Sahoko shows up at a reunion for her high school class. As she greets people she hasn’t seen in a while, she’s on the look out for someone else who is not there. and isn’t expected to attend. Adult Sahoko casts her mind back to her school days, when she was always looking out for the other girl…
In school, Sahoko is popular. She wants to be popular. It’s pretty much the most important thing to her. So her own uncomfortable obsession with Aoi Koshiba really annoys her. Koshiba’s athletic and popular, but doesn’t care at all about anything that passes for important in high school. She quits her clubs and team and heads home every day. Sahoko cannot put her finger on why it’s important to her, but suddenly becoming Aoi’s friend seems…critical. And when she learns Aoi’s secret, it’s suddenly become more important than anything, even her other friends.
Back in the present, Sahoko’s school friend Anna wistfully proposes that maybe it would be best if Aoi never comes.
So….there’s some very good things in this story and some not good things, and mostly I think the not-good things are stuff that was put in before the story kind of gelled. On the good side, I love Fly’s art generally and it was that art that got me to pick this book up in the first place, as you may remember from my review of Volume 1 in Japanese. Thumbs up to the Kodansha team for a good looking volume of manga, as well.
Sahoko awkwardly chasing after Aoi wasn’t bad, but their “accidental kiss” was inexcusably tropey. In Volume 1, it’s almost impossible for me to actually like Sahoko, or no, like isn’t the right word…sympathize, or empathize maybe is closer. Nor are we given much to work with for Aoi, until her entire story is dumped on us in like 4 pages. So this whole volume left me a bit cold when I first read it, and I haven’t read past Volume 2 in Japanese,but…
…re-reading this made me think I want to pick up Volume 3 in Japanese now, when it comes out this summer. Seems like something to get on Bookwalker and keep in my pocket. (Although re-reading my V2 review, I know why it dropped down on my to-read list.) I keep foolishly wanting stories about high school reunions to be about the present…not the past. As Volume 2 is now out in English, you can read it for yourself, then get back to me and let me know what you think!
Ratings:
Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Service – 2 some random underwear for no reason
Yuri – 6
Overall – 7
And now I’ll just wait get V3 and see if it goes where I hope it might, or it just circles the giant drain of lost high school loves. ^_^
Thanks as always for the review! This is one I took notice of for the combination of Fly’s art and that it is, I believe, the first Yuri work from the writer after 20 years of mainly shounen and shoujo straight romances. After reading vol 1*, Fly delivered as always, as for the story while it didn’t pull together entirely smoothly I thought there were enough compelling threads to get me invested in the girls’ relationship – and judging by the framing narrative, what went wrong here.
Strong agree on how unnecessary the ‘accidental kiss’ felt. In other circumstances I might be able to overlook something like that, but it came off as an example of the problem quite a few romance manga (or manga in general) have of rushing to some major development in the 1st chapter in a bid not to immediately get cancelled. For such an experienced romance author it felt slightly amateurish, though atleast the rest of the volume was better judged.
* This review reminded me vol 2 is out already! Kodansha always catches me with how fast they put out their releases. This season I shelved Snow White Note’s anime to check out the manga but next time I turn round Kodansha’s release is up to vol 7 already ^_^’