Manga Notes: Maison Ikkoku 9

As I headed into the ninth volume of the new release of Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku I already had an impression of what the tenth volume’s cover would be, and that was enough to get me thinking things just might not run on that much longer. I suppose there’s a tension between “the promise of a conclusion; this is a relatively realistic romantic comedy” and “when you’ve got a good thing going...” The question did come to mind “when the reputation of this series was building among English-language manga and anime fans, what else was it being compared to?”, but that might be shading towards unfairness.
( As for “unfairness” in the story... )