Thanks to peachgummie I was able to find a new series called Cousin. It's a josei series that flew under the radar, but deals with difficult topics such as self-esteem, weight issues, and building self-confidence. I think these are all problems women deal with as they mature and grow into adults, sometimes we never fully realize how to deal with these issues. Cousin by Ikuemi Ryou tackles these problems in an approachable and realistic manner. This really drew me in to continue reading until the end of the second volume (the manga had an official release but Jmanga who translated it shutdown, making the last volume hard to track down) but I'll give you my review so you can consider reading and supporting the official release. I will update this review when I get a chance to finish reading it in its entirety.
Summary
This manga is considered a Drama, Romance, Josei, Comedy and Slice-of-Life
The story follows Tsubomi, a recent high school graduate who begins working part-time out of school. She led a normal boring life thus far and feels unsatisfied with herself in many respects. To further this dissatisfaction she has a cousin she is always compared to.
Her cousin
is an upcoming idol, good-looking and thin. Tsubomi in contrast wears no
make-up and is chubby. She does her best to break out of her past
habits by making friends with a coworker Shiro, and finding new love.
It's a story of overcoming your own demons and working towards being the
person you want to be. It may be a typical plot for a josei manga, but
what differentiates this title is how Tsubomi learns to stop being a self-pitying woman, and becomes someone who constantly tries to better herself.Story
The story isn't finished after 2 volumes, it was completed at 3 volumes but the first 2 develop a lot that I can talk about. I have technically read the first 2 chapters of volume 3, but it's not enough to make a judgment on that volume as of yet. In my summary I highlighted the development of Tsubomi's character
as that is obviously the big mover of the plot. At first I found her frustrating, but I quickly related to her when she began to think about positively changing herself.
I of course went through a similar phase, however I don't think I was
as conscious about it when it was happening. But much like Tsubomi what
helped me to change were the people I surrounded myself with. I loved
that this story felt real, and that it was relatable on many different levels (that I didn't expect). All this being said, I found the plot at times was slow moving, spending too much time on little points that weren't interesting. Certain points that were the cause of conflict were not very compelling, making them unimportant and not interesting to developing the plot. Although these are problems, they're not major issues to the overall effect of the story. The story gets an 8.0 out of 10 because of its ability to tackle issues in a convincing and relatable manner.
