Sukitte ii na yo – You Are Not Sawako Kuronuma

"I don't know why. I just do."

You know, I’ve been trying for a little while to figure out why I’ve had so much trouble connecting to this manga. After all, the whole reason I started reading it was because people compared it to Kimi ni Todoke, and after reading I can see where the comparisons come from. The heroine is a social outcast who attracts the attention of the most popular guy in school, and through this she ends up attracting a number of friends. The first big difference, though, is that Mei hooks up with Yamato extremely early in the series, which should please those who disliked the slow pace of Kimi ni Todoke. And yet somehow, I couldn’t find myself getting into this series on anywhere near the same level. I think this chapter has finally shown me why that is.

Current Manga Rankings – 2011 – Part 1

I started reading manga a few years ago, and in that length of time I’ve acquired a surprising number of ongoing series. They have quite a bit of variety to them, from shonen to josei, weekly to whenever-the-hell-it-feels-like. I’ve had the chance to talk about quite a few of these series, and even reviewed some of them already. Since it’s the end of the year, though, I thought I would take the opportunity to rank all of my ongoing manga. This way I can discuss some series I couldn’t before, and I can state which manga I like the most and why.

30. Bleach

Here’s the thing about Bleach: it’s the one series on this list that I never read the old chapters for. It’s not something I would do by choice, but then again, I never really intended to start reading Bleach at all. One day I heard that the manga would be showing Gin’s bankai, so I read that chapter to see it and just didn’t stop. That’s a big part of why I find it so hard to get mad at this series. It takes a good deal of effort to feel anything towards it, really. I’ve been told that not caring about something is one of the cruelest things you can do to it, and that’s why it gets the lowest spot on this list.