Marinate1016

Few series have ever captured the struggles of youth as well as kimisomu does. It’s a a beautifully rendered and tender story of growth and self-acceptance. Anime often tends to exaggerate adolescence, romanticising it and making it out to be this adventure that’s constantly exciting. The reality is that being a teenager sucks. There’s the stress that society and your parents put on you and the desire to fit in and find who you really are. It’s such a challenging and sensitive time. This anime handles that stage of life with such realism and authenticity that it blew my mind. I absolutely loved the use ofinsomnia as a shared bonding experience for the two main leads. Both of their conditions stem from trauma that they’ve been holding in for years. While many teens don’t go through insomnia, most do have things they’ve repressed and bottled up which can lead to anxiety, depression other mental conditions. The characters in this show reflect that. They behave as actual teenagers who are stressed would. The interactions are simple yet poignant. There’s so many small intimate moments that just blew me away in this show. Whether it’s singing on a beach, simple nighttime walks or the type of banter between the two leads, it just has a degree of genuineness to it that’s hard to come by in anime. I really appreciated seeing the small details that make the characters who they are. The side characters are also very enjoyable and added some depth to the story. I particularly loved the astronomy club senpai who acts as a mentor to the two leads. The romance may be a slow burn in this, but it’s a very rewarding one. Starting as club mates, then friends and so on. It feels like a believable natural progression. The two leads find solace and serenity in one another and really feel like two halves of the same coin. The art in the show is pretty solid. It’s not the best in the world, but LIDENFILMS did a good job of bringing the story to life. I liked the art direction for all the big emotional scenes and the OST was solid throughout as well. We’ve all been teenagers once and can relate to the pressures it brings. It’s a delicate time where we think we should have everything figured out, but we just don’t. It’s frustrating. This show gets it. If you’re tired of watching the same old high school stories and want something different, this is the one. Kimisomu gets 9, out of 10.

KANLen09

PTSD a.k.a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, is a real issue that can affect all of us in certain ways that we ourselves will only know and that can be either unexplainable or inexplicable to others. But what if you could utilise the only thing that is the common denominator between two kindred spirits, and add the fraction of a relationship that's not just full of love and fluttering feelings, but one of adolescence and keen understanding? The end result will be in the form of mangaka Makoto Ojiro's Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia a.k.a Insomniacs After School, a series that, as a devoted and hardcore manga reader,I have always wanted to see her vision come to the small screen for quite some time. And in this Spring season, it has finally come (along with the live-action movie adaptation to tie in with the anime), and in the heft of new and returning rom-com-cum-romance shows, this show is one of the best of this season, bar none. A short story on how I encountered this manga: it was a year or two ago during the pandemic season where I was unfortunately struck with the thou-shall-not-be-named virus, and even worse, it was at a time in the night where I was feeling the dread of insomnia from watching seasonal anime, as heavy as I am now even back then. After the daily stint of shows ending as late as 2 or 3 in the morning, I was looking for a manga to read, and through the grapevine, this manga came recommended to me somehow, and I read it through from the beginning, then to the next chapter, onwards, and so forth. It was so good that I read up until the latest chapter that was released at the time (well beyond the anime adaptation) and even bawled tears of joy and sadness, knowing how much I could relate to the main characters and their issues on why and how they developed insomnia to begin with. As the months pass, I find myself re-reading the entire manga from scratch so often, catching up to the latest chapters (which, as of this review, are updated to the latest Volume 13) and feeling the same exact emotions over and over again, that it hurts even more with every re-read. It's painful, but a good lesson on the fraternity and sentimentality of life. Indeed, love makes the world go round, but I also argue that goodwill is not misplaced among those who take care of each other, like brothers and sisters. This is the story of a boy and girl who bond through the unlikeliest of circumstances, in a place where even the word "haunted" is a mere understatement to their wellbeing: Ganta Nakami and Isaki Magari. In the school where both of them reside, there once existed the Astronomy Club, located at the school's observatory, but a gruesome death hides a rumour of a ghost sighting, and has left it abandoned. Nakami, having a severe case of insomnia, seeks to find a place where he can get some shut-eye, and the one place that he always finds himself going to is the observatory, because nobody can disturb his much-needed sleep. That is the ritual habitat for him, until he finds somebody who is also sleeping there — the aforementioned Magari herself, sleeping in a locker that has been left opened and vertically placed on the floor like a sleeping bag. Thus, the mystique opens between the two, and more than acknowledging their various states of insomnia as fellow insomniacs, they help cope with each other's adverse effects to get by their high school lives to the best of their abilities, like reestablishing the Astronomy Club back to its former glory. First off, I must praise the fact that Makoto Ojiro has taken THIS long to finally get to her masterpiece. Because this has been a very long undertaking since her starting days in the early 2010s, writing for multiple series the likes of 2012 to 2015's Fujiyama-san wa Shishunki a.k.a Fujiyama's Adolescence, to 2016 to 2018's Neko no Otera no Chion-san a.k.a Cat Temple's Miss Chion, which I have read the former after reading Insomniacs the first time through, and found it to be very poignant in its sense of capturing the story through the no-nonsense depiction of its plot. And the same can be said about KimiSomu here, taking cues from her prior works and perfecting them for this manga, and now the anime as well. KimiSomu is, to me, still a masterpiece manga in the making, though the anime adaptation has taken some liberties that I am and am not a fan of, and we'll discuss this down the road. I must admit that I can relate quite a lot to Nakami here. He's the irritating and grumpy guy who wants to get what he wants, and that's part of his rebellious nature. He is a guy does what he wants to achieve the best results without any compromise, and apart from his varied behaviour, once you get to know him, he's actually quite the nice guy within, reasons and all. Nakami appears quite closed in the beginning, having his only friend in the form of best wingman Tao Ukegawa, who understands his insomniac issues deeply and worryingly while also remaining happy-go-lucky all the time and accompanies Nakami if he's feeling down or just being a plain ol' good, trustworthy friend at that. How we wish we could have friends like Ukegawa: a loyal friend that doesn't discriminate and plays along with his best friend's traits, even when Nakami's insomniac traits create a bond with Magari all the more. Speaking of which, let's talk about Isaki Magari, because if you're a manga reader (you SHOULD know where I'm going with this), she's the literate embodiment of a red flag. I'm not going into spoiler territory (this is for all of you anime-onlies to figure out) but Magari herself is a stark contrast to Nakami as the sociable and carefree girl with her clique of friends: Motoko Kanikawa, Kanami Anamizu, and Mina Nono. The clique of four girls who just want to casually enjoy life together are just like normal friends whom you want to hang out with daily. Kanikawa comes on initially as a person of spite, accusing Nakami of getting close to Magari and giving him endless stares that make him feel uncomfortable. In hindsight, Kanikawa is a rather family-centric kid, the daughter of an okonomiyaki restaurant that she has inherited her family's skills from, and she goofs off quite a lot, though she always commits well to the straight man gag because she's jealous if she feels left out. Anamizu is a tanned girl whose priority is sports, specifically baseball. A somewhat closed girl just like Nakami, her words are few, but they make up for her spirit of just being there for Magari, and as much as she is a background character, she is a support that's called forth when Magari or the other girls need it. Nono is the sunshine of the group. Being very enthusiastic and methodical in her approach to just about anything, she is such a delight to watch as her easy-going nature helps to open up barriers between Magari and Nakami, even to the point of supporting their love for each other as Nakami gets more proactive in his pursuits of wanting to overcome his insomnia. Magari's older sister Haya is the typical brat that likes to bully her own younger sister for her whims, that's the sibling echelon tower trait of superiority. Same with the blonde-haired Rui Haida, who's just a pick-up ladies' man; he too comes off as obnoxious from the get-go. And definitely, the stars of Nakami and Magari's relationship fall on Usako Kurashiki, their homeroom teacher-cum-Astronomy Club supervisor, who just wants to slack and sleep her way through. Such a crass teacher, but who cares. She's a highlight. The same goes to former club member Yui Shiromaru, to whom she contributed greatly with her great composition shots and extensive know-how when it comes to cameras, which Nakami is being taught to carry on her legacy within the club. Oh, and she carries the comic relief, which is nice. Overall, the characters are only part of the shining example of Makoto Ojiro's manga, but that's not all. The cats, like the club's mascot of Two-chan, are also a highlight of the manga, plastered all over the place, because they are that simple and convincing, with references made from the manga's chapter titles. The art is where the manga truly shines in its own right, being a manifestation of great visual art, almost comparable to those of art pieces, and in part, Liden Films tried to capture the mangaka's sense of her distinctive art style, it's...alright, though it can never reach the heights of the original source material. That is despite having Reiko Sasaki, planning assistant-cum-producer of Yofukashi no Uta a.k.a Call of the Night, yet another Liden Films show that focuses on the nightly aspect of the series, which this anime and its manga counterpart are similar to. To be frank, this show needs only sakuga moments in the right places, and through in-house director Yuuki Ikeda, of whom this show is his debut work, he hasn't had quite the experience backing him up from only working on shows in a single-digit manner. So, it's quite the elephant in the room that only Makoto Ojiro's story and plot hold up when others cannot. The music is rather good, to be honest. aiko's OP is a pleasant, smooth-feeling song that tugs at the heartstrings, and makes it worth it for a decent song. The same goes to Homecomings' various ED songs, though they're fine and nothing noteworthy. Even if there isn't Season 2 on the horizon, this is the point where I HEAVILY caution anime-onlies to read the manga at your own risk from this point on. Waiting patiently is better than rushing through the vineyard about the plot points going forward, and while the anime is by no means perfect, it's a good adaptation of the manga overall, and I'm down to see more if they give the anime a sequel in the future.