Under the Red Umbrella

Information

Status

Completed

Year

2020

Author

Yuuenchi

• Author's Afterward
  Nov 17, 2020
• Under The Red Umbrella
  Nov 16, 2020

Reviews

Community Reviews(1)

• B. A. Baker (Thedude3445)Royal Road

  ★★★★ 3.5

  This story is a short, dramatic novella of young love between Japanese teens, written in the same kind of style of Japanese light novels or mangas. It’s paced so similarly to one that I had to wonder for a moment if this wasn’t actually a translation! If you are a fan of dramatic Japanese one-shots, you’ll feel right at home here. I preferred the scenes of the characters interacting to the (sometimes overpowering) internal monologue, but the story overall was quite nice.
  Only problem is, the formatting is way off and makes it very difficult to read. As of this writing, the entire story at 30+ pages is in one chapter (though the author says he will change this soon), and the story is contained in some hugely gargantuan-sized paragraphs that are a chore to dig through. There is consistent typographical weirdness throughout, and I suspect the story could do very well with a thorough edit with the prose as well (though it wasn’t anything to complain about compared to the formatting).
  One thing that plays into the formatting that might turn off readers is the abundance of nicknames and titles and honorifics mixed up in a jumble. Our main two characters have something like three names each, and then other characters will have alternating names too—sometimes in the same paragraph! There is a lot of Japanese inserted into the story in general; some of it works, but some of it is a little superfluous, and there were a couple spots that were outright incorrect. I know Japanese so I could follow pretty smoothly, but I imagine that readers less familiar might struggle, especially with all the alternate names.
  If this story is edited for more readability (and possibly some extra scenes of romance with the characters spending more time together), it’d shoot up a lot higher pretty quick. For now, I wouldn’t recommend it except to people who are really looking for some shoujo-type fluffy drama, but pending those edits it’s a nice time.