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Description
After three unfulfilling years of high school, Imamura Kinichirou was finally graduating. Because of his delinquent-esque looks, he was feared by his classmates, has made no friends, and his greatest regret was not joining the ouendan (cheer club), which was now disbanded. After an accident on the day of his graduation, he and classmate Fujieda Aki are transported three years back in time, freshman again in body but with high-school memories intact. Can Imamura fix the mistakes of his past? Can he re-do his high school years in the way that he's always wanted? Again!! The universe suddenly shouts.
Read at your own risk. I post this comment to recommend that you don't, no matter how much you like the premise. I will say that it began quite well and the plot was consistent for a few volumes (up to volume 7) with some character development.
That is all the compliment this manga will get. The manga is horribly plotted, this is not a slice of life manga but a shounen/romance. The author began this work to exert a meaning of somewhat but instead a good premise for a manga began rolling in the wrong direction; it is a mass of trash that keeps accumulating as chapters pass.
In the end this manga is nothing but a waste of time, a hulking pile of trash and I have no clue how some people rate this 10/10.
I'm still waiting for the volume 10 translations to come out (I hope they do) but so far this has been one of the most enthralling manga series I've read in a long time. I have to admit that I don't understand the people who complain about "filler" content here because nothing really exists like that. Maybe they are just complaining that not every arc is dedicated to advancing some sort of romantic sub plot - fair enough, but Again!! is not really a "romance" centered manga.
Sure there are some elements of romance in the story, but primarily this manga is about the concept of "What if you could go back and change yourself in highschool and get rid of your regrets?" and to that end, it's a perfect combination of fantasy and comedy. All of the other contents of the manga from romances, to clubs, to friendships and the such exist only as a vehicle to explore the maturing behavior of Imamura as he struggles to break out of his shell.
I can't wait for the next three volumes of this manga to come out. This is one of those manga that if it was licensed in English, I would definitely buy all the volumes just to have on my shelf.
Again's positive points are its great art and unique characters. The characters are so full of life and I love how Kubo Mitsurou draws his female characters. Most time travel stories focus on changing a violent incident or getting together with a past crush. In Again it focuses on an anti social guy who travels back in time and decides to use the opportunity to change himself. We get to see him use his experiences as an advantage in the past and also how his actions alter the lives of those he gets involved with. Makes for an interesting read.
Good stuff, as in... Veryyyy goooooooood stuff. As in cream puff goooooood. As in peanut butter gooooooood. It's like being negative while staying positive.
There was so much potential in this one, but since the MC is what you can lacking direction loser, it bogged down to filler and randomness. Read up to the latest, he gets really boring and uninteresting so I'm rooting for other characters now. This is one of the worst usage of Time-Travel troupe where the darn MC is overshadowed and did not use future knowledge in any useful way. It's completely unnecessary.
Just give him a vision about what he will be in the future is enough. Like through a fortune or vivid dream will suffice.
Up until the end of the first main arc I thought this was the funniest thing I'd seen in months. But then it got terribly tedious - way too many people I don't care about. I made it to 89, but just don't care anymore.
Still, the first half or so was great! Side-splittingly funny and well worth reading.
I was looking forward to reading something about time travel to remove regrets and the like but that's not what this is about. It's about one of those japanese cheer clubs. kinda hard to make something like that interesting. They don't really address his regrets, his foreknowledge of events isn't important either (mostly because he has no foreknowledge as he just went through the motions of everyday life). I gave this to chapter 43, I think...boring.
Again!! has been an amazing and rereshing read, right from the beginning. I strongly recommend giving it a try, particularly if you're looking for something creative, a bit wacky and mixed with very strong character creation and a versatile, ever changing plot with time travel questions thrown in.
Particularly in recent chapters, Kubo-sensei has gone with a twisted plot approach that really embodies her style and has a very nice effect, in my opinion. Even in earlier volumes, it was hard to predict where she was going, some, like volume 3 getting a bit boring and others like volume 4 seeming to hit so many different ideas and not close all of them off. This style, however, makes for a fairly realistic storyline, if a sometimes difficult one to follow.
In other words, Again!! isn’t a standard plot progression and even the characters don’t follow a steady development pattern. The characters aren’t even constant: for much of volume 1 and 2, Aki was as important a character as Imamura, in volume 4, Hiro was suddenly introduced and became important, then disappeared, in volume 7 the character relations all get jumbled up and, if you look at the cover of volume 8, you will see that another, brand-new character suddenly becomes an important face.
If you look at Kubo’s other series though, they have a similar feeling – Kubo doesn’t like conclusions, she writes her stories to start new issues, introduce more characters and ideas and sometimes she closes them off, sometimes she just moves on. You could argue it’s terrible story telling technique, or, if you get too invested in a particular aspect of the story, you might think it's filler or milking the plot but it's probably just Kubo-sensei's quirk and enthusiasm to throw her characters off in different directions, which, if you can appreciate it, always keeps her series fresh and pretty realistic (since I find that real life rarely has neat conclusions either)
So the one word of warning would be that you can't go into this series expecting a neat conclusion after a linear plot progression. You're in this for new things and often dropping old arcs without any warning!
Around chapter 30 I thought this was one of the best manga I'd ever read. By chapter 67 (last translated chapter) I decided to drop the series.
This doesn't actually need any time travel in it. It could have just been about a freshman recruited into a cheering club, because that's what's good about this manga. The person below me is right, this manga has everything a shounen should have; huge cast, passion for club activities, friendship, living life without regrets! When this manga was about THAT stuff it was amazing.
Unfortunately around chapter 50~ this manga starts to go off the rails with lots of filler and the characters even not behaving like themselves. First of all, everything important and related to the club and the plot is put on the backburner. Instead, we get lazy filler about a stupid love triangle and some time travel stuff.
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
Reo (the girl who's originally from the cheerleaders confesses to Imamura, Imamura for some reason goes completely out of character from the tough guy who decided to live his life to the fullest and becomes and indecisive loser. He clearly likes Danchou, but becomes sort of indecisive and basically starts toying with Reo (the kiss was completely OOC and inappropriate, I lost a lost of respect for the manga and Imamura when that scene happened.) If he behaved anything like he did the rest of the series he would have just turned her down.
Also, basically another guy comes back from the future and starts trying to use it to his personal advantage. He then has sort of drawn Imamura into doing it with him. It felt really OOC for Imamura who's always been a good guy. To top it off, all of this is obvious filler that's keeping us away from the plot involving the club. Whoever said the mangaka is milking the story is right, and it's really suffering because of that. Maybe it will get better but I can't bare to stick around to find out, the last 10~ chapters were really that bad.
Wrong gender but when I first read this manga, I was just blown away by the number of interesting characters and art, and the spirit that everyone had. I felt like, wow, this is what a shounen manga should be, friendship, club, and excitement, it's all there, and for once I'm not sarcastic. It may not be the best of Shounen Magazine, best it is so unique. (and the gags are actually funny) I'd much prefer reading this to reading Fairy ****. Maybe because it's a manga about revisiting one's high school years and overcoming regrets that appeals to me, younger kids in the midst of high school just don't understand. I swear, it's a college student thing. The only thing that bothers me just a little is how much Usami-senpai looks like a boy sometimes, but I really like the characters because they feel like real people as opposed to mere characters in a manga. I can empathize with the main character, and if you can't do that, this series isn't going to be as fun for you because you'll just be waiting for more time leap and cliche stuff. You can just watch The Girl Who Leapt Through Time for that, sheez.
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