Okay, maybe I overstated the case for this summer not having bubble shows a bit. Kore Kaite Shine probably qualifies as one, if I’m pressed. I do like it a fair bit, but it’s one of those series that has parts I really like and parts that really annoy me rather than one where everything is kind of inoffensively pretty good. Those are a lot harder to get a handle on, though arguably more interesting. I will say that apart from Sachi I think this adaptation is getting every possible milliliter or appeal out of the manga, which is hardly surprising given the team behind it.
On the downside, now that Teshima-sensei’s backstory is complete (for now) the narrative mainly focuses on the club trio. And that’s limiting on the face of it, given how predictable that thread is and my limited tolerance for that tone. But Sensei is still involved and her battle with herself not to get too involved or be too encouraging is quite amusing. Also there’s not that much Sachi this week, and she does stumblebum into a sort of useful role in the context of the club – the critic. The unmarried marriage counselor, if you like. Aspiring mangaka do need a test audience, and for all her faults Sachi is at least totally honest (and snarky).
Teshima-sensei advises the girls to draw short manga (4-8pp) so Ai can learn how to do endings. The early returns are pretty one note – the art is great, the stories suck. Eventually Ai stumbles on the approach of working backwards from one of Kokoro’s drawings, since those are actually good. Sensei explains that they’ve discovered inductive writing, rather than the deductive approach of starting from the beginning with no clear-cut end. This is Tezuka’s terminology – it more or less corresponds to the architect vs. gardener dichotomy you’ve heard on the podcast many times.
Rei-chan proves rather helpful generally. She gives good advice, she provides a desk and chairs, even some props like decent pens and a light box. You can see her really getting into this in spite of herself. Another major development comes with the arrival of Sekiryuu Hikaru on the island. That’s quite the coincidence but this is a fairy tale at heart, so it’s no stretch. If she looks familiar it’s because she’s “Stone Dragon”, the doujin creator Ai met at Comitia. She shows up at school and eventually takes an interest in Ai, seemingly as a guide to the island’s interesting trivia for potential use in a future manga.
Generally speaking I think Sekiryuu is a good addition. She’s a real live wire with a totally different vibe than the other girls in the club, and anything that shakes up that dynamic is a good thing. She’s also a huge Hoshino Rei fan and does not hesitate to prove it once Ai tells her who Teshima-sensei really is. That’s a gambit to lure her into the club, and it totally works – which again, I think is a positive development for the series overall. It is indeed a mixed bag for me, but Kore Kaite Shine is certainly well-directed, lively, and fun. For bubble series one could do a lot worse.
Casey W
July 27, 2026 at 11:59 pmSince this is a bubble series, and it might not win the patron poll, I thought I should get my comments about the show written down while I still have a chance.
This is the episode where Minoru Toyoda’s tendencies as a mangaka really start to collide with the fact that he’s doing a CGDCT series. As far as I can tell, almost everything he’s done in the past is boy-girl romance. His first big series was a high-school romance, his short-lived series was a college-age pinball romance; he’s done supernatural romance, and he did a 7-volume yokai-centered story that eventually turned into a weird romance. But Kore Kaite Shine follows the CGDCT trope of having no male lead characters and almost no supporting ones.
On the face of it this is a series like Shirobako or Eizouken, where the characters are there to illustrate a story about a collaborative creative process. But those series don’t have any romance at all. With Toyoda, romance is his wheelhouse, and in this episode it really starts to creep in around the edges. We get the romance story in Yasumi’s short manga script, we get Sekiryuu trying to kiss Teshima-sensei, and we get more explicit hints that Nana has been in love with Rei for years.
It’s a little strange, because I don’t remember Toyoda putting any same-sex romantic relationships in any of his previous series, but he’s clearly not going to tell a story with no romantic attraction at all… it’s too useful as a motivation for characters. From what I remember of the manga, we get more of this in Teshima’s backstory.
(There’s one completed chapter of Robota and Pokota out there, and it follows the same format as the first chapter of Love Roma — i.e., it’s a straight romance.)
Guardian Enzo
July 28, 2026 at 12:10 amTo be honest it all feels very forced to me. Like he’s doing it becasuse he feels like he has to, to meet the expectations for tropes.
Casey W
July 28, 2026 at 3:09 amMaybe so, and/or maybe it’s something that his editor is telling him he needs to do. Like I said, almost everything he’s done in the past either started out as a romance or ended up as one, and you might not need to twist his arm very far to get him to introduce romantic tropes to a comedic series.
So much of the Teshima material in the series comes across as autobiographical, and she’s a character who’s absolutely tortured by trying to satisfy editors, switching genres with every attempt. Toyoda mentioned in his afterword to Love Roma that he really wished the series could have been picked up for an anime, and that must have been eating at him for 20 years. After so many attempts, he was probably ready to try anything, and this is the one that got picked up for adaptation.
But I think Kore Kaite Shine would have been stronger if it wasn’t set in a girls-only world; that’s not Toyoda’s strong suit at all. The Teshima flashback material is so strong that I wish he had just done a series about an adult who tries to make it as a mangaka, and let her also have adult relationships along the way.
Guardian Enzo
July 28, 2026 at 9:19 amA rare case where I agree with a comment 100.00 percent.
Love Roma not getting an anime has been eating at me for 20 years too, heh.