It was with great anticipation that I cracked open the final volume of Nishio Yuhta’s After Hours (アフターアワーズ ), the story of 30 year-old Kei and 24 year-old Emi and their life together.
It begins, as it must, with the rave that they spent all of Volume 2 creating. The rave is hit and Emi expects that their group will put on another show. Instead, Kei receives a communication from her hometown and rides off to deal with family issues. Emi, feeling abandoned, returns to her parents’ house to pick up her life of unemployed and unambitious adulthood.
Because you too will be able to read this, I’m loathe to spoil the ending – not because it’s epic and amazing, but because it feels realer and more satisfying to me than something epic.
Volume 2 is now available in English and so I hope you, too will want to read Volume 3, when it comes out at the end of the year. And I hope that you, too, will find this a refreshingly adult look at a relationship that isn’t epic, but might be real.
Ratings:
Art – 7 Either it’s getting better, or I’m getting used to it
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – 2
Yuri – 9
Overall – 8
“returns to her parents’ house to pick up her life of unemployed and unambitious adulthood.”
She does nothing of the sort.
True. She just happens to be visiting home around the same time that Kei disappears. Her overall demeanor is really hopeful and upbeat, and she’s looking for work.
I wish there had been an unmitigated happy ending for these girls, but I really liked working on these books.