March Comes in Like a Lion

I started my reading on chapter 89, which is where the adaptation ends

I stopped writing this review midway because I went eat out, and on my way to the restaurant I realized I was practically only writing about my feelings, and not really explaining this manga as a whole. But I think that's the biggest magic of Sangatsu no Lion; how you can't just describe it with words. You have to describe it with feelings and emotions and yourself. Just wanted to say this before anything.

"Human beings are the embodiment of chaos"

No one can be just one thing. Even if one tries, we are too complex and too desperate to be something forever fixed. We are like a sheet of paper, one side facing up and the other hiding behind. Yet both of those sides are scribbled, written and drawn on a thousand times, and in every corner there is a doodle that tells a different story from the rest. No one is "one thing", and that adds so much complexity to our lives, so much beauty.

Sangatsu no Lion does nothing more than show both sides of the paper, as well as explaining every single one of those doodles in the most detailed and tender way. We see the good and the bad; the attributes that makes someone lovely and the drawbacks that make them lovable. The happy and the sad; Rei finding a place where he can peacefully be, and himself thinking he doesn't deserve it. It shows the beautiful and the ugly in complete splendor.

I must say though, that reading this manga straight after season 2 is quite a shock, but that's fully thanks to Shaft and the masterful job they've done. If you're doing that as well, have in mind that the manga is a lot more "calm", even calmer than the anime. It's never really a drawback though, as the silence of the words Umino writes on paper are just as impactful as the echoing of voices.

It is no surprise that this series' metier are the characters or more specifically, their relations (with others and themselves). It delves deep into each one of these people and dissects their very core until we see nothing else than their essence as we fell an immense sense of empathy for even the minor characters. Umino is a master at this; with only a few pages she is able to create someone. Not a character, really "someone", with many dreams and different personalities that's hard to keep track of. There're the folk at the shogi hall; Shimada constantly doubting if he made the right decision, Name-kun being amazed by the humanity of the sport, Nikaidou in a constant fight against himself. Then there're also the Kawamoto family, all fighting together to move on from the people that left then, Akari dealing with the feeling of failure towards Hina and Hina being that pure storm of emotions that she is, and at the very center is Rei. The eye of the tornado, manifestation of the entire meaning of this manga, "The search for a home".

As the story progresses, specially after the Bully Arc, you could very much say that the core is now shared by Rei and Hina and their shining dynamic, but not because Rei now shares the spotlight of main character with her, rather that now we can see her essence as clearly as his: they're just two lost souls trying to find a place they can rest. Well, pretty much everyone in this is doing that to some extent, but all in their own individual way. Everyone is just trying to do their best even with everything holding them down.

To summarize this messy conjunction of me trying to portray my feelings as best as I can, whats truly magical about this story is how alive it is. Almost like if you just let the narrative become a static camera, hovering over any of the characters, you would get just as a fruitful story as we got. It even had the opposite effect with me, with me constantly realizing my own desire to merge with the pages, become one with this world. It presents the pain and the ugly with so much warmth, almost as welcoming as the hug that makes that same pain vanish in a second.

Reading March Comes In Like A Lion was an incredibly unique experience, as you can probably tell from this mess. But I needed to write it, or else I was afraid this feeling would fly away. No other story like this has ever made me this vulnerable and this hopeful, almost as though the constant struggles and overcoming of the characters were a message from the future me that doesn't exist yet telling me everything was going to be ok. The pain is there to make you who you are. It is for experiences like this that I read manga and just live in general. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.