How life is a bejeweled treasure, laden with memories and beauty: sometimes it takes another person to make us realize it.

Story:
When I indulge in the seinen genre, I like to experience it with manga. There is a very special kind of feel to it, just like reading a book for which you hold fondness towards. No seiyuus to disturb the quiet and emotional atmosphere, no background music to annoy you distinctly, and the ability to go at your own pace, experiencing everything in its entirety. I was able to fulfill that need, and much more, by reading this exhilarating adaptation. The story- it is flawless. I'm not talking about originality or no fanservice or anything like that. You can read it, and feel like you're in the characters' shoes. It takes life, and turns it to a side we hardly touch. It is a raw, beautiful, twisted despair wrought into hope, and desire. The desire to take our memories, and add to them. The desire to see that same face every Thursday. In other words, the desire to live. Even if I'm not making sense now, you'll understand what I mean when you read this manga.

Art:
When opening up to the first page, one can immediately tell that the art gives way to a mature piece of work. The backgrounds are seen with ambient and filtered lighting, and it is easy to recognize the characters as being adults. The character design for Mutou Juri was the best one I have seen yet. Her long, slender arms are a characteristic of a pianist-which she is-and she has a kind of grace to her tall, slim figure and her mass of hair. The character expressions are also conveyed very explicitly without all the hassle of trying unnecessarily hard to infer what they are thinking. Every time the characters are shocked, it sends a brief arrow through my body. When they are happy, my heart feels warm. In simpler words, the art gets full points here.

Characters:
Each and every character in Our Happy Hours has a significant role to play throughout the course of the story. It is clearly noticed that their actions move the story along, and that if they were to do something other than what was staged, it would have drastically affected the plot and the conclusion. I also love the dialogue between the characters. The words they exchanged were very honest, and they moved me. The characters are also written beautifully. I never knew that a warden could be nice before. I just imagined them as cold-hearted, lifeless people who feed the prisoners and then take out their food tray when they are done eating. The aunt of Juri also served as the motherly figure she needed in her life. When the characters received whatever salvations they got in the end of the harsh series, I felt glad that they could move on. This means that I loved them and emphasized with them. Character development need not be mentioned, since real human beings are already changing in their short lives.

Enjoyment:
Honestly, whatever words I have spoken up until this point don't do justice to Our Happy Hours. There is only so much that I, an amateur reviewer, can say to express my whole-hearted love towards this manga adaptation. As long as you will read it and see the beauty in it as much as I have, then I shall be content with writing this review.