Read Ri-chan Ch. 60 on MangaDex!
I’ve been following this one for a while and was sort of undecided about it. It’s a page-a-day webcomic, self-published on Twitter. Or more precisely, it’s two pages a day, with the main story pages on Twitter and bonus pages on Fanbox. It was apparently partly inspired by Zyugoya’s When I Returned to My Hometown, My Childhood Friend Was Broken and is a similar set-up, though there’s no sexual content (even in the Fanbox pages) - this childhood friend was broken by a different chain of events. So it seemed sort of derivative, and the translations were apparently machine and sort of iffy. And slow. So I just wasn’t sold.
Then, yesterday, a scanlator called fettyman posted 119 pages - 60 regular chapters and 59 corresponding bonus chapters, starting from the beginning. And with quality translations and enough pages to get a grasp on the somewhat disjointed and sprawling story, I can say I think it’s actually pretty good. It still sort of feels like a freshman effort and the gimmick of alternating every main story page with a non-story bonus page makes it sort of awkward to read straight through, but it has heart, and some great moments. And Ri-chan is an intriguing character with an interesting history.
The inspiration really shows, but I think this storys execution is much better. (Maybe a bit biased because I read this in one sitting, and Zyugoyas while it was releasing. Thank you for sharing this.
That’s a lot of the advantage of getting all of these chapters at once. As I noted, I was already following this, but wasn’t really sold on it. And part of the problem was that it was out to 30 or so chapters, and we still hadn’t really learned much about Ri-chan.
But the thing is that this one’s moving slower and going into much more detail, so instead of suddenly slapping us with a condensed version of the history of her trauma, and with virtually no context, we’re getting things slowly fleshed out. And yeah - I think it’s better execution in the long run. It just needed enough chapters to really get moving.
Another notable difference is that this one has introduced more characters, and I think that’s going to be better in the long run too. We’ve already gotten glimpses into Ri-chan’s relationships with both of her parents, and seen clues to how she came to be who she is. And we’ve already seen that her mom is apparently not as cold and distant as she initially appeared to be, and I fully expect more revelations about them.
Glad you liked it.
I really enjoy Zyugoya works, but he’s got a bit of a problem with taking on too many projects simultaneously, and easily losing interest in them.
With When I returned to my hometown, my childhood friend was broken, he went a little too deep (and dark) with the premise/background of Kyouko, after he realized it he rushed it through rather than letting it drag the story down. Probably for the best, as its much better after going the full wholesome route.
In Ri-chan most character already got some degrees of background, so it feels much more fleshed out. Another strong point is that everyone is trying their best, while not succeeding particularly well. Ri-chan’s father divorcing in a loveless marriage, the mother worrying about their daughter future, Ri-chan being aimless after failure. Each kinda tragic, but still relatable. Im really looking forward for more of this.
Bit on a rant here, so lets end on sidenote: neither male mc have eyes drawn for them, kinda funny
