Earlier this year, I bought a digital manga bundle that included the complete Drops of God. Indeed, that was a big reason I bought it. I've long been interested in reading Drops of God, which takes wine tasting to soap opera extremes (but not Dragonball Z extremes)
I wrote about the series when I was at the halfway point. Now, I've finished it. Did it live up to the potential of the first half?
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Okay, I was ultimately disappointed by how Drops of God resolved itself and that was because it didn't resolve itself. I was aware that there was at least one follow-up series, Drops of God: Marriage. Knowing that, I found that many elements in the later part of Drops of God were actually setting up for that. A whole group of characters, the Watkins family, I now see were really being set up to be major players in the next series.
As a comparison, when I was younger, I read Dragonball and its transition to Dragonball Z. While it was clear at the end of Dragonball that Goku's adventures weren't done (because he is a loveable but psychotic manchild who lives for fighting) but all the conflicts were resolved. In Drops of God, barely anything is resolved.
Well, the Twelve Apostles, the wine identification test that determined which son would inherit Yutaka Kanzaki’s vast wine collection, that gets settled. However, since a more extreme wine identification competition (the titular Drops of God) immediately starts, there's no sense of pause, let alone closure.
One element in particular I wanted to see addressed, if not resolved, is that Issei is actually Shizuku's half-brother, that the Twelve Apostles competition is actually a true family affair. However. while Shizuki does figure it out, no one ever brings it up and takes the matter to at least the next step of talking about it.
More than that, as the series progresses, it becomes clear that Yutaka Kanzaki was a terrible father and husband. Issei in particular was clearly damaged by his negligence. However, that seems to get glossed over since Yutaka Kanzaki was an absolute wine god so that makes it all right. That kind of rubs me the wrong way and I hope it gets addressed in Drops of God: Marriage.
With that said, the fact that the Twelve Apostles were an autobiography in wine form became even more apparent in the second half. That is an interesting and engaging form of storytelling. If the ‘ending’ fell short, the journey was fascinating.
The side stories also reflect the life experience that the wines are expressing. With the final wine being about death and loss, one of the major supporting characters develops pancreatic cancer. It is such a well written gut punch that it helped me get over the lack of closure for the overall series.
It can be argued that my expectations for Drops of God to tell a complete story aren't reasonable since the continuation was clearly intended. And the art and writing of the series is solid. Glad I read it. Good stuff. Annoyed at having to hunt down another series.
