Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia / Insomniacs After School is another library find. It’s a straight forward (and straight) romance about two high schoolers who have trouble sleeping at night.
SPOILERS
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It is rare that I regret my decision to review EVERYTHING I read that’s manga-related. Even when I can’t post a cover because it’s too smutty, I tend to think, “Well, someone might be interested in this kink!” (I have no shame. ) But, then there’s manga like this one, where there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, but I just can’t get excited about it.
The story reminds me of Call of the Night–only with more astronomy and fewer vampires–in that it starts with a kid who can’t sleep at night. Nakami Ganta falls asleep in class, but spends his nights lying in bed listening to the evening become morning. I suspect this is highly relatable? I can fall asleep at 7pm and not wake up until 7am, but I am fan of sleep in all its forms. But, I know that there are a lot of night owls out there, some of them as extreme as Nakami.
At any rate, when Nakami is desperately trying to find a place to nap during the day, he discovers a fellow insomniac, Margari Isaki. Margari has been spreading rumors about ghosts in the school’s defunct observatory so that she can be left alone to sleep there, during the day.
They basically start to hang out and, as part of putting together a nice place to snooze together, start to fall in love.
It’s a nice story?
I can absolutely see why there are fourteen volumes of this published and an anime. It’s clear that by the end of volume one that there will astronomy as well as falling in love.
For whatever reason, I’m just not all that into it. The volume I read was very sweet. I really enjoyed the scene where the two decided to go prowling around the neighborhood at night, since they weren’t sleeping anyway. I could totally see how all this will bud into a very lovely romance that I will root for. So I may try watching the anime. Sometimes when I can’t get into manga, the anime works better for whatever reason. I think, perhaps, that it might be a pacing issue? Like, the anime can get a lot more done is a shorter period of time.
As you can see from the above, the art is also very serviceable. I sometimes feel like I can tell when the artist’s other work is predominantly ecchi, but that’s not at all true in Ojiro-sensei’s case. I would not have guessed, in fact, that the majority of Oijiro-sensei’s other manga titles are full-on adult (as in literally called Nude, based on the life of adult video actress Mihiro,) and/or ecchi. There’s no hint of any of that in Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia / Insomniacs After School, which seems by all accounts to be a very wholesome, slow burn romance.
In conclusion, I guess I would say that if you want a little star science and sleeplessness with your romance, this might be a manga for you. Meanwhile, I’m sad that no one has scanlated Nude…
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Yeah, a few month ago I was planning on watching the anime version of this series, but I never got around to it and just kind of forgot about it. It sounds nice, but it also sounds a bit forgettable. It’s still on my To Watch list, but considering all the great anime and manga coming out recently, it might stay there for a long time.
I watched the live action movie of this series last year. I had the same feeling that it was good, perhaps a bit more than exceptional at times. The movie was really well shot and framed which was nice. I’m back and forth on reading it but I probably won’t until the whole series is in English or something silly like that. My library just got the first couple of volumes. I don’t want to say any spoilers for you, but there’s a bit of a twist to both characters that is intriguing but not quite engaging if that makes sense?