Fumino, known to her friends as Bun-chan, is really irritated by that cool, mischievous Kiko-sempai. For on thing, she’s pretty sure that, while her best friend Mahiro really likes Kiko-sempai, things will go badly and Mahiro will be hurt.

Hamano Ringo’s Sora-iro Melancholic, Volume 1 (空色メランコリック ) is the fist volume of this series that runs in Galette magazine.

When Mahiro loses something that Kiko-sempai gave her and Bun-chan finds it, she pretends she knows nothing about it, until something snaps and she gives it back. Even then she isn’t entirelyhonest about it. There is something about Kiko-sempai that just annoys the daylights out of Bun, although we’re able to put our finger on it pretty quickly. Kiko-sempai also seems to be aware of it. Bun-chan is jealous of Mahiro and of Kiko-sempai.  And Kiko knows it. Initially it looks like Bun-chan is jealous that Mahiro is thinking about Kiko so much, but maybe that’s not the problem.

When club activities forced her to go out shopping for materials with Kiko, the older girl confronts Bun-chan by kissing her, thereby making her confront the way she feels about the older girl. As the volume comes to a close, Mahiro can see that something has happened between Kiko-sempai and Bun-chan, and, maybe, she too, can guess.

This series is ongoing in Galette magazine, and the characters have changed considerably from these early chapters. In a later chapter, too, Bun-chan will have a very edifying conversation with an adult who also fell in love with a girl during her school years. I look forward to that being collected up. I like Hamano-sensei’s sketchy art style, and while these early chapters seem very typical Yuri, one can feel a depth that this part of the story barely touches upon.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 7
Service  – 0

Overall – 7

The cover design is lovely – what you can’t see in the picture here is the lustrous pearly quality of the book cover. In fact that’s probably how I think of this series – a pearl seed, still developing. We’re waiting to see what kind of gem we’ll have at the end of it all.