Originally posted Aug. 5, 2009
By REBECCA P.
My thoughts
I really love short story collections which is what drew me to A Perfect Day for Love Letters. In it, we’re introduced to five short stories about different people (not necessarily high school students) finding letters of love that give them a hope of love or new love. Now, despite being a fan of short story collections, I found this one to be fairly disappointing, yet a good read.
To start off, the artwork isn’t pretty. It’s very simple and I found her character designs to be ugly. Even the backgrounds are as simple as necessary and something an amateur artist could easily do. It’s not the worst I’ve seen, but for readers who are picky about art styles, this may be a troubling series.
Artwork aside, the short stories themselves make up a little for the artwork. The stories are simple and are clichéd to an extent, but at the same time they do tell an interesting story. There are some hard issues dealt with in one or two of the stories, but there’s not enough emotional draw to them. The tricky thing about short stories in manga is they either affect you or seem like pointless garbling.
That being said, the premises are interesting. In a day where we are surrounded by technology, handwritten letters, especially love letters, are rare commodities; it’s a fresh idea. The stories have clichés and predictability, but they also have fresh dabs of something new making for a hit or miss collection of individual stories for the reader.
It’s hard to say whether I’d recommend A Perfect Day for Love Letters. The artwork isn’t great, the stories are hit or miss (I’ve seen better short-story collections), but the premise is interesting. If you want something a little different, you might find A Perfect Day for Love Letters a decent book to read through once. The same can be said of fans of short story collections. If you’re looking for romance, I wouldn’t recommend it because there are better stories on the market. If none of the above applies, I’d skip A Perfect Day for Love letters. It’s not a perfect collection, but some readers will enjoy George Asakura’s stories.
