A Girl on the Shore

A beautiful illustration of a high-school teen discovering herself and dealing with her sexual desires and heartbreak. The best part is that it is a one volume manga. No bulls***, the story is completed in one volume which I loved. Furthermore the art is AMAZING. The characters are relatable and the pacing is great. A must read for this good price.

God, I've never read something that's checked all the tiny little boxes in my mind, but this does it...I feel so sad and empty though. I feel so weird that this isn't my own repulsive life, but others share similar experiences. It's like I'm spiraling and this book is forcing me to face a reality I'm too much of a coward to face. If you enjoy feeling hopeless and troubled, have fun sport! I like this book a lot, but I don't think I'll be ready to pick it up again for a reread anytime soon, too many skeletons in my closet I suppose.

Inio Asano is a genius when it comes to creating breath taking imagery to describe a situation, he's amazing. The imagery and metaphors found throughout this manga are a plenty, and I find myself staring at each and every page for quiet a while. This story is a coming of age in a modern setting that is like none other I have read, it's simply gorgeous and I suggest everyone to at least peak inside to see what it's about. It covers the topics of teen romance, bullying, finding your sexuality, suicide and depression, family issues, and growing up. Although be warned, some of the images are definitely 18+ as there is quiet a bit of sexual interactions between minors, so if you are uncomfortable with that, this might not be your book.
Overall though, I am proud to have this beautiful manga on my shelf.

So let's get something out of the way here: this manga contains frequent and extensive sex scenes featuring 15-year-olds. This is also not my only reason for disliking it, the other being that this is pretty much all there is to the "story." It's poorly written and completely predictable.

There are far more graphic manga and anime out there, both better and worse, including by this very same author. I personally thought that Oyasumi Punpun was excellent, and that one contained explicit scenes and nudity too. But by itself, explicit content is not necessarily bad; in fact, it can actually be quite an asset in setting a story's tone and developing its plot. But Punpun had something that A Girl on the Shore does not have: an interesting and engaging story.

A Girl on the Shore is about little more than some kids having sex and it turning out to be unfulfilling for them, and I was left with much the same unfulfilling feeling after reading this. I didn't care one bit about any of the characters - they weren't likeable or unlikable at all, just bland cardboard cutouts of character types whose names or motives I couldn't even care to remember as I was reading this. The sex is gratuitous - not to the level of pornography, but still explicit. It's far too frequent, depicts underage characters (in America at least; Japan's age depends on prefecture but ranges from 13 to 17), and adds nothing to the story. Which is unfortunate, since it pretty much is the entire topic upon which the story hinges.

I don't normally return books/comics/manga/etc., even things I find to have just been "meh", but I returned this. I found it uninspired, boring, pointlessly explicit to the point of disgust, and far inferior to Inio Asano's other works. If you want something good by the same author, go read Punpun instead.

I like to go into things blind- so I didn't do too much research surrounding this title. From the cover and title I expected it to be a somewhat artistic book. What I got instead was a porn novel with some plot in the background.

Now I'm not a "vanilla" person and honestly I wouldn't have minded the sex scenes if they didn't take up the whole book. There's some potential for this manga to be similar to Welcome to the NHK- in the sense that it deals with very serious issues, sometimes in a comedic way but also sometimes with a serious tone. This manga DOES have good themes- but doesn't utilize them at all. The characters do not act realistically at all, the pacing near the end was god-awful, and the story was seriously lacking any depth. Scenes quickly shifted from ones where it felt like things would get serious to a scene about some weird fetish that one of the characters had. While I have no problem with the sole existence of these scenes- they need something to help put them together so that they actually feel meaningful and actually send a message. I struggle to find any deep, moving story in this book.

This is actually the first manga I've officially read. I don't know, maybe anime is a better medium for me personally. But I just can't find any redeeming qualities about this work. Yes it has great ideas but they instantly fall short due to an oversexualized plot, unrealistic and hard-to-connect-to characters, and pacing that is terribly managed. I would love to see this adapted into an anime- one which would put less emphasis on sex and more emphasis on the characters: specifically their psychological and mental states/thought processes so that we get a look into the effect that their personal relationships has on them. Just to reiterate: I came into this manga blind and these are my thoughts about it having finished it without knowing anything about it beforehand. If you know what this book essentially is and think you will like it- then your opinion will probably be different from mine. To anyone who was like me and looking for time to pass: I would really consider what I've written about this manga.

To keep this spoiler free the best I can, I won't go too into detail, but this is definitely one of the most bittersweet manga I've ever read ; as always, Asano's art is flawless. The two main characters definitely aren't going for a "most likeable" award, they're both very young, stupid and inexplicably human. And that's a big part of why this was so great to me. I'd also really like to take a second to praise how the entire thing doesn't fit into any kind of cookie cutter; I see a few reviews all over the web whining over how this "isn't a love story".
It's not supposed to be, and that's conveyed wonderfully, in my opinion.
Just because the two main characters are a guy and a girl who are physically involved doesn't mean it has to default to a love story. I can't express how much I like that aspect of it.
One thing I definitely wasn't expecting was how explicit the sexual interactions were, so if you have any sensitivities or issues with that, I'd steer clear. It's definitely a great read, though.
The pace of the book is fantastic as well, and the passage of time through the story is very present.
If you're up for all the things I've mentioned, this is definitely for you.

Ugh I am so sick of the literary notion that inventive works about women and young girls is some form of warped exploration of sexuality. This was a slog to get through and based on early reviews I had such hopes it would be a great piece.

For the sheer visual look of it, I would have rated this book five stars. But the font is too faint and small, which takes away from the overall reading experience. But, the book itself is the absolute perfect size. And the illustrations are sumptuous! I would define this book as a deep psychological drama for Adults. Material should be rated for mature audiences only. I do recommend this book if you like foreign films about relationships, because that’s the overall feel of the story. I love this book, just not the tiny font size. Hence the four stars, as opposed to the five stars it deserves.

I'm not sure if this is intended to be a poignant look at first love, or a depressing story of how mixed up young people are about love and sex, or what, exactly, but it doesn't seem to work as a cohesive story on any level. The art is top-notch, but the whole narrative is sad an annoying. Spoilers ahead (kind of): The whole story can be summed up as 'Two kids meet. They start to have sex (a lot of sex) for no apparent reason. They don't seem to really care for one another at all. One of them moves on. The other decides they really did have feelings. Some tears are shed. They drift out of each other's lives. The end.' If this is how young people truly see what it means to share love/sex with another person, humanity is in trouble.

Put "adult content" on the item description please. I thought this was for teens, not porn.