This is a long ass ramble hooboy. on how far along I was on my reading list and checking the release date, it’s been a good 6 years later. I was feeling nostalgic and wanted to see if it was ever finished, and I was surprised and sort of thrilled that it was. When I first picked this up to read, was nearing the end of some post-secondary studies and feeling lost and swept away. & was really so beautiful. Stylistic and almost pop art and sentimental and unreal at the times it plays with bittersweet and sweetness of relationships and our spaces with other people.
I remembered that I loved it because I remember dreamy landscape and the way it feels like you swim in Kaoru’s feelings. & was one of my first josei manga because I’d never really been interested in the genre, and it captures because of how visceral it is. Just finished reading it, and feel…content in some aspects, and bitter about others.
I think as a thematic coming-of-age story that was very likely only ever going to end one way (them being separated somehow), it comes as no real shock how heavy the reality. But there is a sense of disappointment—for all the wonder and all the dreamy like states of the beginning, and how Kaoru herself grows into confidence and aptitude in her salon business, her job, and her love…I couldn’t help but get a sense that I was being sobered up by Yagai and Kaoru. That it’s all well and good to enjoy and live dreamily, but love and people and the decisions we make and the scars we carry don’t last or stay static and un affecting on us or our relationships with other people forever. I’m bittersweet….I wanted more closure, even though it came as realistic as we could get it: a consensual, mutual fair well, a quiet goodbye where they both acknowledge their own feelings, but understand. Because Kaoru really Could Not touch him anymore after learning that he’d just intended on lying to her this entire time, because she had already screamed it all at him, but he could not say anything back because it was right for her to do so. It was a beautiful, crushing moment I appreciate from a technical and art standpoint that I think was masterful. I think it was a fair ending for the two of them, but I don’t really understand the actual 2 years later epilogue.
I just personally….I don’t think Yagai’s ex’s sister really made much of an impact on me story-wise (maybe because she felt too abrupt to me? Not foreshadowed enough, or at least it was only in the remaining volumes she made a dent). There just wasn’t enough development, maybe, because I felt the energy was wrapping up by end of volume 6/7 (and there are 8 volumes). I understand how this part of Yagai’s relationship with her and her sister is why he was so drawn to Kaoru’s ignorance in knowing nothing about his regrets and his own secrets. But it makes me uncomfortable, the self-pat on the back way that we have an epilogue with him suddenly going back and then just asking Shiro about her only to leave again after leaving a message he knows Shiro will never share with her, and telling him to make a move. Like…it’s very in character at the same time it’s weird as hell bc it’s so infuriating chuuni….but I guess since he’s a boomer and a 47-year-old self-identified middle aged man at the end, it’s…so hollywood? Is my complaint? Like, you leave with a message that “it’s just how life is, as brilliant as romantic relationships are, they can burn out and leave us, but we will still have solidity in careers and our platonic relationships?” Like don’t get me wrong, I get there are different forms and messages about love and esp warnings about finding your self-esteem/confidence only when you are in a relationship or being loved (with Kanna), love being something that can never really be stopped from growing or staying (Shiro), one-sided love can hurt if we try our best to pretend all is well with it so leave that if you respect yourself (Ike), adult love is the messiness of indirectedness to get wha you want while your flaws being recognized and each of you having a secret you may not want to show but will share when you’re ready (nurse friend), etc.)
Anyway, about Yagai—I do like the parallel of him living his retirement in the country as a doctor like his former mentor. He’s already more than served his time at the hospital and how he’s been killing himself slowly in extra shifts, inability to sleep or feed himself well, etc… After all this exhaustion, I understand this was his freedom (the debt of paying for his ex’s medical treatment, the weight of guilt he’s kept about three women) that comes at a cost (to never be forgiven really, and to hold it all). But I hate this idea that we as people share connection so immensely and deeply, and yet at the end of it we still end with just ourselves as if we can never really reconnect with the people who mattered so much ever again. It should be a comfort…Kaoru for her part is flourishing in her friendships and her career.
But I’m going to fucking imagine a few years down the road that she and Yagai have another heart-to-heart where they actually talk to each other and even if they don’t get together, they’re both in a better place. And she does not end with Shiro (lit makes no sense to me why the mangaka insists on him being this way and keeping a torch for her, while guiltlessly coming onto another girl. Idk this normally wouldn’t bother me because this is such a regular trope, but it!s because of his personality, and because of specific chapters where we understand he literally just loved her so so much but is never able to really communicate that because he was either too blunt, too late, or too socially awkward…sometching feels really uncomfortable. I think they’re better off as friends and I’m glad mangaka never really cemented this, even if it did feel weird with Yagai and Shiro at the end).
The other pairings in this manga for me range from so interesting to unnecessarily dramatic. Her nurse friend who hates the way adults play, calls herself scheming, but in her own relationship reveals a sort of wish for control and to be supported—the doctor is quite cool. However, Shiro and that girl Ike(?). I can only feel bad for her because that whole scenario felt like some sort of sorry-ass joke that Shiro is so callously permitted as a 2ndML to just….be like that to someone, and even though he got yelled at for it, it felt like some sort of comedic timing or something, and not something genuinely unfortunate and raw. Kanna’s ending…she ended up in a nice one that worked out well for her that liked her for who she was. I really connected with her character…she was one of my favourites, especially when we learn she was just living to survive when she’d been a nurse.
Anyway, a very solid story, dreamy, emotive, and I didn’t want to wake up and I wish I had maybe one or two more chapters to settle the Yagai and Kaoru epilogue, because it felt abrupt, but I’ll take it. Because one of the best things about this manga is the inclusion and significance of our relationships not only with our partners, but other women—a sense of solidarity that connects through “I have loved before and been hurt by love, and been fulfilled by love, so I understand your aches as I support your joys”
(outside of Ike who literally never reappears in the story after assumed breakup lmfao so like I don’t even know how the message of love when it comes to one-sidedness gets resolved—or does it matter? idk it just felt like the other women were given a bit more care….but maybe i’m sensitive)
Thank you to Stiletto Scans and Dayment scans for the closure of 6 years ago for me, and now I’ll take this gap and hope another Josei can fill it up soon.
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