nitroglycerin's Reviews (952)

Find me someone who isn’t charmed by this tale of Akria and Haruo.

It’s 1991, the third generation of gaming is in full swing. Arcades are a haven for middle-school students Haruo, who isn’t good at much else but has mad gaming skills, and Akira, who is rich, and good at everything but, has so much pressure put upon her.
At first Haruo finds Akiras presence in his “sanctuary” annoying, but as the chapters unfold, his feelings change. 

I knew I’d love the manga. I already fell head over heels for the anime. It is SO good being able to revisit the story from the beginning though.

A useful book for people who don’t know what’s its like to have MH issues, a way to understand the inner workings of a different brain. Probably very useful to people with MH issues too. 

Release has me torn. It is a book of two halves. One, a wonderful coming of age, gay love story, two a supernatural, magical realism, ghost story. For people who have read The Rest Of Us Just Live Here by Ness the format will be familiar: alternating chapters telling two stories. In TROUJLH it works because Ness is pointing out the mundane side stories that happen alongside the fantastical tales we usually get. In Release, however, the two tales don’t really match and gel together.
Adams story is excellently and sympathetically executed, taking us through the day in his life where he gets release from the break-up that broke his heart and the conflict within his family.
The ghost story, the magical faun and his fae queen though, I don’t really know what the deal was there other than it also ended with a kind of release.
Had this just been a novella with Adams story I might have rated this a wee bit higher (that deserves a 4), but it isn’t. It isn’t a long book by any means, but the extra pages taken up by the random magical realism detracts a star for me.