Seven Seas has released Bloom Into You, Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 2 on Kindle this week! Follow young lesbian Saeki Sayaka as she navigates love and jealousy in high school.
Volume 2 covers the events of the Bloom Into You anime from Sayaka’s perspective and, as with Volume 1, we get a great sense of her internal monologue, her motivations and her own perspective of her strengths and weaknesses. I enjoyed this book immensely when I read the Japanese edition, about which I said, “Once again, I am pleasantly surprised to have fully enjoyed a novel by Iruma Hitoma, in which the tone and feel of the character as we know her is captured well. And I look forward to the sequel as it takes us into new territory.”
Ratings:
Art – 10 Art by the series creator
Story – 8 A stronger sense of Sayaka’s feelings for and about Touko
Character – 10
Service – 1 Not really this time
Yuri – 7 This book is chock-full of Sayaka’s thoughts about being attracted to Touko for all the reasons.
Overall – 9
I was so pleased to see this appear in my Kindle library this week and I am extra excited for you all to read Volume 3 next autumn!
Thanks for the review! Sayaka is my favorite character in this story, so I wouldn’t refuse to see the whole story from her side.
I was not as taken with this novel as much as with the first, I think — but I am still very much looking forward to the third novel.
The first chapter was intriguing with its focus, not on Touko, but on Yuu, and I think set a standard that the book, for me, did not live up to again until the final chapter, which again was not about Sayaka and Touko.
I was disappointed that none of the scenes (from the manga) with the cafe owner and Sayaka’s teacher were present in the novel. Those scenes seemed like an important part of Sayaka’s high school story. Oh, well, those scenes are in the manga and the anime, after all, and the novels seem to be avoiding duplication in that regard, and may be weaker for it.
The translation of the third book cannot come quickly enough. I want to be able to look at her story as a whole.
(And then I’ll want a fourth novel relating the story of adult Sayaka and *her* life.)
That’s perfectly valid. I liked that we got her inner monologue and the depth of her obsession with Touko, which was only hinted at in the manga/anime.