Sep 26, 2023
Y'know, after 20 or so chapters it becomes pretty long for Ichiro's entire emotional parsing to still be reduced to 'He didn't know how he felt'. Like, the slightest gesture towards introspection could've been used as an extremely effective marker of growth. But still, we keep carrying along this murky 'unknown', which isn't always emptiness, sadness, anger, frustration, angst or anxiety. It's almost never qualified.
Also, I feel like you could definitely look into ways to better structure your chapters. Not every one of them needs to end in a cliffhanger, but I keep feeling like you just guillotine them at odd moments lest you go over the allotted word count (which, when looking at the admin page appears to have failed more often than it has succeeded). Like, there can be a sense of building tension or, failing that, some form of catharsis. But really, all we get are these Dubliners endings that work well for Joyce's shorts, not so much for LN chapters.
