Sora no Mannaka

Yup, "meh" is pretty accurate. I spent the entire time hoping that Miyako could move on and find someone else, because there's really no romantic chemistry to be found anywhere in this manga. Plenty of snuggly family moments, but even the love interest ends up feeling like another one of the siblings, more than anything. There's a joke at the end about adopting him into the family, but it's not much of a joke when he's pretty much at that point already. It's a fairly common pitfall in shojo, where the author spends so much time focusing on the sense of unrequited love, that they get to the end of the story and have to suddenly start requiting it, even though they didn't write any real buildup or progress to make the relationship seem convincing.

Really, they could've pushed the love subplot all the way into the background, focused completely on the family dynamic, and the story would've been better for it.

some of the drama may be random and forced, but the concept and characters are adorable and, if nothing else, it'll make you smile

 

overall, it's rated "meh," but it's worth a lazy weekend afternoon