Hanaizawa-chou Kouminkan-dayori (original) (raw)

Hanaizawa-chou Kouminkan-dayori (or Hanaizawa Citizen Centre News in the translation I read) is a series of mostly individual stories taking place in this one small town that has been isolated from the rest of society via a mysterious barrier that appeared one day.

Some of the stories are light-hearted while others are emotionally evocative and more often than not depressing. With the tone of the first chapter, all that come after it have that sense of sadness knowing what happened to everyone in this story. Though it is sometimes comforting to read a chapter where nothing in particular goes wrong, but then you should be... careful that the next chapter might be really sad.

Many character never appear more than once, but we do receive multiple characters that make several appearances over the course of the manga. The story likes to jump across the timeline of when the town was full of life to when it became empty. The first couple chapters usually in broad terms establishes when the chapter takes place, but this goes away after a certain point, which to me kind of emphasizes how time just sort of vanishes for the people in this town as their lives continue onward isolated from the rest of the world.

I feel like the art is average, but personally I like the style of Tomoko Yamashita.

There isn't really a strong narrative to the manga, so if you want a linear storyline, you won't be getting it. A good portion of the chapters focuses on a single character's perspective and that is the most story you will get. I think this manga is good on a reread cause you can try to piece together the order of events, see if characters appear in other chapters, and get an overall sense of what the state of the town is at.

I gave it a 8 cause overall I really enjoyed it. It's short and it tells a good story, and the experience left me thinking on what life would be like for me in such a situation. No chapter drags on for too long. I left the manga wanting more, but I am content with the ending I received. I feel like this is a story which could have gone on for many more chapters, but the amount of experiences that were put into 20 chapters was still excellent.