 Hey everybody, welcome back to A Week in Geekdom, Gio here and today we're going to be reviewing Seven Seas Entertainment's release of The Conditions of Paradise. Welcome back to the channel, everybody, and yeah, first off, I want to give a massive shout out and big thank you to Seven Seas Entertainment for making this review possible for you guys. They sent a copy my way and I wanted to check it out because I'm all up for reviewing any sort of manga, comic, anime, all that fun stuff. That's what we do in the channel, right? The Conditions of Paradise, a charming manga series about adult women in love by the superstar Yuri manga artist behind titles such as Yuri Bear Storm and Hanyuku Yoshi. So yeah, this is written by Akiko Morishima and it is a romance Yuri manga. So The Conditions of Paradise, at first I made the foolish assumption, which was pretty hilarious. I thought when it was coming out, I thought, oh, okay, so it's going to be a Yuri manga about these two charming young adult ladies and the trials and tribulations and this juicy dramatic story of how they fall in love and all that stuff because you might not know this about me, but I'll tell you a little bit of a secret. I love a good drama. Some of my favorite things are drama heavy and slice of life and good dramatic love stories. None of that lovey-dovey stuff, like real meat, you know? So when I saw the book, I foolishly thought, okay, so this is going to be a really juicy romantic story about in the case of the first couple that I'm going to mention how they fall in love and the, like I said, all the problems that arise from it being in a relationship like that and it turned out to be completely different than what I had anticipated. It turns out The Conditions of Paradise is, in fact, a manga series that chronicles short tales, short adventures of different young adult women, like I said at the beginning of the video. So that was a huge disappointment. The first story involved Serena and her best friend, Sumi. Sumi often stays at Serena's place and they've grown to like each other and all that stuff. One of the characters doesn't think a relationship could work or could be formed from that because Sumi is a freelance writer and the other character, Serena, is an office worker. So, okay, I thought, yeah, you know, we're going to have a fun story about these two characters coming together and forming a wholesome, beautiful relationship. And you do get that, but instead it's cut short because it's an anthology series. So what soon follows is different stories with different couples and their conundrum of getting together. It's never done in a tasteless manner. It's done pretty well for the most part. Like you'll have another story with two girls that there's a big age difference between them. One's 20. The other's 30. 30? 30. That's the dynamic of a young person falling in love with an older person. I also see somebody in, I want to say just leaving high school or something like that. Frank, to be frank with you guys, I wasn't a huge fan of the format and that's partly my fault for not doing proper research and not figuring out, hey, it's an anthology series. And the problem with that, you're probably saying, hey, there's nothing wrong with that. And that's true. But the problem that arises is that when it's an anthology, you're only given a certain amount of pages to tell a story, a complete story. And while there is a short payoff in the long run, most of these stories just have the same unique setup under different circumstances, of course, but there's the unique setup. The problem is there and it gets resolved in a somewhat similar fashion and that's it. You move on to the next tale without really grounding your characters and making you literally or in a meta sort of way fall in love with those characters and that you want to root for. In this case, it's love, mature romance stories or whatever. You want them to succeed, but you also want to learn about these characters and feel what they're feeling. You want to express the happiness and love that they're expressing. You want to feel that as the reader because you're going along the ride with them. So that's usually my main problem with stories like this. The art for most of the book is pretty simple. The characters look pretty and refined and it's not until the last story, which happened to be my favorite, involving the princess from fuel Japan and the sakura tree. I think it was a sakura tree. I really liked that story and it was a little bit longer compared to some of the other tales, although the one that I said at the beginning with Serena and Sumi, that was the larger one or the longer one, I should say. But for the most part, the art is very simple with very minimal backgrounds, except for that last one which I thought was properly set up in a way where I immersed myself in the story even though it got a little bit fantastical near the end. But you know, with tropes and folklore and stuff that I ended up really enjoying it. So yeah, the characters for the most part, they are quick snippets into the minds of interesting adult women going through issues and problems and you figuring out, okay, so this character is like this and how is she going to get rid of a stigma or how is she going to move forward and fall in love with this other person. For the most part, it's very simplistic, which I'm at a stage in my life where I kind of wanted a little bit more of a tearjerker, deeper complex examination of love and romanticism. I don't know. I don't even know what I just said right there, but you heard it, it's on tape. Nobody says tape. I don't know what's wrong with me. The actual writing for some of the stories, the first one was great. I enjoyed the drama unfolding between two characters that don't know if their career paths are in sync with one another and if they can make a romance happen, but for the most part, a good chunk of the material I felt was a little bit fluffier in content and not as strong as the opening tale. There was another one with, like I mentioned earlier, the 20-year-old woman and a 30-year-old kid, which was interesting because you're doing a play on the whole age thing, the 20-year-old being like the more mature and the 30-year-old being more insecure. So yeah, for the most part these stories play on those sensibilities and the fault in characters. So with that said, would I recommend this book? On a personal level, there is some enjoyment in how simple and carefree and pretty some of these stories are and love in its purest form is a beautiful thing to behold. So I don't mind, but it's not something that I would wholeheartedly recommend simply because I didn't enjoy it as much as maybe some other people might. I was expecting something completely different, maybe that's skewing my review for this book, but still it's fine to break out of the mold and read something that you're not used to. I don't usually go for Yuri manga or even romance in manga. I prefer that in your anime or regular live-action movies, stuff like that. But to read something like this is pretty fun. It opens your eyes and sensibilities to other people and other writing styles and other art styles and all that stuff. So yeah, at least I do believe it's an ongoing title. You are going to see variations of it. You're getting eight tales of love, romance, and yeah, the different trials that these characters are going to express themselves in a world that is so judgmental simply because it's of the same sex, which, you know, I hate that. People should be able to love one another and be happy. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Also, a big thanks to Seven Seas Entertainment for making this review possible and sending a copy my way. I am eternally grateful and it's so awesome and it's so freaking great that in a world where people, or I should say companies, they go by numbers. You have a company like Seven Seas Entertainment that is more than happy to help out small content creators online, whether it's a blog or a reviewer on friggin' Amazon or on YouTube, where you're watching me right now. They give everybody a shot at reviewing their products and that's awesome. Nobody does that these days. And so for them to take a gamble and then be like, yeah, sure, go ahead. We'll send you some stuff. I am eternally grateful. Thank you so very much. Thank you for all of you for watching, for liking, commenting, subscribing and being a part of a week and keep them here on YouTube. As always, follow me on social media, hit the little bell icon so you know when new videos pump up. I've got to go. I will catch all of you on the next episode.