feelings as part of yourself, but don't let them define you. Notice the small, trivial things around you that bring you contentment--stop to smell the roses, as it were. If you allow yourself to be open and vulnerable, then you will be able to experience the good along with the bad. But if you close yourself off from the world around you in an attempt to protect yourself from further pain, then you will end up also closing yourself off from the enjoyable parts of life. The two main characters bond with each other because they both learn to appreciate aspects of life they hadn't put as much meaning into before (such as snow or leaves). 

The story also deals with sympathizing with others, and how criminality doesn't make people unhuman. The supposed sympathy of the nun comes across as self-righteousness and it's not until Yuu, the convict, hears their bosom-reasons for visiting fem that fe can open up to them. I appreciated the inclusion of the idea that the "right words" will always come across as bullshit until someone actually opens up and is genuine with you. And related to that, I didn't like the narration of this story since it seemed like it was trying too hard to be meaningful and deep.

The art was pretty good. The clothes and hair all had a sorta wrinkled look to them. They switch up the angles and stuff to make looking at these two characters engaging throughout, though many of the panels are zoomed in to their facial expressions. The emotiveness of their expressions was okay, but at times I felt it was a bit lacking.

The story is really heavy on the drama. I’m not sure exactly weather I like it or not so I feel a bit stuck in the middle. I have never been much into Romance when it doesn’t have some type of comedy within it. I do feel rather sorry for the people within the story. The Nun who only wants to do good, a women who isn’t feeling any love from her mother or the other people around her, and a man who all his life he had seen people turn on their words.

The story seems to speak of forgiveness a lot. Forgiveness of yourself, forgiveness of others… and it seems to be sounding a bit preachy at times. It seems to push it into your face a lot and yet, it feels perfect for the story line they wrote.

The art style is actually really different then I have seen. The colored images are watercolor, so beautiful and done rather well, making them look almost real. The black and white images are heavy in tones; almost no spot was left untouched by the dark look. Hair seems a bit stiff and almost as though it’s dirty or oily on the head.