NIce, sad at first, but with a good and nice ending

Awesome :D

sad to start but cute ending

Really adorable. I was like, "Why on earth did she go skinny dipping though where there are homeless people?" but still very sweet.

-Momo

sweet, I like it.

u did a great job

Ashleigh131

aw its really cute! it sounded like u were gonna make a sequel or somethin the way the story left off but idk its probally just me. :D but anyway, i really liked it and in my opion, it should probally just b rated "T" cuz they only kiss... twice. so anyway, it was really cute! hope u decide to make a sequel. :)

sexy story like this needs a sequel about what they will do when they get home.

I loved your story. Chihiru sounds so pretty but what does kohaku look like?

one thing i think this is safe enough for teen so i think you can change it, and also i really liked it. but i think you could do more with this, just try.

ever thought of a sequel? that would be wonderful, no pressure, 'course._

Aw yay this made me happy - ... MAKE MORE!

OK, I'm really, really sorry to say this, so let's start with the upside first. You had a great idea that was way more realistic than the average Chihiro/Kohaku one-shot plot. Congrats.

Now for the downside(s). Please take note that I'm being as nice as possible, and only offering advice that I've learned through my own writing, because, honestly, my first one-shots were WAY worse, and are no longer on this site.

First off, the characters are rather OOC. Chihiro acts like an immature brat, and the argument between Chihiro and her parents shows that. I mean, the over-all argument was cliche and not realistic at all. She sounds like a whiny ten-year-old all over again. I mean... I've seen spoiled pre-teens through fits like that, just to get attention. It doesn't fit that a college aged girl would be that immature in her argument, and there is little sense in her parents just accepting her 'I won't take this...' way of storming out. And then the whole 'I don't know why you homeless people are so creepy' thing! Agh! She some out a caring, mature girl at the end of her adventure... so why does she sound like a really spoiled, inconsiderate rich girl?

And, though the plot idea was inelegant, the ending was complete fan service. It just goes: desperation, angst, odd homeless guy, angst, angsty poem, crying, angsty fight with parents, swimming naked, not freaking out when said homeless guys see her nude, angst, sudden appearance of an angsty dragon, exchange of I love you's, TADA! Happy ending.

The idea had so much potential! Really, I think you just rushed it a bit. I'm all for angst, and I get that completely original plots are near impossible to find, its just that you crammed way to big of an idea into too small of a space. If you had fleshed out the story by diving deeper into the child/parent relationship and maybe working out a few characterization flaws, this story would be great.

Why am I always the rotten apple...?

I clicked this story because it didn't utilize the same boring plot device as the other three pages of fiction - "X years later Chihirou returns to the Spirit World etc etc". Even if it was only 3,0 words or so I had hoped your story would satisfy my SA craving.

No such luck.

Now, this is not meant to be a flame, only constructive criticism. Take it how you will.

1) The idea wasn't half bad. Frustrated with waiting, Chihiro decides to end all the trips to the river. All right, I can go with that. Except for the fact that it was stated in the movie that the river no longer exists - that it's "all apartments now!". This was the reason Haku no longer had anyplace to call home. He's the god of a river that was cemented over.

2)It was too short. Normally I don't think that length can improve a bad "oneshot", but I think you could have definitely fleshed this one out a bit to make it less grating on a savvy reader's imagination.

3) Your characters (sans Haku and Chihiro) were too wooden. I felt absolutely nothing from Chi-chan's parents at all. Granted, the only one who even had a line or two was her father, but as dense as they were in the movie, I'm not feeling the interaction here. Now, if Chi-chan and her parents had this conversation often - or if it was hinted that maybe her mom and dad didn't approve of her leaving to a foreign country for college - I can see how the argument would have taken on a bored tone, but there was no indication at all in this story.

4) Haa-kun randomly shows up and decides to offer to take Chi-chan away? Okay, is this the same Haku that worked so hard to get Chihiro reunited with her parents and back into the human world? Is this the same Haku who spared her feelings throughout her entire stay in the spirit world? Haku might want Chihiro as his lover/partner/bride/etc, but I doubt he'd be selfish enough to simply say "k, let's go then!" and do so. He'd want to know why she was so eager to leave, if he could help, if there was anything that could salvage her relationship with her parents.

5) You seem to have an issue with OOC in this fic in general, actually. Chi-chan is NOTHING like she was in the movie. Or, scratch that, she'd reverted back to the little monster she was before her stay in the bath house. Considering how much growing up she did, I doubt that she'd be this pathetic in later years. I can imagine a typical teenage phase, but this is the girl who braved two witches, numerous spirits, a No Face, and more than a little magic just to save her parents. And all this was AFTER they blatantly ignored/didn't seem to care about her through the first bit of the movie. I see not even a shadow of the fact that she grew up so much here - not even a bit.

6) Naked swimming? Fanservice. The unoriginal kind. This works when characters are on a quest through the wilderness and the females/bishie boys want to bathe. Not in the modern world. And she thought there was a random homeless person watching and didn't even scream? 'nough said.

Like I said, this had a lot of potential to be good, but you didn't develop all the potential you had going in a little fic like this. Maybe if you worked on it a little bit? When I get stuck, I talk to my friends, or even to some of my savvy reviewers when I need ideas.

You also need a beta for overall grammar, spelling, and structure. I saw way too many run-on sentences and comma splices in your story and it kept throwing me off my reading flow.

I hope you'll take this as a learning review and not a flame, but in any case, good luck with all your future works!

-AkizukiSakura

This is cute, I really like it!

That was so cute. You have to make a sequal. When you do e-mail the title to me!

Thanx! _