A-Koe is a fascinating newish site that brings various manga to life in an unique way – these manga are voiced along with moving readable panels. These are presented to the public for free with, it appears, the creator’s approval. (It was Takemeiya-sensei’s tweet about this voiced manga that drew my attention to it, in fact.)  The selection at A-ko is primarily BL with a number of manga from Rakeun le Paradis magazine, including Kazuma Kowo’s Dear Tearand the subject of today’s review, Takemiya Jin’s Omoi no Kakera.

You may recall that Omoi no Kakera was a three volume series, following young out lesbian Mika who falls for older women. I’ve reviewed all three Volumes here (Volume 1 | Volume 2 |Volume 3) and consider it an excellent manga and a unique one, as it has more than one character identified as a lesbian, and uses lesbian and gay slang in context.

A-koe’s team is excellent. The visual transitions of the manga really help make the words simple to follow, the voice actresses (who are all credited on the page linked above) do a fine job of bringing the characters to life.
It helps to be able to understand spoken or written Japanese, but if your Japanese is not great, the combination of the two really helps attach word pronunciation to kanji. The quality of the visuals is high and can be easily expanded to full screen. Readers can access the chapters by either creating a free account or logging in with Twitter or Facebook.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

This is a genuinely delightful way to experience an excellent Yuri manga. Quite possibly my favorite combination of voice and text so far. Instead of having to click through endless screens, I can sit back and let an excellent story teller tell me a story, with her own visuals animated and given life and form by talented actresses. Akasaki Chinatsu does a bang up job as Mika.