The story of Ehwa, as begun in The Color of Earth, continues in this second volume of a trilogy. Like the first book in the series, The Color of Water is mostly about sex. Ever-curious Ehwa discovers some new things in this volume, often spurred along by crude scenes involving fields of phallic peppers or copulating animals. She also begins a romance with Duksam, a sweet-talking farmhand, and starts to understand her mother’s wistful feelings towards her own itinerant lover.
The first half of the volume is pretty listless, consisting mainly of sexual escapades interspersed with countless discussions between Ehwa and her mother in which women are compared to flowers. I singled these mother-daughter conversations out for praise in my review of volume one, but their talks have become so repetitive that now I find these same scenes to be downright tedious.
In the second half of the book, more of a narrative thread develops, as Ehwa and Duksam make some progress in their courtship and Duksam’s elderly employer decides he wants Ehwa for himself, heedless of her mother’s objections. Unfortunately, Duksam is another one that spews flowery language both literally and figuratively, so it’s hard to care much about his relationship with Ehwa.
Still, I applaud the series for not saddling Ehwa with the very first boy she ever liked and allowing her to meet and be attracted to a stranger. Of course, there is one more volume and the back cover promises a story of “first love and second chances,” so perhaps I’d do well to remember the old adage about counting chickens.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Review originally published at Manga Recon.
After losing her parents in a fire, Nanase Takamine resolved to become a firefighter. Now 21, she has achieved her goal and works as a fire investigator, not actually battling fires directly but determining where and how they started. Three years ago, while she was still a student at the academy, she came upon the scene of a hospital in flames. Rushing inside, she saved the life of a burning man, ignorant at the time that he was actually responsible for setting the fire. After he escaped from the ambulance, taking the lives of a pair of paramedics in the process, his identity as the wanted arsonist Firebug became known. Now, as Nanase is facing some puzzling cases, Firebug has contacted her and, in an effort to repay her for saving his life, provides clues and insights that help in her investigations.
“How close can we get to the rosy, happy ending I dreamt about that night?”
From the back cover:
After seeing Kaze Hikaru praised by multiple people whose opinions I respect, I finally got my hands on the first two volumes, courtesy of my local library, and have reviewed them for Comics Should Be Good. You can find that review 
For the most part, Gakuen Alice is a fairly episodic series about the adventures of spunky ten-year-old Mikan as she acclimates to attending a mysterious school whose students all have special powers known as Alices. Beginning in volume six, however, its first multi-volume arc, involving an organization that’s opposed to the Alice Academy and is responsible for infecting Mikan’s best friend, Hotaru, with a virus, gets underway. In volume seven, Mikan and friends are pursuing the organization responsible through a forest beset with dangerous traps.
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
From the back cover:
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