Until Death Do Us Part Fanfiction Review

Until Death Do Us Part is a Japanese seinen manga written by Hiroshi Takashige and drawn by Double-S. Even though its target demographic is 18-30 year old males, it appears to have attracted a large female following, mainly due to its romantic undertones.

Until Death Do Us Part tells the tale of a twelve year old pre-cognitive girl, Haruka Toyama, who appeals for aid from Mamoru Hijikata, a blind swordsman with a dubious past. Haruka is pursued by nefarious companies who wish to use her special ability for their own gain. Mamoru reluctantly agrees to help her and unwittingly involves himself in a world of intrigue, violence and corruption. A place he isn’t necessarily unfamiliar, nor uncomfortable with.

Sixteen Going On Seventeen by Kyia Star

Plot

’Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ most definitely belongs in the fluff category. It is, in essence, an idealised tale of the progression of young love; from a young woman’s first kiss, through to marriage and the start of a family. This all happens within the confines of two chapters and around fifteen thousand words.

Conflict is what pushes a plot forward, whether that be internal, external, character-based or plot-based. Sadly, there appears to be only a mild attempt at inserting some conflict into this story, with a seemingly random encounter with some ‘goons’ early on, and slight disapproval of the marriage event by some background characters which is easily resolved. It looks as if the driving force in this fiction is the various symbolisms of love, which have been heavily romanticised.

Nevertheless, bearing in mind that this fiction is fluff/romance, then it would be natural for the plot to focus on the relationship between the two main characters. The first chapter progresses nicely and at a reasonable pace. The second chapter does feel a little rushed in comparison, though.

Characterisation

Characterisation is not only difficult to write in fanfiction, but also to review, as a lot of it comes down to personal perspective. However, as the author has said in her author notes, she felt that Mamoru was portrayed ‘out of character’ at times. I have to agree with this assessment. He is a very emotionally withdrawn character, and it feels completely out of place that he would voice his feelings in the ways he has.

Haruka on the other hand is relatively true to her original manga self. The story takes place several years after  the manga as of its current release, so gives plenty of leeway when it comes to character development and growth.

The background characters, Sierra, Igawa, Juliet et al, feel as if they are mainly there for comic relief. There is a slight amount of conflict from mainly Sierra’s side, but it doesn’t prove much of a hindrance for Mamoru and Haruka. The main aspects of their characters have been portrayed accurately, even though their reactions may appear a little immature when compared to their age, although this may have been intended for comedic value.

Grammar

Overall, the story is well written, with only a few mistakes here and there. It is one of the more easily readable fanfics out there, grammar-wise.

Style

’Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ uses a third person, multiple perspective narrative style. This can often be difficult to pull off correctly, but the author has done well by not flitting between different characters too often thus making the narrative easy to follow.

The author tends to focus on dialogue more often than not, which is certainly a good tool for pushing a piece of fiction forward. A little more focus on describing the characters’ surroundings would really bring the story to life. As is the golden rule in writing; show don’t tell.

Overall

In conclusion, ’Sixteen Going On Seventeen’ is a good contribution to a sorely lacking fandom. The fiction appears to be aimed towards a young adult, female audience. With only one focus, it limits its appeal to a wider reader base, but those looking for a casual, feel-good reading experience should be satisfied.

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You may find Kyia Star’s fanfiction, Sixteen Going On Seventeen, hosted on FF.Net here.

February Update – New Fandom Added

Along with Until Death Do Us Part, we have added Mai HiME to the list of February fandoms.

The Until Death Do Us Part fan fiction selection has already been made and Eilara is currently working on it. We have selected a Mai HiME fan fiction as well and are waiting to hear back from the author.

Several other articles are planned for this month. We already have a quick fan fiction site guide up, which is aimed at both readers and writers. There will be several humourous guides on cliches within fandoms and fan fiction coming up as well.

More to be announced soon.

FanFiction: Where to go?

For those of you who have just discovered the expansive world of fanfiction, and perhaps for those of you who have been milling around in it a while as well, we’ve decided to help you out by pointing you in the right direction.

There are several sites dedicated to fan fiction. Some are better than others.

In the following we’ll list these sites, their features and their pros and cons.

FanFiction.Net

To start us off, perhaps one of the most well known and popular fanfiction sites is fanfiction.net. It really does have a huge range of stories, numbering in the millions.

For the reader:

FF.Net categorises their fiction quite well. There are categories for Anime/Manga, Books, Movies and many more. Within these are the titles of the fandoms. Once you choose one, you can filter the list by update/publish date, genre, age rating, language, length, and characters within the fandom. If you have a specific type of story in mind, this can really make narrowing down your search quite easy.

The stories themselves are listed by title and author, with a short synopsis and extra information such as number of chapters, word length, and how many reviews it has received.

Once you’ve chosen a story, the site has a few options for the display of said story, such as increasing font size and bookmarking your position. The chapters are easy to navigate and you may submit a review once you are done reading.

You can add a story or author to your in-site favourites list or alert list, where you will be e-mailed when the story or author updates.

The downside of such a huge archive of fiction is that it can be incredibly difficult finding the good ones. There is a lot of poor writing out there, sadly.

For the writer:

FF.Net is fairly writer friendly as well. There is a profile section, which is relatively uncustomisable. You may input text and upload an avatar, but that’s pretty much it.

Uploading your stories is, for the most part, pain-free. The site supports several different file formats and once uploaded, you may edit them before publishing them.

Again, the way your story is displayed is fairly uncustomisable. You cannot make yours look unique. One story looks, visually, the same as the next.

You may also create communities and forums for discussion and showcasing certain fanfics.

FF.Net shines in its pretty comprehensive list of traffic information. You may view, in both graph and text form, how many people have visited your stories, profile, forums, communities, how many have you on their favourites list and alert lists and to some extent, who they are.

MediaMiner

MediaMiner is a lesser known site, but they have a selection of both fan fiction and fan art.

For the reader:

The site looks rather unprofessional, the font is a little glaring on the eye, but if you can get past this you can find some fanfiction you might not see elsewhere.

The site doesn’t have a huge list of categories, focusing mainly on Anime/Manga instead of other media. The list of Anime isn’t exhaustive either and it’s not terribly easy to add one to said list.

That being said, when you choose a fandom, you can browse a list of the fanfictions available. You may filter/sort the stories by date, genre, type, age rating and language. The information displayed on each story is enough to be able to decide whether it’s worth viewing, though it’s not uncommon for some of the stories to be miscategorised.

The stories are easy to navigate and you may review them when you are done, as well as add them to your favourites list.

For the writer:

Creating an account is simple, but you may find submitting your first story a little confusing. The submission system, while set out quite clearly, isn’t entirely intuitive. Adding chapters to existing stories may take a few more clicks than you’d like as well.

Where MediaMiner’s pitfalls lie are in its aesthetics. It uses a lot of greys, which, in all honesty, is rather drab. If you don’t mind that sort of thing, then you will probably get along with the site no problem.

It doesn’t have a huge range of features when it comes to viewing traffic. You can see how many views each of your stories has and how many reviews it has received.

MediaMiner’s added feature of posting artwork is quite nice if you venture into both fanfiction and fan art.

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Aside from these two main sites, fanfiction authors also post their stories on blogs, such as LiveJournal and in forum communities. Obviously, listing these would be not only a monumental undertaking, but would also take you an age to look through. We do however select our stories to review from multiple sources and will credit them in the relevant posts.

February Fandoms

February will be our first month of reviews. From the first bout of votes it seems like the fandom Until Death Do Us Part will be among the starters. It’s likely we’ll pick one or two from the fandoms we’re familiar with as well.

The selection process will take a few days, and then we’ll announce what fan fictions will be coming up for review. We’ll leave you with a cover picture from the above mentioned manga title.

On another note, we’re continually adding to the site. Some additions are a FAQ page, a Staff page and an About page. More coming soon.

*Cuts red tape*

And we’re open!

Exciting stuff! So much fan fiction to sift through, so little time. We should get off to an energetic start. Get some stories reviewed, so you all have some entertaining fiction to read. Sounds like a good idea to me!

If you still don’t have a clue what we’re rambling on about, please check out our ‘About’ and ‘FAQ’ pages.