Kingyo Sou by Yuki Fujitsuka

So... are my wiki links helpful or just pretentious? Half the time I end up reading them, too, so I guess I just like an excuse to look things up. I'm a long time reader of manga, but it is a whole different culture, after all, and one of my favorite parts over the years has been learning about Japan little by little through it. I still remember though, in the very beginning, having things go over my head because it was culture based and not having any explanations for why things were that way. I suppose that's why I like fan translations best, because they'll explain things instead of changing them like some publishers do, and through them I can glimpse a part of the world that's different from my own. Well, on to this week's review!

Kingyo Sou by Yuki Fujitsuka

Art and story (c) Yuki Fujitsuka

Genre: Shojo
Length: 2 Volumes – 9 Chapters


             General shojo art, round eyes and big hair. Every once in a while at the beginning, the faces looked a little fat from certain angles, but that quickly fades. There is plenty of backgrounds and tones, as well as words, the pages actually look a little crowded at times with word bubbles, this doesn't change at all through the manga. The clothes are typically sort of baggy looking on the characters' frames, but they have detail enough. Nothing really comes to mind to praise or nitpick about the art overall. Its not really original looking but it isn't so generic that it doesn't have character, either.
           Asuka fell in love at first sound with a taiko drum player, plus, as luck would have it, his brother is her classmate so after some light begging, her classmate agrees to let her go and meet him during one of his practices. Giddily Asuka arrives and watches him practice a moment before they are introduced this is when she finds out that Masami, the legendary (to her) taiko player, is actually deaf. Her classmate tells her to speak in short sentences and Masami will be able to lip read, so she blurts out the first thing she can think of, “I like you!” Can a bumbling girl like Asuka really reach into the silent world of Masami and prove her love?
            Taiko playing (wiki link), I don't think I've read any manga with taiko playing in it, and adding in the fact that the love interest is deaf, I found the premise of this manga very attention grabbing. I also found the story touching and cute. Asuka and Masami are excellent together, and the fact that their relationship crashes pretty hard right at the beginning also lends some reality to the situation.Still, I found myself not as emotionally invested as I had hoped to be, mostly due to how the situations are approached with a more lighthearted touch. I didn't want an epically tragic story (a la 1 Litre of Tears, for example) but I was hoping for something more original. Kingyo Sou has a lot of shojo tropes instead of more original plot points, things such as birthday forgetting and long distance worries, which, granted, is made worse by one party being deaf but are still very obvious shojo troubles used in hundreds of other manga. At times it felt a little rushed, too, where suddenly months pass and the like. Its worth reading once and I'd read it again for sure, but its far from perfect. I had hoped going in that it would be a little more deep than it turned out to be, but the realism that the author was able to weave into the story itself was very satisfying. Had it not been quite so generic when it came to the plot lines it would have had a much higher emotional impact and rating.


3.5/5 Cute with a good hook, but not as deep as was expected.