Saeki Sayaka would probably not, if you asked, consider herself nostalgic. Nor would she likely think of herself as capricious, I don’t think she’d go far as to say that she was any more logical than anyone else. I am confident, however, that she would agree that she is a thoughtful young lady, who considers her choices carefully…and considers the consequences of those choices very deeply.

In Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 2, we meet Sayaka after she has experienced love and loss in middle school and after she has fallen in love once again in high school. It’s a love that isn’t going to be realized, we know, but she’s in the middle of it. While she might have an inkling that she’s put herself in an untenable position, she’s allowing herself a kernel of something like hope, a promise to herself that if she should want to reach out and bridge the distance between her and Touko, she could…she just doesn’t want to.  It’s a pleasant little story, that becomes a lie in the beginning pages of the book and Sayaka knows it.

We can relax into this book because, of course, we already know happened, but we really should take a moment to appreciate how much work the writer, Hitoma Iruma, put into it. They could not relax at all, as the readers already know what happened. ^_^

There are number of nice touches in this volume too. Classmates Manaka and Midori are a lot of fun. I read an early passage in which Manaka said that joining a club would be useful, because “…if you exercise enough, you’ll be ready if something happens and you need to make a quick getaway.” I hope we all had a laugh remembering the friend in high school who said stuff like that. (Honestly, in my crowd, any one of us was likely to be “that guy.” ^_^)

Physically, this book was lovely, with extra flourishes by interior designer Clay Gardener – the original Japanese volume had undecorated pages. I thought this was a very nice touch. All the other technicals were likewise excellent. Translation and adaptation were spot on for the serious Sayaka we see in the anime.

I enjoyed this volume immensely – again. As I said in my review of the Japanese edition, “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.” I look forward so much to the third volume in December, in which we see Sayaka exist apart from Touko, as she becomes the Sayaka she will bloom into.

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

My impression of the third volume in Japanese, was that I grinned throughout. I hope you do too!

Thank you to Seven Seas for the review copy. As a result of their generosity, I have an extra copy to give away!  Enter by putting a funny story about a friend in high school saying something goofy and you’ll be entered. Use an email you check regularly. I’ll pick a winner by Sunday, August 23. (The winner has been contacted!) Here’s my story:

In high school I was sitting with some friends in the cafeteria and one of them had decided that she was head over heel in love with some senior boy. She asked us all to say what liked best about him and my future sister-in-law said, “His absence.” I absolutely lost it and haven’t stopped laughing about it since. ^_^