Gravitation, Volume 6 Book

Personally, I think we've reached the point where the anime does it better. It's still an amusing read, if you can tolerate the cringe-worthy cooking show business. I know that's what a lot of up-and-coming bands have to put up with, and I loved Hiro's rant about selling out towards the end. I couldn't give it five stars though, because it's just a little bit too crazy.

The anime wins because it only used the really good scenes, and it made those good scenes even better. Particularly Yuki's coming out to the media scene. That was so delicate and beautiful in the anime, and yet in the manga you can't take it seriously because Shuichi has all these crazy facial expressions and then they spend about five pages shouting at each other about it.

In one of the side notes, the author admits she started the manga without knowing where it was going. I'm sure that was all good and fun for her, but it's starting to show in her work. The plot really isn't that bad in this volume - why else would I give it four stars? - but it would have been better if she'd put a little more thought into it. I think she resorts to crazy ideas when she's worried about reaching a dead end. It's a shame, but she can just about get away with it for the moment.