March Comes In Like A Lion is a slice-of-life coming-of-age manga that maintains a fine line between sentimentality and melancholy. The manga depicts a teenager who is a Shogi prodigy, but how he experiences the world and lives his life independently, without any supervision or any form of support system, which could be defined as lonesome and depressing.
The manga is known as “Sangatsu no Lion” in Japanese. Chica Umino wrote it and illustrated the artwork. Since July 2007, the manga has been published in Hakusensha’s Young Animal magazine. It also has an anime adaptation with two seasons running from 2016 to 2018.
Kiriyama Rei, the protagonist, is a highly introverted seventeen-year-old shogi player who sustains his independent lifestyle through professional competitions. If you’re not familiar with shogi rules, it’s simply Japanese chess. The majority of the story is an interconnected narrative that thoughtfully focuses on a variety of deeper psychological issues such as bullying, anxiety, depression, parental death, and many more.
Rei’s character conveys a complicated set of emotions that are rarely seen in manga or anime. He has an introverted character and spends a lot of time in his thoughts. Instead of enjoying the game, Rei’s motivation to improve at shogi stems from his need to survive and continue a solitary lifestyle.
Such a distant way of life can become serene in ways that outsiders, particularly extroverts, cannot understand and may even find depressing. Rei does have feelings, but they are held deep within, sometimes bursting on the surface, which gets uncontrolled along the way in the narrative.
Rei struggles to comprehend the purely selfless kindness of a family that cares for him as well as the guilt of being the recipient of such compassion, which motivates him to seek more solitude. Rei is fortunate to meet another tragically deprived women and a grandfather, both of whom play important roles in perspective and character development, as we see in the story.
March Comes In Like A Lion Chapter 199 Recap
The chapter starts with Shimada and Shigeta’s conversation, more likely an argument where Shigeta prefers putting too much sugar on his coffee while Shimada suggests that if you put too much coffee, then you obviously need that much sugar, to which Shigeta thinks it’s bitter because it needs sugar and he uses a curry spoon for it.
Shimada’s place is always boisterous. He started to wonder when he became such a nice person. He looks after Nikaidou, Rei, and Shigeta, prepares home meals, and shares knowledge and experience with them. Maybe he wanted to be a good person after all. He wanted to be relied upon or needed in that way.
While thinking all these things, the doorbell rang, and it was Smith. He came with a bunch of sweets, like strawberry daifuku and cream puffs. Smith wanted to be with them in the Shimada study group but was never invited. But there were already a lot of people, and Shimada didn’t want to let him in.
Smith wanted help from them as he’s against Dobashi-san the day after tomorrow, and he wanted help from them to go at the kaku-exchange gang variations. For Nikaidou and Rei, it’s more important what’s happening at dinner, and Smith came at the perfect time because they are having oden that night.
March Comes In Like A Lion Chapter 200 Release Date
March Comes In Like A Lion Chapter 200 is set to release on February 3, 2023. The last chapter was very likely chaos in Shimada’s house. He is becoming a better person. Now that Smith came uninvited to practice for his next shogi match, let’s see how Shimada’s patience and behavior react to the situation.
March Comes In Like A Lion Chapter 200: Where to Read
The English version of the manga is licensed by Denpa and was first released in the summer of 2022. In Japanese, Hakusensha’s Young Animal magazine publishes the chapters, which have sixteen volumes as of September 2021, but the latest volume hasn’t been published yet. Although you can get the English translation for free from any other website, so don’t forget to check out the latest chapter.
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