Due to the final 3 volumes arriving yesterday morning, I got around to finishing CC last night. I re-read Vol. 2 and the first chapter of Vol. 3 to get back into the swing, then I got started with the final chapter of Vol. 3 and kept going until the final chapter of Vol. 6.
What do I think of it after finishing? I think it's one of the best out there. The quality goes up and down depending on the chapter since each chapter has a totally different story, but very few of the stories were poor. Only the long and boring stalker chapter in Vol. 6, which had a terrible lead character who kept fannying around over a nutjob ex-boyfriend, was disappointing. The other disappointing stories weren't so bad because they only lasted 50 or so pages, where as the stalker story dragged on for 150 pages, which highlighted the drop in quality.
The final story of Vol. 3 was just there to fill the remaining 50 or so pages left by the first story. It was neither excellent or awful; somewhere in-between.
Vol. 4 is a collection of four short stories. All of them remained interesting until the end, but none of them were able to match up to the first 3 stories in Vol. 1-3, all of which had far more time to develop were far more moving as a result. I prefer having 1 long story in each volume, with an extra story added to fill space if needed. Also, a few of the stories in Vol. 4 were a little hard to swallow, the most difficult to view as something that could happen in the land of the real being a story about a school teacher beating and dragging a school girl by her hair in public, and another imvolved a girl getting away with murder.
Vol. 5 was a big improvement and the best volume in the entire series, returning to the high quality shown in the first 3 volumes. As expected, the first story, involving the gang rape of a girl and how she had to continue living after that, was the most moving and best story of the lot. Everything was handled excellently by the author, with her going into detail to explain how, no matter how you think you'll act in any situation, you don't know if you'll be able to do the brave thing until fear has got ahold of your heart. I found the relationship between the female lead and her boyfriend touching: it was totally believable how he reacted initially and later tried to make amends. There was, however, a rather dodgy piece of dialogue/translation in Vol. 5, the dialogue in question being...
"Becase it was made with the "knife" called a penis."
The other story included, which lasted the same length as the rape story, wasn't far off the quality of what came before. The story was about how a high school girl had to deal with having AIDs and slowly becoming weaker and weaker with the passing of time. It was both informative (no-one wants to read about deadly diseases until they need to!) and, like just about all the stories in CC, was very moving. It gave me a warm feeling to see someone with such an horrible illness fighting against it with the help of her best friend and boyfriend.
Vol. 6 was, sadly, the weakest of the collection. The first story was an unusually dull effort by the author, it taking a lengthy period to reach a conclusion of no interest. Reading the story made me dislike the weak and submissive main character. The last story was on improvement, it being about how a victom of bullying turned into a bully, but it was short and, like the stories in Vol. 4, lacked the detail of the more detailed stories included.
So, overall, my feelings are that, despite having the odd average story, CC is up there with the best manga has to offer. The only flaw I spotted aside from the odd poor story was the similar character designs of all the characters in each of the stories: there was too little variation between each character and that made it hard to remember the characters from each story. But, ignoring those issues, anyone who likes their manga realistic should seriously consider splashing the cash to get the full series - I promise you won't be disappointed!
