Ah, KOR remains one of my favorite manga - that is, if you disregard the
middle two-thirds of the volumes and only pay attention to the beginning and
the end of the manga.  =)

Anyway, glad to see someone writing KOR stories still.  I miss KOC.

I'm aware that "Oneechan no Madoka" has no name.

Yeah, and it's an interesting enigma.  What made Madoka the way she is - did
her sister have something to do with it?  How much of Madoka's upbringing
was her sister's responsibility?  There's a whole story there that's ripe
for exploration. =)

   Ayukawa Misako looked across the table at Madoka.

<snip following paragraphs>

/me rubs temples

These are awfully... dense paragraphs.  I know you've classified this as a
shortfic but really, that's too much too quickly.  Each paragraph leaps
about from subject to subject without any unifying theme.  It seems like
your attempt to get all the "background stuff" out of the way as quickly as
possible so you can get on to the "good stuff".  That's actually not such a
bad impulse, but don't over-do it with dense blocks of text like this -
tends to put people off.

I'd suggest breaking this down into several more paragraphs, and perhaps
even intergrating it into the conversation that follows.  Make Misako's
background thoughts arise out of her interaction with Madoka.

Of  course, I want to thank my parents.  Without them I
wouldn't be here.

You all know  Hikaru.  She was once a force that drove us
apart.  We don't blame you for  it at all."

Ugh.  I don't like this... I don't think it's something you'd mention in an
engagement announcement at all.  "And I'd like to thank Barry, who if he
hadn't dumped me and left me emotionally devastated, I wouldn't have gotten
together with Gary on the rebound!"  You'd mention that happy, positive
things in a public announcement, and leave the "We don't blame you for it at
all" conversations for a more private time.

Overall... I like the *idea* behind the story very much.  Trying to define
the relationship between Madoka and her sister is a daunting task, and I
applaud you for undertaking it.  I think the execution is a little clumsy,
though.  It's too short, too fast, too much packed into too little.

If you're going to explore this idea, I think you need to give it a little
more room to breathe.  Spread out the thoughts, the details, the characters.
Allow some interaction between Misako and her husband and Madoka, let all of
Misako's internal observations arise out of that.

In short, take your time.  Don't rush just so you can get past this to the
good stuff, let this have a life of its own.  Some of my best moments in
writing have come when I have developed parts of the story I wasn't at first
interested in at all.  But I forced myself to fill in the details so that
the story would be more complete, and surprised myself by finding the
"boring parts" to be much more interesting than I had supposed.

I think you, too, would be surprised by how good a story this could be if
you develop it a bit more.  I'm not saying make if a novel, but don't let it
whither and die in five paragraphs.

Great idea, though.  Would love to know more about Misako and Madoka.

-Richard

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