My first impression of this manga was "oh, this must be from the 90's." It's not, it began on 2009 and ended in 2015. But can you fault me on that, considering the art style? At first, I was unable to not notice how weird Shiori's lips were.
My second first impression, after a few chapters, was "The author must be a clothes design that turned mangaka." Or at least a fashion magazine collector. It's not a moe manga, it feels like how teenagers want to be mature and grow up, and that goes to my next point.
This story feels like a coming-of-age done well.
What is a girl to do as she grows up, to find her new, grown self? With all the baggage of her life, being attached to her baggage. She wants to let go of her family and meet friends and partners! Well, Kikukawa Shiori is lucky on that she's not attached to her baggage, because she doesn't even remember that.
She wakes up to a yankee-looking boyfriend, a little sister who hates her and a brother who believes too much in the value of family. That brother is the first to be willing to love and accept her amnesiac self when her boyfriend is broken up with for scaring the shit outta her (sexual assault trigger warning, he probably didn't mean to considering his personality but it comes across like that anyway, he doesn't take seriously at first that she's real amnesiac and will be for a while, and doesn't want to fuck a total stranger in a stranger's ~~her own~~ bed) and her sister, again, hates her.
When she leaves home and meets classmates, she learns that she was an asshole and many people hated her.
Shiori isn't like that, but who she is? She tries to lean on the identity her brother gives, of a loved sister, but she still gotta go to school and deal with the baggage of her previous self. And then she learns that this previous self left another weight, a competition of pretty girls (was it idols, it's a week since i finished). She decides to try because, why not? But her brother worries about the dark side of the media, and they end up fighting in the day she goes.
She arrives dazed, but still pretty, even if she's not confident, but she's not afraid of anything in there, and that's probably what gets her in. Her future producer sees value and potential, and when they ask who she is and why is she there, she says "I have nothing. I came here to see if I can gain anything", and honestly? That's.
That's the manga. The whole thing with being amnesiac, during her process of growing up and becoming an adult woman, with everyone's expectations and all her baggage, but Shiori the amnesiac has nothing. She's trying to become something and rid herself of all the emptiness her lack of memories left her with.
With it, she overcomes the isolation bullying from her previous group of friends (one of the friends was angry at Shiori for stealing the boy she liked. But Kai liked Shiori first for a long time, so it's kinda petty), and in the process of Kai, the ex-boyfriend, understanding about Shiori the amnesiac being a Shiori he never got the chance to meet before but still valuable to know (and falls in love with this one too lmao), Shiori finds out.
She fell in love with Akio, her brother! Because he is the first person who truly supported her when she lost her memories, she believes, and to her everyone are strangers, so it doesn't feel like he's her brother, because ever since she woke up from the accident, that's how far her memories go.
Other than the one she gains where her brother looks at her with contempt, and leaves her worried about her own place in family and society.
Akio later confesses to his girlfriend that
Thanks to Mizuki, Shiori finds out about the secret too, even though Akio was working hard for her to not find out.
Shiori worries before regaining her memories that she will regain them and become an unpleasant person again, and destroy Maho's self confidence again, so she writes a letter for the future. Eventually, she regains her memories, but only some and enough to become the unpleasant person she feared. Her mother comes back from abandonment island, and Akio decides to leave home and give back the family he thought he stole from that mother
Also she finally becomes a good actress. And the good dating time she had with Kai goes down. He's too good for the unpleasant side of Shiori, I was honestly worried seeing their dating going well because how would the author justify her getting with Akio? But I hated seeing it go badly when she remembers. Kai really makes you care even though he messes up badly for that bad sex attempt on the first part and then jealousy occasionally.
Love that Kai does well what Mizuki messes up, he's like best character.
Thankfully Oono, her ex-friend turnt friend again calls her out on her past obsession with Akio that came back horribly, and triggers her to remember her father's death and giving up on Akio, becoming again a good sister to Maho right on time for the mother's abandonment and irresponsibility bullshit to happen. Parents as people is a good trope, but mom leaves again after feeding her parasite boyfriend for a while (knowing that he would only stay with her if she got the money the father left to the kids from Akio's responsibility).
Akio's new friend Tsumura is a shipper on deck kind of. While his male friend is gay and hates Shiori for being competition, Tsumura is attracted by Akio but realizes he might be into his ~~step~~ sister even though he represses it for the sake of protecting the family. It's only thanks to her pushing that he finally breaks away from his father's pleas to keep the family together and platonic, and accepts that he loves Shiori back and confesses to her.
I didn't expect to like this manga so much. The art feels outdated and old, and quite josei style (it isn't bad but it's not moe blob), and it takes a bit to get used to it. But the plot and story is hypnotizing, the pacing goes well, things mentioned in the first chapters and volumes don't get forgotten and changed and feels like a well thought story, and the characters, even Chika, you feel for them. Not Mizuki though, fuck Mizuki lol
But Kai who messes up so badly at first, turns out to be such a supportive character who doesn't lose identity for it, he has his own friends, his likes, his family. Chika who is a jackass for a while, but she gets called out by her old friend Ucchi and becomes a proper good friend if only to Ucchi lol. Even the mother Natsue, you can realize how she leaves good husbands easily, but gets attached by husbands who are no good to her and her daughters, and although you can still hate her for what she makes her family go through, you can understand that she's a victim too.
Just, the characters feel real and their potential isn't wasted by the plot. The plot uses them to the most, not falling into slice of life or hurry, but remembering to tell a story about those characters.
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