Asuks magazine (which is where Uraboku was published) shared various covers for their 41st anniversary which included multiple Uraboku covers. Glad to see they haven’t forgotten about the series! (I promise neither have I ;w;) The last one says:
Yippe wahey I sure love putting characters together go forth my snakejam
Made a magazine version cause one of my friends said it looked like it could be on a cover, but I got silly with it so it looks like this now
Reference image and translation/explanation of the text under the cut, bonus points to anyone who might possibly recognise what I'm referencing without looking :D
If anyone actually recognises Uraboku I'll be surprised lol
Also known as Uragiri wa Boku no Namae o Shitteiru, or Uraboku for short. (since..yeah that’s a long name LOL)
I actually haven’t properly finished this series! And if I’m honest, the hyperfixation has worn off a bit ^^” but i still enjoy it / find it interesting enough to me to make it the media of the month!
Due to me not having read the full series, i hope it is a given that I do not wish for spoilers…
i was introduced to it by the anime and went in practically blind besides the minor details i read on Wikipedia and Crunchyroll’s blurb (as I typically like doing). I grew to find it very cool and fascinating, and ended up loving a lot of the characters. but something felt a bit off….
Characters kept mentioning things that would never happen, things felt faster paced or condensed. And uh, pretty much every single episode ended on a cliffhanger LOL. I had a feeling it was a case of the manga, the original version of the work, being rewritten and condensed to fit the needs of the anime.
I ended up being right. My library had volumes 2 and 3 of the omnibus releases, and i was shocked by just how different things were! entire scenes were rewritten or entirely removed. and i’m not even halfway through Vol. 2! So if you plan to look into this for yourself, i highly recommend finding a way to read the manga before watching the anime.
The art is also very nice in my opinion! I love the many more gothic / alternative influences, and the general way characters are drawn.
(yes, there’s a little dorito chin action…but i have seen Way worse, and i am sure you have as well… somehow the way it’s drawn here is more natural looking to me than others)
★✩★✩★✩★✩
In relation to the content of the series itself, I find it pretty cool! A lot of what I’ll say is from what I’ve seen in the anime, as it is the only thing of Uraboku that i have seen all the way through. Though I hope that a lot of what I want to see or have assumed of the story will be specified or otherwise further expanded upon when I continue the manga.
There are a lot of queer implications between most main pairs of characters, which just makes me enjoy it more. (wooo yaoi!)
There is a huge focus on supernatural powers, past lives, demons, and a centuries old war. Y’know, anime stuff LOL
But this series does it in a way I haven’t really seen before, that I don’t quite know how to describe. I would recommend seeing it for yourself if it sounds interesting!
And as far as I’m aware, the typical things I worry about when digging into obscure 2000’s anime/manga (Incest and uncomfortable age gaps) are very minimal, if present at all. There is a pair of siblings who are main characters, and while sometimes they do seem a little too close, it is not really presented in a way that is very romantic, at least in my eyes. In the manga this is slightly different, as I remember a joke about a “sister complex”, since they are so close, but I haven’t read enough to confirm if it is much of a problem for me. And the other character had acknowledged and mentioned it was strange, which I typically don’t see.
When it comes to age gaps, it’s a bit more complicated? I tend to try and look past it when it comes to this series. As far as I’m aware all of the main character pairings are first and second year highschool students, with the exception of the main character (a first year student), who is paired with a demon who is clearly immortal in some way. It’s more of a trivial nitpick on my end, as I actually like their dynamic. It is very tame from what I’ve seen so far, and the main character is a reincarnation of the demon’s past love interest which is why there are any romantic implications at all. And while the demon is devoted to him, i have yet to see any true advances on either’s end. It’s typically just sort of sweet and not painfully in your face. Well done in my opinion.
I am very picky when it comes to depictions of these topics and would usually rather there wasn’t any at all, but that is unfortunately difficult to come by with anime/manga, especially older ones. If this series has passed my critique, it’s pretty tame! And i commend it for that. But if you look into it for yourself, you should come to your own conclusions.
★✩★✩★✩★✩
Overall, i’d rate this series a 4.7/5 and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for something a bit angsty, lore heavy, unique, and full of demons and shipping potential.
Oh, and there’s an adorable sidekick creature who can turn into a cat boy (and a huge dragon). What more could you want! (he’s my favorite character…)
★✩★✩★✩★✩
If you actually read this far…jeez LOL, i’m flattered…
doing this “media of the month” thing really is just an excuse for me to yap about things i like. so I really appreciate the interest in what I have to say! (≧∀≦)♡
this post will most likely blend into being the post for august as well (or later if i end up not having a different piece of media to showcase…) until i can freshly start on the first of a month. i just couldn’t wait hehe…
and i am so sorry for any inconsistent grammar… i cannot be bothered to fix it and was stuck between formal and informal throughout the entirety of writing this (T◡T)
