In Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 1, we took a journey  backwards through the years, following Kayoko and Mitsu as adults. From their senior years back through their different paths in life; Kayoko having marriage & children thrust upon her versus Mitsu pursuing a career; watching them struggle in a world that had no place for them as a couple.

Now, here in Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 2 (夢の端々 下), we look back further. Into the 1950s, as Mitsu seeks to establish a career and of course faces the kind of systemic and personal sexism that still mars women’s career worldwide. A journalist tracks down Kayoko and Mitsu to discuss their failed attempt at suicide, but in the end they have no messages for one another. We then, at last, look back at their first years together in school, and the circumstances that lead them to attempt a lover’s suicide.  After failing to die together, Kayoko loses part of her finger to frostbite and Mitsu chooses to cut her own finger off so they have that in common forever. This is not, however enough to keep them together, as we earned in Volume 1.

The last few pages return us to the present, in which Kayoko is struggling to remember her own daughter. Kayoko sets off by herself for a walk and, after a fall, dies. But we can see that she is not alone in death. Mitsu who had been killed in an accident, is there to greet her. Both of them, school girls once more, are together in death as they could never be in life.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8 It hurt more when we see that Kayoko was once able to smile
Service – 0
Yuri – 7

Overall – 7

This was a hard story for me, as I spent a great deal of time raging in my head about the unfairness of life. But as I said in my review of Volume 1, for those of you who are looking towards a future in which all of this is as alien as horse carts and flint-napping, it’s a beautifully drawn fiction that details a real historical artifact. Let us never have to return to those days, nor allow them to be inflicted upon anyone else. Amen.