I’m Luce, procrastinator extraordinaire and- how did I end up with more books than I started??? – book hoarder. You can call me a bookwyrm. Mostly hoarding, but getting back into reading novels. 

In the first three volumes of what I call Best Friend Girlfriend or ‘BFGF’ by Syu Yasaka, we met Minami, who realised she has a crush on her childhood friend and next door neighbour, Yuzu, and decided to try and get Yuzu to see her in a more romantic light – and generally failing in her attempts. We found out that Yuzu, however, also likes Minami, so we were landed firmly in the ‘mutual pining’ section.

In volume four, Yuzu gets a cold and Minami looks after her, Kamiya tries her best to talk Yuzu into telling Minami she likes her, and Christmas arrives with all the romantic implications it carries in Japan. In volume five, things get romantic on the school skiing trip, but misunderstandings abound. Can Minami and Yuzu finally just tell each other?

Pining, pining, pining. As a fanfiction reader, and writer, I’ve read it, I’ve written it. The delicious tension of words unsaid, hands not quite reaching the other person. The roadblocks characters will put up to avoid saying anything, only to trip over them and have to catch themselves. The moment it all comes crashing down as they throw over the cliff of no return, yet find themselves flying as the other person returns their affections (at least, in the ones with happy endings). But there’s an art to it. There has to be a compelling reason why one or both wouldn’t just say something. Something has to be in jeopardy if they were wrong about it, no matter how big, and the creator has to sell you on that.

Which is to say, how much you like this will depend hugely on how much you like, or can tolerate, mutual pinning, and people just not spitting it out. I enjoy it… sometimes. It’s a well worn trope for a reason, and can result in breathtaking scenes of self-restraint, where you just want to hug the characters… but it can also leave the reader with frustrations where you’re thinking ‘just kiss already! They obviously like you!’. This tips into the latter, unfortunately. I get that it’s hard to admit you like a friend romantically, and daunting to tell them that. But there comes a point where it goes a little past denial into ‘how thick are you?’. There are various moments in these last two volumes where, in my opinion, there’s no compelling reason for them not to tell each other. Look. If someone is also going in for the kiss, that’s a pretty good sign they’re into you romantically. Don’t then say it was nothing! If someone says ‘I want you’ and tries to kiss you, that’s not ‘getting your hopes up’. Reacting that way is absurd denial, or ‘authorial delaying’. Making pining work as a trope is all about making the reader believe that the character genuinely believed that their feelings were unrequited in that moment. They’re normally not correct, but only the audience should know that.

I guess my problem with this manga is that the pining was quite cute for the first two or three volumes, after which it got too stretched out. The older I get, the more interest I have in stories that cover making a relationship work – getting over hurdles, managing intimacy and boundaries, and especially when the characters are in school, trying to work out where the relationship fits, if it can, in their futures. Series like Kase-san and… and You and I Are Polar Opposites have both been exploring this to various degrees, and it’s been really refreshing. It makes manga like this, where they dance around each other, and not even particularly convincingly, less interesting.

It also ends up so focused on the dance/mess between Minami and Yuzu that everyone else falls by the wayside. Their friends feel like puppets to react to the dramas rather than people. There was some hints in the early volumes that two of them might be interested in each other, but does it get mentioned here? No.

In total, a cute series that overstretches its premise to its own detriment. There’s a fine line in pining between ‘come on, you guys can get there!’ and ‘get on with it!’. Unfortunately, this series falls closer to the latter.

Story: 6
Characters: 5
Art: 7
Service: 1
Yuri: 8
Overall: 6

Man, I really want to go read some good fics about mutual pining, now. As for manga that give me some of that vibe, Hirano and Kagiura (BL) and If I Could Reach You (Yuri) comes to mind. A Sapphic book, Six Times We Almost Kissed by Tess Sharpe also did pining very well (amongst other things). Any favourites for pining Yuri manga?