Nanae Chrono

I'm still not quite understanding the gist of this series, but I feel like I got a bit closer with this volume. I really should have finished watching the animated series first (since the book are officially a sequel), but oh well... The major points in this storyarc are the establishment of community issues - both that of sickness and its effects within a closed population, and of political divisions. Honestly, this was mostly just precursor to the larger storylines, but now I feel like I can go into the next volume with some idea of how the story could progress.… (meer)

I'm still not 100% sure that I understand the point of this series... Obviously the story is set in a very specific time period in Japanese history, with historical characters, events, and behaviors alluded to, but I'm not really up on my Japanese history and therefore feel like I'm missing a lot of things. Some of the cultural references are clear (and others are common to most traditional cultures), but it's difficult to figure out who the Shinsengumi are for or against when I'm not even sure who the ruling political/military parties of Japan are at this time period.… (meer)