Sasaki and Miyano (by Shou Harusono)
I bought Shou Harusono’s “Sasaki and Miyano” manga Volume 1-3 not long ago (volume 4 on the way), and only get to read volume 1 recently, as the recent anime trailer of “Sasaki and Miyano” or “Sasamiya” came out these few days too.
The English manga of Sasaki and Miyano is published by Yen Press, retailing at US$13 for the physical book. Each of the matte cover is very pretty and colorful, though the books are slightly thinner than most manga. But to me, the quality of the paper inside felt slightly better than most manga.
The art style is pretty and the story seems to be going down the typical fluffy BL path in a school environment. Basically, Miyano was reading a BL manga alone and Sasaki saw him, asked him to share what’s he reading and then things develop from there. Of course, they sort of “met” each other first on a different occasion but I won’t be mentioning that here in order not to give away too much. Anyway, I will keep on reading this BL as it seems to give positive energy, light fun, cuteness, nothing dark or anything like that… I have been watching a lot of depressing, dark and even gory shows recently, so it’s a nice change for me.
I found a page in Volume 1 (page 98) with weird typesetting though, which I have included in the first picture below, click on "Show". I was wondering if it’s a mistake made by the publisher or was it intentional? Some words were cut off from the speech bubble. Does this only occur for the first edition print? Anyhow, I really appreciate the Translation Notes at the end of the book which gives a lot of info about certain translations and meanings, this is very helpful especially for those who are new to Japanese terms.
I also found out that Volume 1 is not available from some websites that ships worldwide like Rightstuf or Book Depository, totally out of stock. So hopefully, Yen Press will replenish the stock for this as the anime release date is on January 2022. There’s the digital version available too if you don’t want to get the physical copy, it’s $6.99 and you can check out Yen Press site for the links on where to buy.
Aarin's overall rating: 7.5/10 (so far for Volume1)
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