Yagate Kimi ni Naru Saeki Sayaka ni Tsuite (やがて君になる 佐伯沙弥香について) has radically changed my opinion of this whole series. For the better. But it was a radical change.
When we begin this book – presuming we have read the Yagate Kimi ni Naru / Bloom Into You manga or have seen the anime – we already know most of this story. Sayaka has told us most of what will happen. So none of it will come as much surprise. The narrative follows Saeki Sayaka from elementary school through high school.
In the first section of the book, we learn about a girl she went to swimming lessons with who was – clearly, from our point of view, much less clearly from hers – infatuated with her.
This is followed by a more detailed retelling of her first relationship with her sempai from choir, an upperclassman who asks her out and later breaks up with her after leaving for high school.
These two sections are marked by some brilliant tone of voice. I’ve said that I don’t much care for Iruma’s writing (I recently finished another novel by them and will not be reviewing it here, unless I get desperate,) but Nakatani-sensei’s touch in Sayaka’s voice and the illustrations by her makes me think she was intimately involved in this work. The Sayaka we know (and whose narrative voice we are familiar with) from the manga is captured perfectly in the exploration of human relationships by an interested, but mostly uninvolved, outsider….a tone that I am 10000% sure I will not be alone in recognizing as similar to my own internal thoughts as a young person. Sayaka can see that someone else is interested in her; she is equally interested in and confounded by this. Her internal monologue seeks to make sense of the feelings she receives and those she does – and does not – feel in return.
The volume ends when she enters a new high school and meets Nanami Touko and utterly, completely, falls for her.
So, since we knew all this, how did it radically change my perception of the series? Let’s begin with the title. In Japanese the title is “Yagate Kimi ni Naru,” which I, as a typical American, translated from the first person – “In the end, I will become you.” The transliteration “Bloom Into You” is not much of a help, since again, as a westerner, I presumed a first person subject.
I was wrong. As I read this novel, I realized how wrong I was. The subject is not first person…it is second person. “In the end, you will become you(rself).” And with that realization, I saw what I had never seen before – there is only one plot in the manga, but that plot applies equally to every character. Every character is in the process of becoming themselves. In retrospect that seems kind of “duh” for this series, but when you realize how it all is being handled by Nakatani Nio-sensei, it suddenly becomes really rather extraordinary. We are of course watching these children become themselves, but holy shit we are watching an intentional narrative of these children becoming who they are and learning to verbalize and accept themselves and…wow. The same plot applies as much to Sayaka as it does for Touko and Yuu. And Maki. And Miyako. And everyone else.
I said from early on in the series, that I was giving Nakatani-sensei the benefit of the doubt. I have no doubts left; whatever happens from this point on, this novel has proved to me that she deserves my trust.
Ratings:
Art – 10 well, since the creator of the original did the illustrations, that stands to reason
Story – In and of itself, not riveting, but since Sayaka is the reason I follow the series…8
Character – 10
Service – 3 bathing suits and changing rooms
Yuri – Well, now…this is hard. I’m calling it a 5 because it’s so complictated
Overall – 9
I’m being asked if this will be licensed. A few years ago I would have rolled my eyes and said no way. Nothing happens, But, depending on how well Bloom Into You is doing for Seven Seas, they might want to consider it. These days, all I can say is “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” I will say that this was an easy read and much less plodding than Iruma’s original works I have read.
It seems to me that Sayaka is the real treasure of this franchise. She is so popular that half of the interviews are about her, and adaptation is more often discussed with her seiyuu than the main couple’s
When I first started reading the series, I thought of Sayaka as an obstacle to the main couple; now, she’s become my favourite character and want only the best for her <3
Well, it’s hard for me to pick out the “favorite” character in the story, but Sayaka definitely has the the most brightest personality and exciting background, I can’t disagree with that.
As literature, I actually preferred the straight-up magical realism with ephemeral girls in ephemeral towns of Shoujo Mousouchuu. When I was reading it, Saeki Sayaka felt like the author’s dog was being held hostage and the captor was telling them “you better make write this in naturalist prose or the dog gets it,” and the result ended up in a weird no-man’s-land where the ephemeral girls were grudgingly given names and the ephemeral towns had some recurring places.
That said, the “insider-outsider viewpoint” is a good point that didn’t come back to mind then. (Also, reading this review I finally realized that the author’s name is actually 入間 and not 入門 which explains the persistent “what’s up with this name” feeling.)
I can’t quite reconcile your perspective to the impassionate voice that we’re given in both the manga and the anime. It was, IMHO, a rather good continuation of a inner voice we’re already acquainted with. I was honestly surprised, as Iruma (and yes, that name is “…”) tends to write like it’s an RPG. “And the she… She did … She said…” very monotonous.
From reading several of Iruma Hitoma’s novels, I strongly disagree with that description.
I don’t exactly agree with redfish on the no man’s land thing, but I do also think Shoujo Mousouchuu was better. It was more original and more interesting stylistically and as a complete story.
I read and reviewed Shoujo Mousouchuu, but don’t consider it erepresentative of their work. I’ve read three other books, only one of which I have reviewed here, Adac hi to Shimamura, V1. Generally, I find their work cludgy. I just finished Kitto Kanojo ha Kami ja nai, きっと彼女は神様なんかじゃない and just had to slog through it.
I’ve read those, the other current volumes of AdaShima, and a few more.
Your blogging makes it pretty clear that your Japanese isn’t strong, so I’m inclined to think that’s why you’d find a postapocalyptic SF novel with action scenes to be a slog.
Did it make you feel good to be insulting? It’s wasted on me, I’m not going to feel bad because it annoys you that I don’t care for this writer. I was able to understand it just fine, it was just very boring and not all that well written in my opinion. If you disagree, that’s fine, but it won’t change my opinion at all of the book. Being rude does change my opinion though, of you.
That wasn’t really intended as an insult and I’m not commenting in the hope of making you feel bad, but because I think some readers might take your word on these matters as they can’t read Japanese for themselves and I think it’s better if they have a chance to see that not everyone agrees with you.
When I comment here I actually feel like I’m walking on eggshells since my impression of you is that you’re someone very sensitive to disagreement. I hold back my views and refrain from posting corrections.
Your impression of me is incorrect. Everyone is welcome to disagree with my opinion. Very few people, it turns out, can do that without creating a “reason” for the disagreement. redfish did not like this book, and that’s okay. I do not like Iruma generally and that’s okay. What is not okay is imagining that my dislike of something you like must be because of imagined linguistic deficiency.
This is important to remember. Even in my native tongue I will interpret things in ways other people will not. And they will disagree, claiming I “do not understand.” I did, I just have a different point of view than many other people – the very thing that drove me to begin this blog.
Tl;dr: All you have to say is “well, I like Iruma and did or did not like this book.” Then it’s your opinion and not subject to condition. ^_^
I read and reviewed Shoujo Mousouchuu, but don’t consider it representative of their work. I’ve read three other books, only one of which I have reviewed here, Adac hi to Shimamura, V1. Generally, I find their work cludgy. I just finished Kitto Kanojo ha Kami ja nai, きっと彼女は神様なんかじゃない and just had to slog through it.
The continuation is a good point too, I may have read Saeki Sayaka too much in the shade of ShoujoMousou.
I haven’t read Iruma’s other books, I think I encountered ShoujoMousou here and was surprised after reading it that they had written quite a few—ShoujoMousou had many of the tics of a doujin novel and I ended up assuming that they were at the start of their commercial career. For example, undue attachment to certain sentence formulas (as you say, “RPG style”) and to complicated words that don’t necessarily add much value (I started counting occurrences of 寂寥 at some point and thinking that just saying 寂しさ would get the point across better most of the time). Saeki Sayaka was actually quite an improvement on the latter.
Not that this makes their books bad (these two are still far better than much of the tripe that gets put out as light novels), just a bit grating at times.
I find the RPG-ishness of their writing quite dull, generally. Shoujo Mousou was a surprise stand out. But I did like this book, so maybe I’ll upgrade them to “inconsistent” from “not good.”
Stop, is that the same Iruma Hitoma? Who wrote Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, one of the first hits of denkeki bunko? Well, I knew that she was a woman, but did not know that she was interested in writing yuri.
According to Japanese Wikipedia, Iruma is a guy, fwiw. It obviously doesn’t matter, per se. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/入間人間
Yes, that seems to be the same person. They’ve done quite a bit of original and contract work, with a distinct emphasis on science fiction/ science fantasy. And a number of their work is Yuri. Shoujo Mosouchuu, Adachi to Shimamura and Kitto Kanojo ha Kami ja nai, as well as this novel are the ones I know of. There may be others.
Hmm, thanks for the info. This can probably explain the fact why the Maekawa from Denpa looked more like an tachi character than the standard tomboy love interest from harem LNs.
In any case, given that all his works were also published under the Dengeki brand, it makes me think that this brand turns out to be an increasingly open space for yuri in various forms.
Dengeki has definitely been a brand with Yuri stories for many years. Some of the very first Yuri I ever read came from their magazines. ^_^
I don’t know what you mean a “tachi character” versus a “tomboy” since they are pretty heavily overlapped as terms, while not exact matches. I would be comfortable using tomboy or butch to describe tachi to someone who didn’t know Japanese.
Well, I mean a tall tomboy-ish character with a playful personality, a relaxed voice and a prince-like seductive style of communication with MC.
I’m not sure that tachi is the right word, I often saw people call such heroines Takarazuka prince. But Maekawa is not involved in the theater in any way, so I thought that tachi would be a more convenient word.
“Dengeki has definitely been a brand with Yuri stories for many years. Some of the very first Yuri I ever read came from their magazines. ^_^”
Not to mention the non-yuri series with lesbian characters. If I’m not mistaken, Azumanga Dayoh, which literally invented the CGDCT’s yuri girl with one-sided crush, was published in one of their magazines.
Although to be honest, I still don’t understand the meaning of the Kaorin’s joke “I am not a lesbian, yuri is a more correct word!”.
Well, it didn’t create that, but it did run in Daioh. ^_^
The *Kimi ni naru* anime tends to give Yuu more agency, and the changes she makes to the student council play then hint that “Bloom into you(rself)” is the meaning of the title. But until reading this review it hadn’t occurred to me that the imperative might be directed at more than just Touko.
I think I’ll wait a bit in hopes that this novel is licensed (or hopes that my Japanese reading proficiency improves). Thanks for this review!
Thanks for reading!
There is an english version of this novel? Even in japanese I can’t find it.
There is no English language version of it. To get it in Japanese you can click the link in this review and purchase it from Amazon JP.
This is is no longer true! Volume 1 is coming out from Seven Seas: http://www.yuricon.com/product/bloom-into-you-light-novel-regarding-saeki-sayaka-vol-1/