Archive for the Shimura Takako Category


Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 3

October 12th, 2021

Akari and Ayano met in Volume 1, but their relationship was instantly complicated by the fact that Ayano…is married. In Volume 2, Akari moves to give herself a fresh start only to find herself literally face to face with Ayano, as her new home is across the street.

In Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 3, Akari can’t get a break…she’s walking to the train in the morning with Ayano, and home with Ayano’s husband Wataru. As they chat, Akari is sucked deeper and deeper into the quicksand of their family life and her own past. Akari returns to her previous job, which means she’s meeting her ex, as well. It’s a complicated set of circumstances in which no one is wrong, and everyone is trying, but the mortification just keeps piling up. Poor Akari.

I’m absolutely convinced that this is the best work Shimura-sensei has ever created, as the people are all relatable; from the two girls in Ayano’s class who may be targeted because they like each other, to Eri, Wataru’s shut-in sister.

Every single character here is doing their best; every single character is trying to figure out how to be, how to navigate the complicated waters of society and relationships. And nearly everyone is struggling. I love this story. There’s no good guys or bad guys, there’s no one who is more than slightly, very normally awful. Everyone is smiling, but also hurting, and trying to figure out how to make it through the rapids of life safely.

In and among all of this, I am particularly on tenterhooks about the two girls in Ayano’s class. They don’t know, yet (or ever) that they have an ally, but I hope that they end up okay.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 7 I’m liking most of them, even if they annoy me sometimes ^_^
Service – 0
Yuri – Yes. Also Queer.

Overall – 8

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy! Volume 3 is hitting shelves today, so grab yourself a copy of this queer and complicated story about adult life. Excellent lettering by Rina Mapa, as well as outstanding translation by Jocelyne Allen.

I especially loved this panel of a phone argument. ^_^





Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 2

August 6th, 2021

Yesterday I said we were playing a “choose your own adventure” in reading works by creators you already had opinions about. Yesterday, we walked down Path #1 with a work that was pleasantly excellent. Today we’re doing a second path, as we look at Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 2 by Shimura Takako.

In Volume 1, we met Akari, a lesbian who has had some bad luck with partners and Ayano, a married woman, for whom Akari falls. If indeed that was the sum and total of the plot, it would be merely all right, but in this series, nothing ever is exactly what it seems to be.  Ayano is not at all the person she appeared to be and, we learn in this volume, there was a whole other Ayano in school, where she was tall and boyish.

Akari …well, she’s a decent human and it’s hard to not like her. She’s just looking for someone to be happy with and it’s not at all making her happy that she has feelings for a married woman. In fact, she’s pretty damn pissed about it. In this volume we also learn that she has previously been down this road and it did not go well for her, so we can completely sympathize.

Even Ayano’s husband Wataru is decent. He’s a guy whose life has been thrown into a series of chaotic situations and he’s trying to stay afloat. When his father becomes ill in Volume 2, he and Ayano get roped into moving back with his abrasive mother and shut-in sister. He too, one can completely sympathize with.

So, you may wonder why I consider this a path down the “what is this going to be like?” game. And to explain that, I have to tell you a secret. … I don’t actually like Shimura Takako’s work that much.

I don’t hate it, I just think she’s either a straight (or officially closeted) woman who has made a career of writing queer characters who…don’t act like people actually act. Her works has been insightful only rarely and sometimes torpedo their own good intentions.  As a result, she’s gotten a huge amount of queer cred, most of which I think is unearned. More damning, her storytelling has been…inconsistent. Sweet Blue Flowers is a narrative mess with flashes of brilliance, but Wandering Son is literally filled with repeated scenes and conversations.. On top of that, her endings are occasionally pat and irritating. So, call me very pleasantly surprised that all the characters here (except, so far as you know) Mom, are written with nuance and sympathetic perspective.*

These characters have been written with the kind of nuance I crave in manga…especially manga written for adults. Sure, sex and violence have their place, but surely being adult means we can more layered and thoughtful writing, too, not just more violence and sex. Here everything is just working in concert to create a strong whole.

So for a creator whose work has, in the past, left me feeling disappointed or even exploited, Even Though We Are Adults is an absolute masterwork of storytelling. The art is perfectly fine, but it still is finding its stride and I talk about that in my discussion of Volume 2 in Japanese.

Ratings:

Art – 7 with flashes of 9
Story – 8 Not easy, but well told
Characters – 7 easy to sympathize with, but like? That’s another story.
Service – 0
Yuri – Yes, definitely. Akari is gay, Ayano may be bi or questioning but it’s all question marks now.

Overall – 7

*I’m not the only one to feel exactly this way, as the Mangasplaining Podcast spent an entire excellent episode talking about this series and they touch on all these things. I love this podcast, not just because some of the folk on it are friends. ^_^ It’s a great podcast for folks who love manga, I recommend it highly

Volume 3 will be available in October and while I have already reviewed it in Japanese, am looking forward to it in English as well. Translator Jocelyne Allen’s work is always fantastic. Casey Luca on adaptation,  Rina Mapa on lettering and retouch, Hanase Qi’s great cover design and Shannon Fay on Editing; The entire Seven Seas team is doing excellent work here for a terrific reading experience of a complicated, adult story.





Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 4 (おとなになっても)

June 23rd, 2021

In previous volumes of Otona ni Nattemo, we met Akari and Ayano, who met in a bar and spent the night together, Ayano’s husband Wataru, who has wondered what that means for him, and assorted family, friends, coworkers and students who have become involved in the lives of our principles. No one know what they are doing. Sure, they are adults, but…

In Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 4 (おとなになっても), the whirlpool sucks them in further. Wataru suggest a separation and Ayano agrees. Wataru’s going home to live with his parents. Akari, not knowing this, has also decided to move to give her distance between her and Ayano. At school, Ayano is playing at being a grown-up with answers for the children who have their own love triangle issues and is torturing herself on faking competent adulthood for elementary schoolers, while her own life is in turmoil.

Ayano and Akari coincidentally meet at the train station and coincidentally look back at one one another and, as the final pages of the volume are turned, Ayano suggest they go to the cafe at the station and talk….

I’m calling it – this series is Shimura Takako’s best work to date.

For years, I have said that her work reminds me of Melissa Scott’s novels – solid concepts with slightly too much emphasis on sex and gender considering the lack of conviction with which it was executed. For the first time ever, I feel that this book isn’t trying to say something – it’s a fully conceived story about people who might be real, and neither sex nor gender is the story, just part of human existence as a whole.

One does not dislike Akari, Ayano or Wataru, they are all sympathetic in their own ways. I don’t pretend to know what the future holds for any of them, frankly. I don’t even have an opinion on whether any of them ought to be together. I’m content to see where the story – which is well-drawn and well-told – goes.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri / Queer – Impossible to tell at this point. Ayano may be bi, Akari is lesbian, Eri might be ace, but we can’t be sure about anyone of them but Akari.

Overall – 8
I hope you’re all reading this story as it comes out in English as Even Though We’re Adults from Seven Seas. It’s Shimura at an absolute peak of her work and a story wholly for as well as about, grownups. Volume 1 is out, Volume 2 just came out last week, and Volume 3 will arrive in October (you can pre-order it on RightStuf or Amazon already.)





Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 3 (おとなになっても)

February 25th, 2021

Akari is ready to move on. She’s ready to reclaim her old career in the salon and stop running away from her life. She’s putting Ayano and her old ex behind her. She’s moving into a new place and ready to face a new day. Volume  1 and Volume 2 are old news.

So, in Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 3 (おとなになっても) when she walks outside for her first new morning and finds Ayano walking out of her own home at the same time, one can easily imagine some of the words that flit through Akari’s head. And when she gets off the train and finds she’s walking home with Ayano’s husband, she’s sure that a brand new level of hell has opened up just for her. Only, Ayano’s husband is, actually, kinda nice? And not in a creepy way, he just seems to be a decent sort. Even knowing this is the woman his wife is interested in, Wataru invites Akari to dinner. The story gets more complicated as Wataru’s NEET sister Eri now thinks something is up with Akari, but it appears she thinks it’s her brother having an affair.

Akari ends up being roped into a mini-marathon for the local town art festival. In doing so, she rediscovers her love of running. In fact, everything might be looking just great, if it weren’t for the fact that she just can’t seem to get away from Ayano, who she loves and Wataru who she’s come to like.

This was the first volume of this series that really focused our attention on Akari, as opposed to Ayano and like magic, I found myself way more engaged with the narrative. ^_^ I’m torn though, because I don’t want to care too much, either, because I don’t see this series having an ending I can live with. I just hope when the wreckage clears, Akari’s still standing.

Shimura-sensei’s artwork is confident and clean in this volume and to be very honest, this might be the best story I’ve read by her, narratively speaking. I don’t know what will happen and I am content to let it happen, which is exactly what I want from a drama about adults.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – Hrm….Ayano and Akari are still interested in each other.

Overall – 8

I’m putting my money down on this being a candidate for a live-action series.

Volume 4 is already out in Japanese and Volume 1 is available in English as Even Thought We’re Adults, (I reviewed that here on Okazu earlier this month) so share your thoughts in the comments if you’ve read it!





Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 1

February 4th, 2021

Takako Shimura’s Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 1 is a very strong opening to a series I still have no idea in what direction it is going. Ayano, a teacher, meets Akari when she stops by a place for a drink. They end up sleeping together. Both Ayano and Akari want to see each other again, but when Ayano does come to the restaurant Akari works at, she’s accompanied by her husband.

Ayano tells her husband that she’s interested in Akari and he basically has no idea what to do with that information. He’s in love with his wife, and he’d like a child with her, but thinks (fears?) that she’s slipping away. Ayano isn’t sure what she wants, except that she is sure she wants to see more of Akari. Akari is in a worse spot; with a history of failed relationships, the last thing she needs is to be falling for a married woman…but that is definitely what is happening.

Quite a lot of manga people I know who are also queer, including myself, have very ambivalent relationships with Shimura’s work. She does seem to focus quite a lot on gender and sexual minorities, with varying degrees of verisimilitude. In my personal opinion, this story feels equal parts solid and kind of icky. It may also be that I’m not particularly thrilled to have either another “messy relationship with a married woman story” or a story that makes the lesbian performatively self-loathy. At the same time, there are elements here that keep bringing me back to this story, which is at Volume 4 now in Japanese.

One of the best things about the series so far is the art. There are moments, especially when Shimura-sensei is using the watercolor style she often relies on for covers and color art, when she really shines. I talked about this a little in my review of Volume 2 in the Japanese, as well.

As always, the team at Seven Seas has done a great job. Shimura-sensei is great with *moments,* but has a harder time sustaining conversations over a scene. Translator Jocelyne Allen and adapter Casey Lucas allow the conversations to flow naturally. Everything about this book – the lettering and design, as well as the writing and art – is given room to get out of the way of the characters and let them tell their story. I’m  not at all sure where that story is heading, but I guess I’m here for the ride!

Ratings:

Art – 8
Character – A not-sure-yet 7
Story – Same 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 1 Hardly any, in fact. The 1 is mostly on principle

Overall – 7

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy! Volume 2 is slated for a summer release. I’m definitely going to have to bump up Volume 3 in Japanese on the to-read pile and see what happens.