Io Sakisaka's latest work, 'Sakura, Saku' is something I've been anticipating for a long time as a surefire great manga. Unfortunately I didn't see it being translated anywhere even though I knew it was being serialized. But now mangakakalot has done its job and posted the first twelve chapters of the series. It's as good as I expected it to be. This as expected romance manga has great timing because I needed something new to replace Mujaki no Rakuen in my top manga rankings, which I'd already given up on and wanted to kick out.
Sakura, Saku enters my top manga rankings, filling out the nice round number of 75 top ranking manga all without full anime adaptions. Since every top manga also deserves mention in my fictional character hall of fame embedded within '100 Waifus,' (as does every top anime), I also replaced Serenoa from Triangle Strategy with Haruki, the main male love interest in 'Sakura, Saku.' Haruki is a cool guy, handsome, reliable and kind. I have no objections to him, though I might actually like Saku (the heroine protagonist) more. But it's easier to replace males than females in my fictional character hall of fame because males tend to all be lower in quality than females, so the upgrade from Serenoa to Haruki is larger than the upgrade of 'theoretical female' to Saku.
Serenoa's biggest problem is that he isn't a fixed soul, but makes different decisions based on how you, the player, decide for him. Nobody likes a fickle person like that, he's hardly even one person, but more like some sort of freaky soul chimera. Haruki is one persona that acts the same at all times, the way he wants to act. No player input required. That's a huge upgrade.
Soon enough I'll be replacing Gloria from Bravely Default with Hiyori from Extreme Hearts, or perhaps Haizakura from Prima Doll, or maybe Ichigo from Tokyo Mewmew. Someone will be replacing her, so that my top 200 anime and my top 75 manga all have proper representatives in '100 Waifus.' I just don't know who. But at least I can replace Serenoa right now.
Sakura, Saku is a purebred manga, not based on any other preexisting source, so it qualifies for the manga hall of fame while stuff like Genkai Koe does not. Io Sakisaka is one of those mangaka like Rumiko Takahashi or Mitsuru Adachi I can always rely on to fill out the ranks of my top manga. I guess it's not exactly a good thing that none of Sakisaka's works get decent anime adaptions, and thus they always end up in my manga hall of fame, but I needed her to make the numbers round so this time I count it fortunate.
While I was at it, I also changed my movies hall of fame. I took out some underperforming Marvel movies like Captain America, The Incredible Hulk and Ironman 3 and replaced them with more anime movies -- the old Bastard!! oav's and the Planetarian oav's -- plus the recently released Top Gun 2. Top Gun 2 isn't all that great, but it sure as hell beats The Incredible Hulk.
I thought I didn't need the Bastard!! oav's anymore given that there's a proper Bastard!! tv series, but that turned out not to be the case. It's more like the tv show is unnecessary because we have the oav's, at least that's how the situation stands right now. Ideally I think people should watch the oav's first, then watch the tv show only when it's new material the old oav's didn't cover. Which means both versions are necessary.
I finished the new Umi route in Summer Pockets Reflection Blue. The only new material left is Mizuiro's route, which I have virtually zero interest in. So basically I've finished Reflection Blue. I guess I'll fully complete it at some point for completion's sake, but I've already read all the new material that's worth reading. The new Umi route was really good, as expected of anything involving Umi. Reflection Blue was worth making solely for the sake of this route. As usual it's familial love, not romantic, and as refreshing and wholesome as anyone could ask for. All of Summer Pockets is wholesome, it's not an eroge, so people should try it out unblinkered by silly prejudices.
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