Seize Ristorante Paradiso Constructed By Natsume Ono Distributed As Interactive EBook

didn't get on all that well with this one, It wasn't terrible, but I'm not quite sure how it's got so much critical acclaim,

The story setup intrigued me: a girl is abandoned by her mother as a child because her mother falls in love with a man that doesn't want to date women with children.
Once she's grown into a young women, the girl decides to go and confront her mother and the man that she is still with, with the truth, Throw in the backdrop of an Italian restaurant staffed incongruously with only older bespectacled men, and you've at least got a good hook for people like me who are after something a bit offthewall in their comics entertainment.


The main problem I had with the comic tho was the writing, Things just seemed to happen because that's what the author wanted to write, rather than the characters actually causing things to happen because of who they were, One example: at the start, the daughter thinks to herself that she doesn't understand the appeal of the allolderbespectacledmale waiting staff at the restaurant, but the very next time she sees one of the staff she immediately starts to think how sexy he is.


The author could have written it as if the daughter's mind changed over time, or even that there was something specific about the man that suddenly caught her attention, but in fact she just seemed to contradict herself entirely in the space of just a couple of pages at the start of the book.


There also really isn't much of an emotional impact anywhere in the book around the daughter and the mother's relationship, which is a missed

trick in my opinion, given the plot.


The artwork is probably going to be marmite to a lot of people: you'd love it or hate it, Its drawn with nib pens in quite a scratchy, quick style, Personally there are moments where I think the artwork is quite beautifully balanced, but most of the time its quite ugly to me, It's reminiscent of the kind of pen illustrations you might get in a magazine about wine which is actually pretty fitting, considering the Italian restaurant backdrop, but I'm not really a fan of that style of illustration unfortunately.


All of the supposedly sexy male staff at the restaurant were drawn looking pretty similar, so at points they were very hard to tell apart from each other.
The choice to give everyone elongated, spindly bodies and hands was probablyconscious on the part of the creator, but again, I'm just not a fan of that style of art it screams 'I'm out of proportion!' to me :S

So I would say flip through a few pages of this book if you can before buying and take a look at the art if you love the art then you'll probably forgive the story a bit.
But if you're a fan of enigmatic tall older men with glasses, you should probably just go straight out and buy this anyway Uuuuh, . . huh Why did I buy this

It's supposed to be a prequel for a series, but it made me want to stop halfway through the thing, not even looking at the next books.
The drawing style was really janky and the romance was confusing and uncomfortable, The only thing I sorta liked was the mom's character, but she was annoying as well, I feel like we started at zero and came nowhere, Nothing really developed past the first chapter except for the mom, I can't say I recommend reading this manga, A graphic novel about a young woman who goes to Italy to confront her absent mother, She arrives to find her mother in an idyllic love, surrounded by handsome gentlemen, As her jealousy intensifies she also finds herself hesitant to break that idyllic world as she falls in love as well,

The characters in the novel already have a presence, and I wasn't surprised to find out that there is already another graphic novel about them,

I was interested to find it completely different from other works by Japanese artists, in art as well as to some extent content, There is one thing I noted though that seems to be common in Japanese works and that thing is a harem, This one was a little different in that, unlike most manga, it did not consist of young girls and the people in the harem were not all in love with the same dude.
This harem consisted of older, glasses wearing men, And they all had separate personalities and lives that did not completely revolve around one person,

So, although I, for the main part, do not like harem style comedies etc, I did like this story, I also didn't think, unlike so many things in fiction, that the ending was too forced or happy ever after, I liked the openendedness of it, and the little vignettes at the end,

This is the second graphic novel I've read by Natsume Ono and so far I've been very impressed by the originality and maturity of the work.
Too short to be anything amazing, but a good comfort read, Nicoletta has moved to Rome to confront her mother for abandoning her, however she discovers a lot by actually spending time with her, and even experiences burgeoning love.
The love interest is an older gentleman by the name of Claudio who is going through his own abandonment issues with his exwife, Nicoletta has difficulty deciding what stance to take, she knows that before Claudio can even think of having a relationship, he has to let go, Ono's easygoing drawing style is not as refined as some, but it does have a unique tone and some finer points, Deep eyes and long mouths give many of the characters a peaceful and kindly look that one associates with the elderly, Even though there are some initial troubles, few stories and styles can bring the word "contentment" to mind, Like the gentlemen of the restaurant, this manga is for those with a more refined and quiet taste in romance and sliceoflife,.stars

This was lovely and peaceful, Surprisingly I was more invested into development of relationship between mother and daughter than in romance, The romance is on prerelationship stage during the entire book but it was cute, I liked Nicoletta and Claudio scenes together,

The art was pretty but a bit rough I had trouble figuring out whos who because many characters have similar designs, This is a tough book to review it is visually stunning, but the story is silly, I will admit I kept wanting to know what would happen next even though I found it trite, . . I did buy Gente, so that says something more about me than the book, En el amor no existen reglas, Siempre es fortuito, extraño, arrollador, No importa cuánto nos preparemos o cuanto lo neguemos, pues cuando nos alcanza es como un rayo que nos atraviesa no sólo es inevitable y destruye aquello que éramos hasta entonces, sino que además nunca podemos saber cuándo ocurrirá.
Si es que alguna vez ocurre,

Aunque Natsume Ono es prácticamente desconocida en nuestro país cosecha un importante éxito crítico tanto en EEUU como en Japón.
También en buena parte de Europa, A ello contribuye un dibujo de ecos manga, pero más estilizado al redundar en la línea clara, donde todo se juega en una composición de viñetas que no teme al espacio en blanco.
No existe diferencia alguna entre dibujo y diseño, Una viñeta en blanco o un espacio más prominente entre viñetas puede dar a entender tanto como la sucesión de dibujos, remitiendo a las formas más elegantes del género.
Ono siempre sabe dónde colocar la cámara para retratar con exactitud la sensación que quiere transmitir, pero lo hace tanto con el dibujo como con el viñetado o su distribución tanto con la imagen como la composición o el montaje.
Elementos estos últimos que no pocas veces descuidan dibujantes muy bien considerados en Occidente,

Su única pega es narrativa, Al ceñirse hacia cierta linealidad donde los flashback van sólo en relación al descubrimiento inmediato, consigue retratar de forma certera el tempo propio del slice of life, pero también pierde la oportunidad de ir más allá.
De no sólo ser un excelente slice of life, sino un manga perfecto, Algo que se hace evidente en lo desaprovechada que se siente la relación entre el dueño del restaurante y Gigi,

Pero, de qué restaurante estamos hablando Del Ristorante Paradiso, Un restaurante donde todos los empleados son hombres con gafas para vista cansada, Auténticos caballeros. Y allí aparecerá Nicoletta, hija del dueño del restaurante, para aclarar con su madre su disgusto por haber sido abandonada durante quince años, Al menos hasta que decide hacerle el favor de no delatarla por el momento de que es su hija en parte por un cierto amor soterrado y en parte porque Claudio, el jefe de camareros que le lleva más de veinte años, ha conseguido despertar su curiosidad.
O tal vez algo más,

Aquí el conflicto se dilucida en si Nicoletta revelará el secreto de su madre, que tiene una hija, mientras que su relación con Claudio o las revelaciones de los demás miembros del restaurante alimentan, de forma extraordinaria, la forma de ver el mundo de Nicoletta.
Cada pequeño paso nos hace comprender mejor cómo o porqué hace cada uno de los involucrados lo que hace y, con nosotros, también aprende Nicoletta, que descubre que, aunque sea difícil de comprender, cada persona está dispuesta a llegar hasta diferentes lugares por amor.
No todos haríamos lo mismo en la misma situación,

De ahí que la única pega que podamos sacarle sea ínfima, Su modo de narrar es perfecto, no tiene debilidades o incoherencias mas al contrario, es uno de los slice of life más inteligentes que pueden leerse no sólo en el manga, sino en la literatura en general, por lo cual la queja va más bien sobre su trascendencia.
Sobre la posibilidad de, dando mayor peso hacia ciertos elementos de tensión la culpa que siente Gigi, el carácter agrio de Luciano, pudiera explorarse con mayor profundidad el contexto.
Pero entonces hubiera necesitado más de un tomo, Y Ristorante Paradiso, tal y como es, ya es casi perfecto,

Partiendo de esa idea, sólo nos cabe esperar que en el futuro podamos leer más obras de Natsume Ono, Y con un poco de suerte, que logre la popularidad que se merece, A fin de cuentas, no todos los días podemos leer una historia tan excepcional que parece, como el amor, demasiado real como para reducirse a la mera pasión.
Nicoletta comes to Rome, determined to get a little revenge on the mother who abandoned her when she was small, Olga is married to the owner of a quaint little restaurant in the heart of Rome, and Nicoletta shows up unannounced, Only to be intrigued by the waitstaff, all of whom are suave, bespectacled gentlemen over fifty, And most especially by kind Claudio, Despite a significant age difference, Nicoletta is in danger of falling in love,

A charming blend of restrained romance and family drama, with motherdaughter moments providing most of the character development, There's less in this single volume than was in the anime, but I suspect the adapters borrowed from the threevolume sequel, Gente, which I'm diving into next! Basically set in a maid cafe for women who think older distinguished gentlemen in glasses are sexy, it follows Nicoletta, ayear old who tracks down her mother, now the wife of the owner of the aforementioned restaurant.
Nicoletta develops a heartsinhereyes crush on one of the waiters, but he's still in love with his exwife, There's some drama and pining, there's some backstory about all the waiters, there's a lot of art that seems to mostly be hair and glasses, I have nothing against hair and glasses,

I wish I could remember how this ended up on my toread pile, I expect a certain level of ridiculousness from shojo/josei manga, and this cleared the bar with feet to spare, Interesting read!! I love stories that slowly introduce you to individual members of an ensemble, Also really enjoyed the restaurant setting, Main character wasn't super my favourite though and I found some of the men in the restaurant to be a little dull, I really liked the tone and the ideas behind the characters, but the story was a little too thin and there were a few too many characters to keep track of without enough space for their development.
I'm curious whether I'll like Gente better, since that's a collection of smaller stories focusing on each character, It makes sense that Ono would shift focus and do that with this concept, .