Was anyone else somewhat unimpressed by this chapter? I felt that the author could have done a bit more with Mikoto, and because her character felt a bit weak, the whole chapter itself felt weak also.
I don't find Mikoto herself very interesting. There's little of mystery behind her; large chunks of the chapter is devoted to exposition or montages of who she is, why she's here, why she's gunning for Taiyou, and what she's capable of, without a hint of anything being amiss. She's portrayed as being completely perfect in all ways, with minimal exaggeration, parody, or deconstruction. My definition of Mary Sue is different, so I won't outright call her that, but nonetheless...
On top of this is that I found the way the main characters--namely Taiyou, Hinata--interacted with Mikoto to be rather uninteresting as well. Mikoto was obviously introduced to inject some tension into the story and kick off a new story arc, now that the whole amnesia thing's over and done with (for now), but I just couldn't feel a whole lot of tension from this chapter, at least not at the level of a WHAM that I suspect the author was going for to start off this arc. Much of this lack of tension, I feel, comes from Taiyou and Hinata's reactions to Mikoto. There's two particular instances with Taiyou that I felt were missed opportunities for some nice tension:
1) Taiyou remembers Mikoto fairly well, despite having not seen her since elementary school.
What could have been: Perhaps Taiyou remembers Mikoto particularly fondly--maybe he had a small crush on her too; or maybe they were close friends.
What actually was: "Oh, I talked to her for a lot, and she was rich and good at stuff. And, uh...yeah. *shrug*"
2) Mikoto is the talk of the school; she's ultra popular, everyone likes her, etc.
What could have been: Perhaps Mikoto and Taiyou get together to catch up on old times; they were friends, or at least good acquaintances, in elementary school. Maybe they'll reminisce about their friendship, or laugh about that one time Taiyou tried to catch a frog but fell into a ditch or something.
What actually was: Taiyou spends the whole time doing the usual "Hey Hinata, remember me--ohgodshedoesn'tremembermeatall". He's not shown having any sort of interest in Mikoto at all, even platonically.
The end result is that Mikoto's advances have less of an impact; she goes after Taiyou openly, and even kisses him at the end, but Taiyou himself shows little to no interest.
As for Hinata, it seemed to me that she spent most of the chapter feeling flustered or embarassed than jealous. We, at least, if not Hinata herself, know that she has genuine feelings for Taiyou. Yet, even after the kiss scene, Hinata doesn't really seem all that jealous; her facial expression and overall reaction to the kiss looked pretty much the same as her facial expression and overall reaction to Taiyou declaring that she's his girlfriend, which in turn looks like Tenma's and Fusenji's reactions to the kiss scene. If the author intended to make Hinata look actually jealous, I don't think he went far enough.
I'm not so arrogant to claim that the author should follow my exact suggestions; the entire point of this rant was to say that I simply think that the author wanted to use this chapter to add some tension into the storyline, but failed to deliver the sort of punch he really needed.
Of course, this is just the first chapter in what will be the next major story arc; the last one was 12 chapters, and I have no reason to believe that this one will be all that much shorter or longer. It's too early to make a solid judgment. That said, I do wish that the author made a bigger splash with this chapter.
Sign In
Create Account
Back to top
