Well.

That was not a fetish I had ever thought about before.

Okay, then.

Ahead of Yen Press’ release of Comic Beam‘s  Cocoon, Entwined by Hara Yuriko, I picked up the Japanese edition of Mayu, Matou Volume 1 (繭、纏う). And found myself with a faceful of…hair. 

Hair is the predominant symbol in the this volume and takes up a lot of space, both physical and emotional, at Hoshimiya Gakuen, where the students grow their hair very long.  

This volume follows Yokozawa and Saeki, students at this high end and very rule-bound school. But it is, much more than a story of two students and their classmates, a story of their hair. 

I’m not even joking about this – their hair is the main character and the people attached to that hair are merely abstractions. If you don’t like hair, this manga is going to skeeve you right out the door. The hair in this book represents freedom and being bound and hope and loss and everything else. 

Art in this volume is good although, as you can see by the cover, hair tends to chew up the scenery. The stories mostly center on hair but by the end, the characters get a chance to be seen a little past the curtain of hair. I really don’t even know how else to convey to you that this book is absolutely, totally, about hair, first and last, with a story peeking between strands.

Ratings:

Art – Hair
Story – Hair
Characters & their Hair
Service for Hair enthusiasts
Yuri – 3, plus Hair

Overall – Hair

I can only imagine that cleaning duty in this place is a nightmare.