Othello 7
March 18, 2006
The end. I’m so sad it’s over. As I usually say, I’m not sure how quality this series is… it doesn’t do anything that makes it stand out among others, but the main character’s really endearing (as are most of the others), the story’s good, and it’s got a bittersweet ending. I really loved this series, and I’m happy to see it wrap up as efficiently as it did.
Can I say anything without spoiling the ending? I wanna talk about how Nana and Yaya **** and how Shohei **** and ELIZABETH! But I don’t want to spoil anything. Just know the ending is very satisfying indeed.
Slightly Biased Manga 
April 28, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I read this series through to the end with great anticipation, and I agree that the series was well written with extraordinarily well developed characters. The plot was excellent, well developed characters that are easy to relate to, very light-hearted with just enough heart-felt moments, intriguing fictional devices to move the whole thing along that you don’t see very often. I liked this review. I think it did the series some justice! ^_~
May 5, 2007 at 1:25 am
Thanks! I loved this series the entire way through, I was so sad it didn’t seem to be very popular. Yaya/Nana is still one of my most fondly remembered characters, even a year and about a million volumes of other series later. I wound up liking Satomi Ikezawa’s other series, Guru Guru Pon-chan, a little more than this one for a lot of the same reasons… really great characters with cute plot stuff going on.
June 27, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for the review! Below are spoilers for the series, so any of you who aren’t finished yet shouldn’t read on.
I just finished the entire manga the other night, and while I really want to love Othello… I find that there’s not much *to* love. Yaya is an incredibly endearing girl, but she often grates on my nerves for how shy and unquestioning she is. Think Peach Girl, but worse. Nearly everyone and anyone takes advantage of her and she doesn’t do a thing. Nana, in that respect, makes me cheer on the inside when she does her thing, but I also find myself disrespecting her because of the way she seems to steer Yaya’s life. I agree that the way the secret of her dual personality was kept from her was genius, but I wish there was more development all around. Moriyama’s mysterious ex-girlfriend, for example, really pissed me off. It was a poor plot point – all she did was beg Mori to take her back, tell Yaya about her dual personality, and disappear. I mean, what? What has she been doing all this time? Pining over Moriyama? And Shohei… he didn’t live up to my expectations, to say the least. All in all, this is a good manga if you want something pretty to stare at, but the plot seems to be little more than the skeleton of something great that may never be fleshed out. I’m tempted to make a manga based off of it and improve it for how disappointed I am.
June 29, 2007 at 3:01 pm
Thanks for posting, I think you hit the nail on the head with everything about it I knew wasn’t up to standard. It’s really not a spectacular series, I think I just liked some of the characters really, REALLY well. Pretty much everything you said is absolutely true (especially the thing with Moriyama’s girlfriend, which really was from left field), and I can totally see how a lot of people could be disappointed in the end. I really did love it a lot, but it was quite flawed and middle-of-the-road.
March 15, 2008 at 1:27 am
I finished it about a month ago, and Othello is my favorite manga. I know that there’s a lot of flaws in the series–it’s not always consistently good (volume five kind of pissed me off, not the whole volume anyway, but the conclusion to the Hano arc was so lazy), and for the record, the writing can be well…generally lazy. For me, the reason I enjoyed it so much was that I really related to the characters in a way I usually can’t. Especially right now, when I’m really struggling with school and often feel like my friends take advantage of me, so Yaya’s personal growth was something I could really relate to, and even aspire to. The characters are really the major draw to the series, if you ask me. Also, I like Led Zeppelin (that helped a great deal!).
Anyways, I hope that helped you put your finger on what’s so likable about Othello, even if it’s just my experience (:
March 16, 2008 at 2:18 am
You’re definitely right, Ikezawa can definitely write good characters. I remember liking most of the main characters in Othello a lot (it’s been awhile since I’ve read it), but her other series, Guru Guru Pon-chan, was absolutely spectacular because of its characters. It has a somewhat directionless plot in favor of one-shot stories (sometimes a couple chapters in length), and while it has one of the stupidest premises for manga I’ve ever seen, it’s got the best characters on Earth. It’s harder to relate to Ponta and Mirai in the same way as Yaya, but they’ve got one of the cutest and most sincere romances I’ve ever read, if you’re into that sort of thing.