Familiar Diversions
I'm a librarian who loves anime, manga, and reading a wide variety of genres.
Currently reading
Reading progress update: I've read 385 out of 630 pages.
All right, that's the end of volume 2. One more volume to go and I'm done with this omnibus.
Volume 2 was basically the "dark side of fandom" volume: OEL manga creators being told that what they're doing isn't "real manga," people making fun of bad cosplayers, con-goers who don't know how to respect the boundaries of cosplayers and touch them or take pictures of them without asking, etc. It was a wee bit much crammed into a single volume, and maybe over-dramatized at times, but not inaccurate.
The series still doesn't quite work for me as romance. In volume 1, Christie and Matt got to know each other over the space of 2-3 days. At that time, Christie was dating her sleazebag of a boyfriend, who crossed a line and became her ex-boyfriend. In the year between the end of volume 1 and volume 2, Christie tried to call Matt once but never actually spoke to him. In volume 2, Matt is dating someone else, but there are still sparks between him and Christie.
By the end of volume 2, Matt and Christie have maybe spent a grand total of 4-6 days out of an entire year in the same physical space, and a good chunk of that time has been drama-filled, with one or the other of them dating someone else.
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