Here we are at the end of Akashi’s workplace-romance that became a completely different story. In Still Sick, Volume 3, as I said in my review of the Japanese edition, there is a lot of story to tell and, overall, this volume is up to the task.
Maekawa is still locked in a struggle with herself about drawing manga. But being locked in a struggle is what Akane does best, as she’s simultaneously locked in two other struggles. Also vying for her attention is her increasingly serious feelings for Shimizu Makoto ,and her refusal/inability to deal with her depression…a depression that has some deep roots.
Makoto, in the meantime, has decided to be everything she can be for Akane. She’s supportive of the other woman’s choices, and forces her to confront some of those roots. And, while Makoto forces Akane to grow on in her personal life, her editor pushes her to do the same professionally. When the dam breaks for her, Akane, she is finally able to get past her blocks. Makoto takes a leap into the unknown too. Ultimately they walk together into a much less foreseeable future than either of them could have predicted.
As a story, this was also a stronger one than we could have predicted. There was a lot of room for Akane’s passive-aggressive nature to just continue to be played for “laughs,” but I believe that would have done a disservice to characters and readers. Instead, Akashi ties the series up pretty tightly and allows us to close the book knowing neither we nor Akane and Makoto were jerked around by lazy writing. As I said with the JP edition, to get everything tidy, the art suffers on some places, but I will always take a well-told tale with slightly sketchy art over detailed art, with an underdeveloped story.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Characters – 9
Story – 9
Yuri – 9, LGBTQ – 7
Service – 3 some noodling around, underwear, bed
Overall – 9
Tokyopop did a decent job on the technicals with a solid translation by Katie Kimura, editing by Lena Atanassova and some very nice letting and retouch by Vibraant Publishing Studio. I took a closer look at the cover design and, honestly, without the title and author in black across front of the the cover, Sol DeLeo & Soodam Lee’s cover design is honestly more open and easy to read than the original. Nice work, folks!
Tokyopop has not announced any other Yuri Yuri manga, but they are still bringing out manga-inspired comics, so keep an out for more from them. ^_^
Just got my hands on this, and raced through all three volumes. I enjoyed it quite a bit; nice having adult characters showing development through the series. The story did feel a little rushed to me, but that might have had as much to do with reading all the volumes at once.
I really appreciated a mostly positive portrayal of a woman engineer; don’t think I’ve seen that too often — maybe Kobayashi from Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, I seem to remember her writing code.