2 stars
I will start out by saying I love Your Name. The movie was great and I enjoyed the manga series. I was really excited to get a look at the lives of some of the side characters.
From the first story, I already disliked the book. When I read that this was about minor characters, I was not expecting the first story to focus on Taki, you know, one of the two main characters. As I was reading it, I was waiting for it to switch over to a side character, but nope, it’s pretty much just a story about boobs. While the whole boob thing was weird and kind of awkward in the movie, it wasn’t a main part of the story and it was fairly understandable given the situation. Writing an entire story based on the boob thing though, that is another thing altogether. Completely pointless. I would have much rather read a story from Sayaka’s perspective.
The second story focused on Teshigawara (Mitsuha’s male friend), which was pretty good. It was cute to see his journey to building the little cafe and the love/hate relationship to the town was an interesting avenue to explore.
The third story was about Yotsuha (Mitsuha’s sister). It started off well enough then tailspinned right into an obsession with boobs again. Seriously, the boob things is a tiny bit of the movie. Not sure why Arata Kanoh thought it needed to take up half of the book.
The final story explores Toshiki’s (Mitsuha’s father) life and was by far the most interesting. This is the only story that actually makes the reader understand the character better. It mostly focuses on his relationship to Mitsuha’s mother, Futaba. Beautifully written and full of heart. This was the kind of story I wanted to read. The whole book should have just been this one story. Cut out all the creepy boob stuff. This is the stuff that matters.
Overall, the book was just okay. The boob stuff was weird and unnecessary. Too much time was spent on the philosophy of boob squeezing. The other issue with the book was that,because it was translated, some of the writing is clunky and awkward. I’d read a scene and see so many instances of misused words which completely changed the tone of what was happening.
Okay read, but really the only story worth reading is the last one (and maybe Toshiki’s). Really disappointed with Taki’s and Yotsuha’s.