A review by dragonlilly
Sasaki and Miyano: First Years, Vol. 1 by Kotoko Hachijo, Shou Harusono

emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced

4.0

Kotoko Hachijo did such an amazing job novelizing all these scenes. It was nice getting first person point of views for the different side characters, so we were able to find out a lot more about their personal lives, struggles, and thoughts which we don't see in the manga. I feel like I understand Kuresawa and Tashiro as characters a lot better than before, and it was cool to see certain scenes and stories that were in the manga, but received added detail in this novel. It was also neat to see how perceptive Tashiro is in terms of Sasaki and Miyano's relationship, and we even find out that Tashiro witnessed a manga scene that proved what Tashiro believed about Sasaki's feelings, which was a neat and fitting revelation. We even learn more about Sasaki, who was dipping into a negative state during the start of high school, but after meeting Miyano, he starts to make a promise to himself that he wouldn't see everything as a pain anymore. The new illustrations that come with this novel are cute too, and overall this book is a great supplement that adds to what we know from the first two volumes of the manga series.