And so, another year of Comic Yuri Hime magazine comes to an end. I had to buy another storage container and move a few years off my shelf so I have room for more – I can only keep about 3-4 years at a time on the one shelf where the current issues live, depending on the size of the issues. The 2023 volumes are visibly larger than 2022 and I can see that 2024 volumes are looking to be getting closer to 600 pages again. It’s been an amazing process, watching this magazine go from quarterly to monthly, and being a corporate partner to successful anime and multiple kinds of contests. What an absolute ride these past 20 years have been. When I look at Comic Yuri Hime December 2023 (コミック百合姫2023年12月号), I’m thinking about endings, but no series actually ended, except the cover story.*
There is one series, however, that will end with the next issue and I wanted to talk about it, because since the first chapter it has been a textbook example of how *difficult* it is to serialize a story. ^_^ So instead of me paging through the magazine, saying “here’s the stuff I like” let’s talk about a series I have not actually reviewed here, for reasons of my own.
Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata, (君と綴るうたかた) localized in English as The Summer You Were There by Yuama, has had a literal fatal flaw since the very first chapter. Shizuku is an author, but she is clearly, visibly traumatized by human contact. Kaori is an ebullient reader of her work and, not coincidentally goes to the same school. Kaori asks Shizuku to write her a novel, but Shizuku, full to the brim with PTSD, is totally blocked. When Shizuku learns Kaori is dying, that does not help free her mind. But as the chapters continued, Shizuku has done a lot of work, in order to become the person Kaori saw her as.
The story has had to do some interesting things to get us to this penultimate moment. Firstly, Shizuku’s initial trauma was that she was the aggressor in an incident in elementary school and has never forgiven herself. The story takes time to parse this and the incident and aftermath is resolved. But, after all that time and care it turns out that “not forgiving ones’ self’ is not enough of a trauma to explain Shizuku’s very obvious PTSD. Much as characters we are told were “neglected” by parents, when their behavior shown signs of being a victim of CSA simply doesn’t sit right. (I am told that Citrus did, eventually, create a more plausible story for Mei’s behavior than parental neglect. As I have not read any of it beyond the first few chapters, I cannot confirm. If so, I think that’s good, narratively speaking. It was a horrible inconsistency in the story.) I am not a fan of trauma porn, but if you’re going to create a character who behaves like a victim of trauma, the story ought to be consistent.
Interestingly, in this case, Shizuku’s story is given a coda. Having been shunned by classmates for being “scary,” Shizuku takes to writing. She finds an online site and becomes a successful author. But with fame comes abuse and, at 13, Shizuku is alone and unable to cope with the harassment online. She stops writing, and becomes the recluse we met in the beginning of the story. At which point, we understand and her behavior actually, finally, makes sense. Was this series originally meant to be more than a volume or two, in which case the initial scenario might have been enough? Or was this planned? It feels more like the former, as that piece of the story comes in after the initial conflict is put to rest. Nonetheless, it was a good use of the (possibly extra) space and time.
Now we get to current issue and we have to reckon with the other huge weakness in the narrative. Kaori either must die as we have been told she will for years now, or an impossible and annoying miracle will occur. We have been repeatedly told that her condition is fatal. Even as she heads into surgery, we know there is no happy ending here – this surgery cannot save her. The final chapter hit shelves yesterday in Japan and there are a number of likely endings: One, Kaori dies, Shizuku goes on to plumb the depths of this horrible point in her life to become a famous author. Two, Kaori miraculously survives. Three, Kaori lives a little while longer, helping Shizuku become the person she wants her to be, then dies off-screen when Shizuku is helpfully older and more capable of coping. Four, this was all a story that adult Shizuku was writing for Kaori and none of it happened. All of these have positives and negatives, and everyone’s opinion on what will work are different. I know how I would end it. ^_^ I’m hoping for an interesting ending that works with the characters and story as they have been presented to us.
We can see plainly here how longer serialization can and has to change the way a story is structured and executed. I’m reminded yet again, of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane deciding that if you want a series to continue sometimes the premise be damned, you have to write a story (I believe this was in Have His Carcase, if you care to check, it has been a long time since I’ve read that one. Think I’m going to have to bust it out on audiobook….)
In just a few weeks I will know how this ends and I am equally ready to be annoyed and pleased. ^_^
And we’ll be in for another year of Comic Yuri Hime!
Ratings:
Overall – 8
*The cover story ends in an epilogue that returns us to the colorless life of our protagonist, fondly remembering that gloriously colorful year of her life and all I can says, adults…we are doing this wrong. ^_^;
The January 2024 issue of Comic Yuri Hime is out, with a whole new cover design.
