Kyou no Kira-kun
Kira-kun Today

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I found this manga by chance while scrolling through the "Romance" tag on a manga site.

I just spent the past 2 hours reading the entire series.

I have been in tears now for 20 minutes.

The story appears rather simple: boy meets girl, boy has a fatal illness and will die within a year. Despite the seemingly plain premise, what the story does so well, is making you fall in love with the characters.

While every character starts out plain or stereotypical, the depth of every one of them is simply so encapturing. Not only do they keep you turning the page, but they also ... give the heartwarming story a fresh breath of life (no pun intended).

This story will force you to fall in love with a parrot faster than you can blink.

Not only the characters, but the story itself has a life of its own. It's really a journey as it takes you through the beauty and fragility of life and how life should always have a meaning.

It'll break your heart for different reasons than you expected, but it will also warm your heart for those same reasons.

Honestly, one of the best reads I've had in a long time.

I definitely recommend if you're tired of the stereotypical shoujo character tropes and are sturdy enough for an emotional rollercoaster :).

I honestly thought this manga would be your typical Shoujo manga (which I definitely do like) however this manga brought up so much more. The lead character is an introvert caused by a past trauma whose only friend is a bird. She befriends a boy in her class after finding out a very troubling secret about him. Under any other circumstances they would've probably never befriended each other.

The story is well-developed and the characters also develop throughout the story (especially the main character). What I also really love about this manga is that the author made the main male lead a crybaby. This is honestly ... rarely seen in Shoujo manga, and surprised me because it fit the story so well.

tldr;

1. Well developed characters and backstories for the lead characters
2. Unique characteristics added to the lead characters
3. An emotional story that makes you think
4. A heart-warming read.

Definitely recommended.

A Mixed Bag.

Kira-Kun today is the story about an incredibly shy girl who always has a parrot on her shoulder and about a Boy who gets everyone's attention. Both share a secret which in turn sort of connects them. The FMC's secret is that the Parrot can talk and is actually somewhat mature. Whilst the Boy will die in 1 year. So now you have 2 people who share a secret and in turn both people changing each other due to this connection.

Now the FMC is the classic 0 friends, no social skills type heroine. Totally never been done before. Now as you'd expect she ... hides her face using her hair and when she does show her face (pretty early on) she is like the most beautiful person to date. I think the author was going for a contrast of ugly and beautiful. kinda like an ugly duckling story. But honestly its just down without real passion. Like i didn't enjoy the turning into beautiful swan story that much. Like it was done pretty poorly and too quickly. At the same time i was actually upset we couldn't see her face in the beginning I originally thought the author was going for a self insert by not giving her a face. So you know it happened, its over, im glad we are moving on.

Now this is gonna blow your mind. But the MMC is actually kind of an asshole. I know completely original. I think this is the first Shoujo series to ever pull the asshole boyfriend trope. He's also living right next to the FMC. Crazy i know. I do like the reasoning they gave for assholeness though. I mean if you had only 1 year to live you'll do whatever you want too. The MMC is also a bit of a crybaby. I was pretty shocked about this actually. Like he cries alot.... a little too much. Like im not gonna pretend i eat glass or spit or something in my free time but honestly him crying so much actually kinda pulled the series down. Like when he did cry to stuff that you would also want to cry it doesn't have the same effect because he cries all the damn time. This becomes more of an annoying trait than anything else tbh.

The 2 main issue that this series had was probably the friendship between the MMC and the generic bad guy who is upset that the MMC isn't an asshole anymore. I actually remember the generic bad guy's name Yabe. Its a problem because Yabe obsession with the MMC gets really odd. Its one thing to do it for comedic purposes but its another to make there friendship borderline Gay. Im not gonna pretend that Naruto and Saskue bromance is the best in all of manga but it got the job done and kishimoto who wrote it I felt did an excellent job making them feel like best friends. In here Yabe and the MMC relationship feels more like what a yaoi fanatic thinks male friendship works. The 2nd major issue was the illness that the MMC had. I did not care man. They tried to pull the sad shit card and it had no effect. Its really sad too because its one of the major focuses in the series as a whole. There was also love traingles and bad comedic timings. But overall they weren't that much of an issue. Some of them were pretty fucking hillarious though. Soy sauce made me say lol outloud.

What i liked about the series was the romance though, which as you'd expect is pretty important in a romance story. The romance didn't just get the job done. But it was actually much much better than i'd expected. Look at any of the girl and boy blushing for each other you can literally see the love written all over there faces. The author does such an excellent job of making the character be in love. This is of course partially due to the artstyle though. Which really brings out the happiness and love the characters have. Honestly i can talk about the blushing faces for hours. I will say i liked the Heroine's love face more but maybe its cuz im a guy so my opinion might be a bit more skewed on this one.

Another thing i liked was the talking parrot. That parrot is my spirit animal. Its quite hilarious how this series has 1000 human characters and 1 bird character the parrot ends up being the most relatable thing in the series. I liked it when the parrot was observing and his inner thoughts. Who was just like *don't you pussy out*. *just kiss him you dofus*. **FFS**. These thoughts were really the highlight of the series involving the parrot. Now i don't like how they revealed how he can talk. but you know i considered it a minor issue anyway.
I didn't like it when he was cockblocking though. That was also annoying.

The ending was decent though. It wasn't rushed or anything, i just didn't like how it all resolved. I did like the *ending ending* or the last chapter as it were. It got the job done but you'd still expect something more.

TLDR: Good Romance and chemistry between the main characters and parrot but honestly this doesn't really do anything. The ending shoud've been better, If you really have nothing else to read i guess you can check this out. 5/10