Manga 25229 Sugars

update: Since re-reading this, I didn't notice all the age differences in the upcoming volumes:o

Story: [Concerning the first 14 chapters; review from Sept 14, 2015]
I liked this series from the get-go. Sugars is a series of connected one-shots with recurring characters all set in the same school. All of the love is pure with nothing obscene or demeaning. The humor is great too. I cracked up at the 'recipe for life' in the third one shot. I enjoy that this manga touched on "true love fading" and new love arising. With shoujo, you're often coined into thinking all relationships are eternal (unless it's a love ... triangle). I'm excited to see the rest of the development on that.

Art:
The artwork is beautiful, and I usually dislike the pouting boy look featured in shoujo, but here it made the characters look cute. SN: I loved the fashion too! Every character is so stylish. It makes me want to shop for some clothes.

Characters:
Yes! There were no whiny losers here. The few tears that were present weren't bordering on excessive shoujo tears and some were realistic. The resident tsundere Mami wasn't an irrational witch either. <spoiler>She also helped the first couple get together</spoiler>. Honestly, she's pretty nice, just waiting for her turn at love.

Thankfully, the boy character archetypes extended beyond bad boy, tsundere boy, smart dude, and I-hurt-you-because-i-love-you-and-i'm-hot-so-you-don't-care. Now, there was a genki boy/overly cheerful, but he had a flash of maturity, which broke him away from that all-consuming mold. And ... The one bad boy turned out to be more than what met the eye, so he was pretty fleshed out for a one-shot character.

For the girl characters, Akira, Emma, Mami, and Sakura stood out from the norm of shoujo leads.

I like all of the characters so far!

Romance:
The perfect mixture of sweet and humorous is a recipe for love! Again, I like how there's young love, love that faded, and heartbreaks/one-sided love. The smallest of gestures and interactions can turn into love here. These stories will get your romanticism going until you're thinking, "Hmm... The person that served my bagel? I wonder if they are my future lover? The individual who gave me directions ... will they be my 2nd husband/wife, assuming the first doesn't work out?"

Overall:
Please give these one-shots a shot! You can read them in a single sitting or as a stand-alone. Sugars is a fun read to pass time and savor. They are all heartwarming and may give you feels. Plus you can keep your hair intact from not having to rip it out from chronic SCS (Shoujo Crying Syndrome) girls'/guys stupidity.

This is a compilation of one-shots by Yamamori Mika, author of popular manga Hirunaka no Ryuusei.
The art style is not completely the same, but similar. Yamamori-sensei draws faces in a recognizable way that her fans love. What I really like is that every character is looking different - sometimes mangakas can't change anything than a hair colour. Here we have really unique-looking characters, but not only that - they are really different as a whole! Different age, hobbies, personality, gender, every one of them though is battling with love.

Stories are cute and warm, in a good harmony between funny and serious, leaving you with ... a fuzzy feeling. Some characters are 14 years old or below, having their first encounters with love. Some are 20, trying to figure out complicated feelings. You will laugh and smile nostalgically, or melt from cuteness. There are also stories that are more sad, bringing up break-ups and unrequited love, but eventually everything has a happy ending (or gives a feeling of having one in the future).
What is also really interesting, that the stories are linked. If we meet a friend of the protagonist, in the next one-shot we will be introduced to that friend's story from their POV. Characters that we already know often appear in a background of someone else's story, giving a reader subtle uptades on their lives. It's easier and only natural to empathize with characters thanks to that.

The only thing that bugged me, was that sometimes everything was happening too fast. It's hard to show a progress of a feeling in one chapter, I know, but some stories were obviously cliche and predictable, without really a reason behind sudden love. It's nothing big, though. It's shoujo, after all. They were still nice to read! Moreover, not every story is cliche, some are unexpectedly original, so don't worry if you don't like old chestnuts...

I will give it an 8 in overall, but I may change it to 9 after reading other chapters (for now, only 16 are translated). I don't think I would give it less, even if every new story was super cliche!

Some stories were good, others were not. While I started out liking the stories and characters because of how cute and fluffy they were, it didn't stay that way for long.

The author kept on introducing more and more and more and more and more characters throughout the manga to the point that I didn't even remember their names by the last chapter. Most of the storylines are also predictable and some characters were pretty one dimensional. It's sad because there ARE characters and couples that I liked but the author didn't give them enough time to be fleshed out because of how short and unimportant ... their "screen time" always was. Instead, they dragged on plotlines that often have predictable outcomes just to satisfy the audiences' demands. I came here from Daytime Shooting Star because I really liked that one. I wanna say I'm disappointed with this one but I think this came out first so it's understandable that the author is still a little rough in writing characters during this.

With that being said, as I mentioned before, the stories are very wholesome and lovely despite my complaints. The artstyle is beautiful and it fits the stories and characters perfectly. I also applaud the author for having the creativity she has to create all the concept, scenarios and plots to make each story different from one another because there are a LOT of them. And while I did mention that some stories were dragged on longer than others, I don't think it'll be a big deal for most people since all the couples in the manga are very pleasant and the development of their relationships are very interesting to read.

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I'd recommend this to anyone who just wants to read a collection of light romance stories that connects with one another. All in all, this was a pretty nice manga as I didn't want to read anything too serious at the time and was just looking for something sweet, which Sugars very much delivered.