Some of the best discoveries are made when we least expect them: How could a manga about discovering jazz be so real and harrowing? How could it take all these ordinary routes and narrate the spontaneity of the human experience so well?

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This manga destroyed me, left me crying for a solid volume straight. But I couldn't stop thinking about it a week after finishing. I kept thinking about how everything just fit into place, but at the same time, I could still see so many different routes for these characters because they felt so real and honest ― maybe not to themselves or to others ― but that’s also a very human thing to do: to want to hide parts of yourself, your feelings, your past, your identity. Kids on the Slope made me feel. I got to watch (well, read) the characters grow up into adulthood and the experience was out of this world, or perhaps very much grounded in ways that no other series has really done for me. It was so heartfelt, so exciting to see where the story and its characters were going. Ever since Sen’s backstory, or the one he told Kaoru, the series had gone down so many expected routes in unexpected ways to the point where I kept anticipating and anticipating until it was the only thing my mind could focus on. It was scary to think about how these kids were changing, how their lives were moving so quickly and I had no idea where they were bound to go.

But to live is be curious; it is not knowing all the answers or the telling of the future and what it awaits. It is the spontaneity of making music and jazz. I am so glad that I read Kids on the Slope.