Now that a day's past I'm going to go over my thoughts on Ai-Ren in a little more detail. There will be big spoilers.
I'm still thinking about it. Not just the ending, all of it. While at work today it was the most frequent thing on my mind. Yesterday whenever I thought of it tears would start coming up but today I'm fine, which is good, since this is only a manga >_> but the fact that tears came up at all is a true testiment to its effectiveness. When Ai dies, it just hits you like a brick wall. The way it's revealed, too, where in the previous chapter Ai was fine. Then in the next chapter, through conversations of other characters, you realize she's died. It isn't even completely spelled out until it transitions to Ikiru going home, and walking around, its emptiness very evident. A house without Ai. Those scenes now are fighting to well up some tears in me. That was the first point when reading that I cried yesterday. It doesn't stop there of course. Then Ikiru watches the videos he made with Ai... so incredibly sad. Ai was given to him for comfort, he loved her and her him, they lived happy lives and knew of their fates, and now, Ai has passed before Ikiru, and Ikiru is now living a life without Ai. His own condition gets worse, and then he dies in a terrorist attack from the opposing humans from that stupid sub-plot or whatever. His final words, as they extended for pages and pages on a black backdrop, were so hard to read. And then the second to last chapter, Ai's sketches for her diary. And finally, in the end of it all, Ikiru's sensei a year later living in a world without Ai or Ikiru, caring for the child Ikiru and Ai left behind, who's in an irrepairable state... or so thought. At the very end, a miracle happens, and it would seem that the child rivives into consciousness.
That whole last volume had me in tears really. I have never been so struck with emotion when reading anything at all, period. Ai-Ren is a masterpiece. Unquestionably it is my favourite manga of all time. The sub-plots held it back a little and weren't as fun to read as the experiences Ai and Ikiru shared but they had their own sadness to them, and they wound up being an important factor of the story. So, overall, great fucking read.
I also went on a purchase splurge over these past two weeks. Lots of monies down the drain! Here's what I bought;
Love Hina (manga) vols. 2 - 9
Kare First Love vol 2
Strawberry Panic (manga) vol 2
Welcome to the NHK (manga) vols 2 & 3
Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Set I
Android Kikaider Complete Series
Love Hina is replacing Strawberry 100% as my light-hearted manga of choice for reading, and is the primary published manga I'll be focusing on. The second volume of Strawberry Panic will wrap up the manga releases for that series, apparently it was discontinued and not actually finished so I'm interested to see how that volume goes. Gundam SEED was kind of an impulse buy because I don't know anything about Gundam, but I want to try a mech anime and apparently that's a damned good one. Kikaider I'm getting because I AM going to watch it eventually, I know I was meh over the first ep but whatever, I'll finish it out at some point.
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