Inaction
At the heart of the two stories today are desires left unspoken. One is fairly trivial, while the other is far deeper and darker. Plenty of links and symmetry with earlier chapters 🙂 Stay tuned next week for the conclusion to this strange little journey of ours…
Shikou Shounen v02 c09 [DL @ Mega or MediaFire]
Shikou Shounen v02 c10 [DL @ Mega or MediaFire]
Thank you so much for the updates!
So I guess there isn’t really an overarching theme or plot in this series? Just episodic chapters, but with overlapping/shared themes (also thru the “main character” boy)? I feel like I’m missing out on something because I still haven’t got it and that’s frustrating. Otherwise, it’s really been enjoyable, reading this series.
There really isn’t an overarching story, no. There are recurring motifs (crows, dogs), and then chapters that tie into other chapters (the hit man in two chapters, the two chapters with the private investigators). And then the main char, who in his first chapter tied back to the hit man…
Well, that boy gets the final chapter, which does a better job of tying the loose ends together 🙂 Really, it’s a series that should be read all at once >.>;
But yes, mostly episodic!
Thanks for the updates!
A question, if I may? Is this a manga where “the philosophy” of the plot(s) somehow always links back to romance? I’ve read several manga lately which started out looking unique but ended up going either the tragic love route or the HEA route (both of which disappointed me, because I was hoping for something more profound than the ol’ horizontal tango) and Shikou Shounen looks/sounds a lot like those titles. Not to criticize, you understand, just as a forewarning.
Either way, thanks for your efforts!
The easy answer: no.
The series is made of tangentially connected vignettes, maybe a third of which have some sort of romantic aspect (often forbidden/unrequited). However, they all link to the main character’s story, which has zero romance whatsoever.
This is more like the type of plot where you look inside a cafe at 10 strangers, and then follow each of them for a day and see the unexpected connections/symmetry in their lives. (Only it’s not a cafe, and it’s not so obvious…)
Anyway, I’d recommend just waiting till the weekend for our final release. This is really best read all at once 🙂
*Cheers* Wow, that’s truly good news. Finally, I get to wash my mind of all those pretentious romances! (Dunno why, but I’ve never regarded romantic love or lust as particularly profound emotions: they’re base instincts, so I prefer straightforward love stories to ones that try to be deep.)
And I rarely ever pick up a manga unless it’s completely scanlated, so, yes, I’ll wait 😉
Thanks for the quick and detailed reply! I was bit worried that my question would annoy you, and if it did, apologies.
It’s nice to get comments, actually =D
And I’m just not a huge romance fan, so I doubt we’ll be doing many works centered on romance. …except for Ando Yuki. I will happily read her romantic shorts <3
“And I’m just not a huge romance fan, so I doubt we’ll be doing many works centered on romance.”
*Throws confetti* I’ll be eagerly following Lovely Strange Dark in the future, then!
I’ve never read anything by Ando Yuki. Well, expect Motto, Ikitai, which I believe was authored by someone else. Can’t remember the last time I read a drama/slice-of-life romance, actually.
“Normal” romance bores me, especially when it’s drawn out 🙂 Now, give me some fantasy element and kill off one of the lovers in a tragic but noble way, and I’m sold.
Ando Yuki is known more for her shorts rather than that one weirdo manga she illustrated (which I translated too~). Check out Drops or Sakana no Yume — I don’t think either are really romance-focused. Then if you’d like to see romance shorts done well, read the two released chapters of Fushigi na Hito. It’s all on Batoto. Lovely, refreshing stuff.
The plan is to release oneshots randomly as we do our “longer” series, so I’ll get some more of her stuff done at some point, I’m sure!
Yay for Ando Yuki! She’s defo one of my favourite shoujo authors. Motto, Ikitai WAS weird but refreshing in a way, and I really liked it. Anyone looking for her stuff can find them on Batoto; Delish Scans likes her works, and their scanlations are top-notch~ and I’m definitely looking forward to LSD working on her stuff!
I’m definitely reading Shikou Shounen again, from the beginning, just to get any extra things I might have missed the first or second time around. It’s one of those good series you can reread multiple times, definitely.
The “normal” romance thing, ahaha… I’m always for normal romance when it’s done well and depicts healthy relationships (+ the characters’ own developments, not just their relationship’s), but once in a while I also like to go the “Omae ga Sekai o Kowashitai nara” route, as I call it 😉
Ehehe, I might’ve linked to Delish from this site purely because they do Ando Yuki… .>; I’ve got a handful of seinen oneshots to do, and then Ximena likes Nakamura Asumiko, so we’ll probably do one of her oneshot collections first. Eventually =D
You plan to do Nakamura Asumiko’s weirder oneshots? Yesss! Really looking forward to it! I don’t like most of her (scanlated) BL, because they’re neither romantic nor well-plotted — just odd, violent and purposeless — but most of her non-BL look fascinating especially the supernatural/fantasy + psychological stuff. I really want to read Utsubora sometime, but living in 3rd-world Asia means buying even two volumes is not feasible for my current budget 🙁
Actually, I think all of Nakamura’s weird non-BL works have been done >.>
I’m not a fan of her weird/taboo explicit stuff. What I have in mind are her collections of sweet/lovely shoujo oneshots. Most of her stuff gets done, but I’ve noticed that no one’s really been doing the sweet ones. There’s maybe one or two stories done out of each of the collections, and that’s about it >.>; Anyway, that’s what I’ve got my eye on =D
Oh, wow, really? That’s a shame. And also, that means she has less weird manga than I thought, going by the covers. Shoujo fluff’s definitely not my thing, though. *Slinks away*