Kon no Ki Konoha

This story is magnetically delivered! It's like a hundred voices whispering in your ear, in an archaic language that is deceptively simple as it weaves tighter and tighter around you!

I read this one almost a year ago and have reread it and retold it to others many a' time. It echoed like a rock skipped across water.

The story has such a sad, yet beautiful acceptance of a tragic past and a unusual solution that was offered to a group of children many years before the heroine actually meets the hero of the story. As their relationship slowly develops, with carefully selected, meaningful and deftly delivered panels of words and art, I felt more and more for the relationship that they both desire so passionately, but time and magic held them prisoners.

I'm not sure I actually understand the co-relation with the girl's school friend and the tree boy, but I do think that the mangaka left it open so that each reader could find their own very personal interpretation of the ending.

The humour was so gentle and soft and left a smile on my face, especially the mischievous tickle scene! And the romance, although understated, was very powerful, especially the scene where the heroine presses her forehead against the boys' while he is still inside the tree. Awesome art!

Was this comment useful? Yes

Another bittersweet tale from Yumeka Sumomo

by djbreezy
16 years ago

Rating: N/A

I swear, whatever Yumeka Sumomo/Sahara Mizu does is just fantastic in terms of art and story. It is a absolutely WONDERFUL oneshot that actually made me tear up when he said:

"Your a Liar, Akino"

It is very rare for oneshot to hit you like that.
This is a highly recommended short read for anyone who has the time.

Was this comment useful? Yes

A touching tale of love

by bloogal
17 years ago

Rating: 8.0 / 10.0

It's innocent, painful, pleasant, melancholic yet gladsome and beautiful. Beautiful in its simplicity. The manga-ka knows how to successfully trigger an emotional reaction from the readers. This one-shot embodies that magical feeling which distinguish her manga from the rest.

... Last updated 17 years ago

Was this comment useful? Yes

Replica

by gati
16 years ago

Rating: N/A

Eh? The story is VERY similar to an older one by Yuki Midorikawa!
It resembles "Hotaru no Mori E" soo much I can't believe it!
There is a young girl meeting a ghost-like person in the forest and they become to like each other altough they can never be together! hello? WTF!
I like the STORY very much and also the works by Sumomo Yumeka but It seems like a copy of Midorikawas story.
I'm disappointed.

Was this comment useful? Yes

Wow

by Twilight_Moon
17 years ago

Rating: 8.7 / 10.0

It's another beautiful story that entices the reader to feel sympathy for the characters and be swept along the mood. Truly, it's a beautiful oneshot, that almost made me cry. It wasn't extremely tragic, but just beautiful with a subtle sadness. I love this oneshot. It's worth your time.

Was this comment useful? Yes

Dreamlike...

by Tatania
14 years ago

Rating: 8.0 / 10.0

This story is so dreamlike; the pages seem to pass by slowly one after another laying out the sad tale in such a wonderful way! The art greatly added to this in its light and somewhat sketchy manner. This story is a very nice one!

8/10- Was good

Was this comment useful? Yes

kon no ki konoha

by sweetgirl121
16 years ago

Rating: N/A

I agree with **gati **, just finished reading the story and all I could think of "OMG this is a total ripped off of one of MIDORIKAWA Yuki's one shots ", it was ok nonetheless, but could not feel the ending coz it felt the deja vu

Was this comment useful? Yes

Love it :)

by :Mikko:
16 years ago

Rating: 10.0 / 10.0

... It was great 🙂 The ending was sad, but you could feel the love between Akino and Konoha. And like you said, it's a bittersweet story, but it's beautiful.

Was this comment useful? Yes

Brilliantly poignant.

by sadow
11 years ago

Rating: 8.5 / 10.0

MightyMaeve's review sums up my thoughts nicely. What I would like to add however is although the story bares a striking resemblance to the more famous "Hotarubi no Mori e", a manga that was made five years before this one, I believe this one is the better read. Why? Because:

-Yumeka Sumomo's art is better. The beautiful nature backgrounds, the detailed designs, and the graceful way she depicted the characters' emotions and facial expressions are some of the primary reasons why the story tugs the heartstrings much better than in Hotarubi. In fact, if you read my review about it, you'll see that I mentioned how the facial plain facial expressions were a big killer of the story for me.

-Better story flow. Hotarubi failed in this aspect because it rushed the climax. I explained about that in my review. I actually mentioned there that the rushing might be because the mangaka had to fit it in the page limit, but now I think that's not an excuse because Kon no Ki is eight pages shorter and still manages to have stable development. The scenes when the heroine was still a child weren't so long, but they showed enough important parts that would build the foundation for the teenager part of the story. And even in the teenager part, the development was still stable and didn't rush. A good chunk of it is the girl spending time in school actually, and it's scenes like those that help build her character and evoke her emotions to the reader.

-Kon no Ki handled the twist and the ending better.

By twist, I mean the death scenes. In Kon no Ki, the character Konoha, a tree spirit, dies because of a fire that spread in the forest. What makes that scene good is how well it goes with the ending. In the end, years after the fire, the heroine still regularly sees the mountain. But by then, the fire has died out and the forest has regrown in a single color- blue, the color of Konoha's leaves. Hotarubi's ending was unsatisfying, which again, I explained in my review.

TL;DR Hotarubi no Mori e may have had the idea first, but Kon no Ki Konoha's storytelling wins.

Was this comment useful? Yes

Bittersweet

by Persimmons
17 years ago

Rating: 10.0 / 10.0

This oneshot is absolutely gorgeous. Yumeka takes her time with the layout and doesn't rush the story, and the sense of longing for human contact and loneliness are beautifully portrayed through her artwork and the subtle changes in expression the characters have. It's such a bittersweet story, and it's fantasy element in an otherwise normal world, the narration and the page layouts remind me of Chou ni Naru Hi. It's a 40 page oneshot, published in volume 8 of the Gensou Collection, and it's definitely worth buying--or waiting for it to be in the next volume of Tengujin (guessing it'll pop up in there).

... Last updated 17 years ago

Was this comment useful? Yes

Pages (2) [ 1 2 ]