I finished the series. I want to write while I didn’t like it all that much, especially after the focus went away from being in school to the main female becoming the greatest Commoner Mary Sue that was ever poor, yet proud, spunky and wanted by every available billionaire teenage male in the country of Japan and the savior of entire financial empires, I can’t.
Instead all I can think is, someone give me back the last 24 hours of my life. It’s just that was one of those manga where while there’s no “happy ending” for 90% of the cast that’s not what bothers me. I don’t need everyone and their uncle to find their one true love or whatever. What bothers me is how ridiculously unbelievable almost every single character in that was. And unlikeable. I’ve never disliked a pair of main characters as much as I did the girl and her eventual one true love as much as I did with those two.
It also appalls me that the only people who really grew or changed were said main characters and if by grew I mean she became more erratic and bitchy and he stopped beating everyone he met to a pulp. Oh and the perpetual other love interest guy became more “cheerful” if upgrading from having no personality to being a blatant plot device is “growing”.
Every single other character is exactly the same way at the ending of the manga as they were when you first met them. They even go through “life changing” moments and it’s like water off a duck’s back.
I’ll probably be a lot more forgiving when I’ve a) slept more than a handful of hours and b) had more of a chance to sit and digest the manga.
It also doesn’t help that I had to have read the worst fan scanalations I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, I give mad props to people who are willing to sit down and translate a manga, but I’ve never appreciated all the hard work cleaners, QC’ers and a competent editor do for a release.
Seriously the scanalations was riddled with spelling errors, partially missing words in sentences, pages where only half the bubbles were translated so conversations made no sense, entire sets of pages where no conversation was translated, it’s just nothing but blank bubbles for pages. There were also pages where no one bothered to erase the Japanese so there are just English words typed over the Kanji.
I’ve never complained about a release before. Usually minor grammatical mistakes and spelling errors don’t bother me unless they’re so bad I can’t read entire sentences without stopping and trying to decipher what the translator/editor meant. I mean I fully understand these are translated as someone’s hobby and since I can’t read Japanese or Chinese I have to take what I can get, but my god that was painful to read.
Let’s just say I’ve never taken anyone seriously that sits and says, “Oh I don’t like official releases by name manga companies. I think the fans do a much better job and we don’t miss bubbles or mess up the translations!” because frankly I don’t hold that to be true.
I’ve read some badly translated professionally done manga where yes, the company changes storylines or choses not to translate certain bubbles, but I’ve also read some very badly translated fan translations where entire pages haven’t been translated, people haven’t bothered to translate Author notes that explain certain key points about characters or choose to ignore text in battle scenes.
So I take what I can get. If a story is good it’s sold me. Flat out. I’ll go and purchase it to support the mangaka even if I don’t think the professionals did a topnotch job.
And now I’m just rambling and incoherent.
Long story short. Boys Over Flowers not a manga for me. I didn’t like the story, I found the majority of the cast to be irritating and overblown and the situations the main character to be in just getting ridiculous. I also seriously felt like the last twenty or so volumes were riddled with revolving villain syndrome where 90% of the people introduced were basically out to be plot devices or obstacles that were quickly dispatched and then disappeared into obscurity.
Also Plotnesia? Bad Manga! No cookie for you!
