"The stars that don't shine in Tokyo surely do shine in a different town..."
TSUTSUMI Koutarou, who couldn't be a senior at a college-oriented high school in Tokyo, moves into Himi City, Toyama Prefecture with his relatives and spends one school year there.
"I wouldn't be able to shine for the rest of my life..."
He's hurt, and depressed.However, his encounter with a girl named Nagisa changes his "tomorrow" little by little.
Now, HARA Hidenori begins "the sweetest 'starting-over' love story in the world"...

Kenn's Comment: As I said before the jump, if you don't know who the author is, I'm not going to hound you for that. If you don't know at least one of his other works, that's a different story. Why? This is the author of Densha Otoko. If you don't know that series, go hit up your local bookstore that carries manga, or your DVD outlet an dlook for the live action. It's one of the series that you must read/watch. And there's no excuse to this one. If you're not 'an anime person' there's the live action. If you're not a '3D people make me ill' then there's the manga. Get on it. Now.

Anywho, can't say I've gotten to the end of this one, but from the bit I've read, I've had nothing but smooth sailing. Nothing really bothered me about the series, though that probably doesn't say much as I'm incredibly tolerant of happenings in manga and anime. All the characters are very human, and there's no heavy drama or constant unfortunately events happening. I feel that all too often, authors will put their characters through trial after trial to keep the story flowing, never giving it time to wind down. At times, that kind of story gets very arc-y (made up on arcs) and almost forced.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. Like Densha Otoko, this one also has a live action version, though I'm not sure how that one went. I'd normally say a realistic romance like this one wouldn't be that hard to pull off, but after reading the article about Usagi Drop's live action movie on the JapanTimes, I'm not so sure about live actions anymore. Anywho, enjoy!

Before I forget, Densha Otoko is available in North America through VIZ if you were looking for it. It's a bit old, so it'll likely be fairly hard to find.