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Bloom into You

Bloom into You, Vol. 1Title: Bloom into You, Vol. 1
Author: Nio Nakatani
Series: Bloom into You #1
Publisher: Seven Seas
First Published: September 13, 2017
Pages: 188
Genres: Drama, Slice of Life, Yuri
Format: Web
Source: Web
Rating: ★★★★★

Synopsis:

Yuu has always adored shoujo manga and yearns for the day when someone might give her a love confession that would send her heart aflutter. Yet when a junior high school classmate confesses his feelings to her -- she feels nothing. Disappointed and confused, Yuu enters high school, where she sees the confident and beautiful student council member Nanami. When the next person to confess to Yuu is Nanami herself, has her romantic dream finally come true?

Rating Breakdown:

Volume 1: ★★★★★
Volume 2: ★★★★★
Volume 3: ★★★★★
Volume 4: ★★★★★
Volume 5: ★★★★★
Volume 6: ★★★★★
Volume 7: ★★★★★
Volume 8: ★★★★★

My Review:

Bloom Into You is, without a doubt, one of the best coming of age love stories that I’ve ever read. Yuu is a young girl that dreams of experiencing the dazzling love that she sees in books and film. Despite this, she doesn’t find herself feeling at all excited when faced with romantic prospects. There is also some wonderful aromantic and demiromantic representation that I didn’t expect to find in this manga, and the subtle differences between each are written well.

The story is paced well, while many romances fall back on overblown drama to keep the narrative going with many ups and downs, Bloom Into You was consistent from start to finish, like a gentle heartbeat humming with life. The title of the manga is apt, as the characters bloom into love but also into themselves as they discover who they are.

I found myself relating a lot to Yuu, who wants to experience the excitement of love but doesn’t know what it is. It can be easy to fall into the comforts of verbal and physical acts of love to mask a lack of love for oneself, as in the case of Touko; or the admiration of another that you place the other person on a pedestal, like Sayaka. Each of the characters was multilayered and written with such care and understanding of the nuances of romantic attraction.

This manga talks a lot about love, how we fall in love, and what it means to be in love. The fluttery feeling that happens when we find the right person is something that many strive for, but love is more complex than that. People fall in love in different ways, and for different reasons, love is defined by the lover and each person’s experience can be wildly different. Bloom Into You stands out from other romance stories for the way that it presents the concept of love, and the sometimes steady journey toward realizing what it really means. It’s heartfelt and written with so much warmth that it made me feel happy from start to finish.

“What is love, in the end? It’s a word I could never say… Even though I’d always wanted to. But now that I’ve said it, I don’t understand what it really is.”


Trigger Warning: Sex


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Citrus

Warnings: Nudity, Mild Fan Service, Sexual Situations


My Review:

Citrus had been on my radar for a while being one of the more well-known Shoujo Ai manga available in the west. I finally sat down to read it and found myself feeling conflicted about it. The art is spectacular and the manga is worth reading to appreciate that in itself. The characters and the story can be charming and genuinely heartfelt at points, and horribly cliche and boring at other points. My ratings for each volume ended up moving up and down wildly and left me wondering how much I really enjoyed it.

The story follows Yuzu, a loud-mouth gyaru, and her new step-sister Mei, a reserved and goal-driven tsundere. The beginning is rough and the characters are so hot and cold, it takes a while for the romance to feel like it was actually developing. Though Yuzu and Mei’s parents marry, Mei’s father is barely in the picture from the onset, which really made me wonder about the convenient marriage to create a step-sibling scenario. Sibling romance in Japan feels overplayed, and the foundation was so weak in this one. Yuzu and Mei are cute in a way, but they were both so terribly inconsistent that their romance feels forced at times.

I enjoyed the fun female friendships in this series, but each character introduction was frustrating as every new female that Yuzu and Mei befriend happened to be lesbians, and all have some romantic interest in one of the two leads. Most of these brief romantic rivals have next to no good reason to be rivals; the stories that focus on these side stories are so overblown and absurd, it feels like reading a shallow harem manga at times.

The manga does seek to address issues regarding society’s views on homosexuality which I appreciated. The issue of acceptance and support from friends and family is as important as ever, as gay marriage is still not legal in Japan and many other countries around the world. I appreciated the conversation that this story brings to the table about the struggle for LGBTQ couples that have to hide who they are. However, I feel that the reality was not well represented in this series, it explores the issue, and the main characters dating in secret, but it also paints a rosy picture that is not possible for many.

In all, it is a decent series that is relatively tame in terms of sexual content. It isn’t a bad first yuri series for those that are looking into getting into the genre, especially for folks that enjoy colorful characters and plenty of drama without being too emotionally taxing.


“Unknowingly, I ended up running away from you because of my wavering feelings.”


Trigger Warning: Nudity, Blood


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Hare-Kon.


My Thoughts

Harems are a dime a dozen in the world of anime and manga, portrayed as the ultimate male fantasy and often played for laughs, it’s a trope that is riddled with issues while not portraying polygamy with any real accuracy beyond gratuitous sex. For some, polygamy is an alternative lifestyle that can be fulfilling and painful for others.

Polygamy has been a vehicle for numerous abuses all over the world, and it is generally misunderstood by many that see it as free reign to cheat on partners. The truth is, there are committed polygamous relationships, but rules are set by those within the relationship in the same way that they are set by those in monogamous relationships.

“The Hare Kon will continue to push you to your limits and bring you agony. And as long as you continue to love me, I will continue to destroy you and will protect you forever. This is the form of my love to you.”

This series is pretty large, spanning nineteen volumes, the reader follows the ups and downs of a hare-kon family. In response to Japan’s declining birth rate and low marriages, a pioneering town decides to make polygamous marriages legal. With this, the readers are introduced to a marriage between a man and three completely different women, each one representing some favored romance tropes. Despite this, Hare-Kon faces the question of polygamous relationships head-on, showing the absolute worst sides of this kind of family set-up along with the joys and kinship that is possible with a large family.

To say that this series is frustrating is an understatement, there are many issues with the way that the story is presented spearheaded by a husband that is unabashedly detestable at times. Ryuunoske could be charming and funny, but he is also extremely selfish and manipulative. Koharu “falling in love” was also extremely weak, she goes overnight from hating that she feels forced into a sham marriage to suddenly deciding that her unhappiness must mean that she’s jealous and in love.

Understandably, reactions to this series have varied wildly with many people swinging from hating characters to loving them. Honestly, what made me keep coming back was the gorgeous artwork and a genuine interest in seeing if the series actually goes anywhere. It starts off extremely weak, but the middle volumes become stronger and even enjoyable with some genuinely heartfelt moments. Despite the issues, many of the characters are engaging whether they are likable or not, and the author did a marvelous job in stirring up conversation about harems in the medium that glorifies them the most, an achievement in and of itself.


Warnings: sex, gaslighting


three-half-stars
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The Secret of Friendship

Also by this author: High School Debut, My Love Story!!, Sensei!


My Thoughts

Maintaining a friendship after entering a new relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend is one of those tricky things to navigate, especially if your best friend is single. It is not uncommon in both manga and in reality for friends to slowly drift apart as more time is invested in the new relationship. The single best friend becomes a third wheel, and can sometimes end up feeling lonely or abandoned by their friend, it becomes something of an expectation in friendships. The Secret of Friendship, or Tomodachi no Hanashi, subverts that expectation and presents a strong female friendship that takes priority over a boyfriend.

Eiko and Moe are best friends and there is no one that can come between them. They are complete opposites, Eiko is average but cute in her own way, she’s good-natured and has no problem with compromising. Moe is beautiful, strong-willed and outspoken, and she often finds herself facing backlash for being herself. Eiko compliments Moe with her mutability to Moe’s fixed nature. Some could say that this power dynamic between friends is toxic and it is brought up, but Eiko and Moe are unbothered and are happy. Moe values her friendship with Eiko, and she knows that Eiko would feel left out if she were to have a boyfriend, so she puts her friend first.

“Finding one true friend was a lot harder than finding one hundred boyfriends.”

The story from there is really heartwarming as the girls navigate boyfriends, especially with Moe’s rule that any guy she dates has to be considerate of her best friend as well; causing trouble as can be expected. I enjoyed this depiction of a strong female friendship based on a solid foundation of mutual love and a genuine desire for the other person to be happy. I wished that the romantic interests in this story could have been a little better developed, there is a little bullying here which is uncomfortable. But overall it was pretty sweet and the friendship is the highlight here.

The bonus chapter, Sonokare, Shira Bemasu was beautifully drawn and had swoon-worthy main characters, but the short was only okay. You don’t get any real sense of chemistry between them. It’s a silly short about spying on a friend’s cheating boyfriend, and there is some commentary about relationships but altogether the story is pretty forgettable, especially right after reading the main story.


five-stars
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Sweet Poolside

Also by this author: A Trail of Blood, Happiness, The Flowers of Evil


My Thoughts

The premise for this manga was ridiculous enough to pique my interest and I honestly don’t know what I expected. A teenage boy who hasn’t grown any body hair meets a girl with a lot of body hair, and the two band together to shave. There is some good commentary about the way that society judges both men and women about body hair underneath the obvious ecchi scenario of a boy shaving a girl. This little manga would definitely appeal to folks with trichophilia, particularly the ones that find shaving arousing.

Ayako actually has a normal amount of body hair, but like many teen girls is embarrassed by it. I could relate to Ayako in that way because bodily hair can be a source of teasing from other teens. When I was in middle school I didn’t shave my legs or my armpits, my mother had warned me to hold off on shaving as long as I could so that my hair wouldn’t grow hard and thick like hers and she was right, I had soft baby hair. I began shaving in seventh grade, after wearing a shirt vest that had no sleeves and I got ridiculed mercilessly by a boy in my class. I was so embarrassed I went home and took my dad’s razor to shave my armpits.

“Even though our genders are different, Gotou and I might actually be similar…”

Ayako struggles with shaving, cutting herself left and right. It sounds ridiculous but when you first start, especially when nervous and ashamed, it’s understandable. I too used to get tons of nicks and cuts because I was clumsy and would push too hard, so in a way the manga is not entirely unbelievable. Like many slice of life manga, the story does not really go anywhere beyond the strange shaving friendship shared between the two main characters. However, I liked the message that body hair is natural and beautiful, it is a message of body positivity that I didn’t expect to find in a silly ecchi manga but here we are.


Warnings: sexually explicit content


two-stars
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News of Transformations

Also by this author: There’s Nothing Wrong With Me, Prologue-Gymnopedies-


My Thoughts

Henshin no News is a collection of one-shot stories that explore human relationships and loneliness. It is an extremely experimental slice of life manga that comes to life due to Miyazaki’s unusual art style and expert storytelling in a relatively small package.

“It’s only when it’s time for goodbyes that I finally come to like everyone.”

Like most manga in the slice of life genre, many of the situations that the characters deal with are relatively mundane, but what sets this manga apart is that there is this element of the fantastical that removes the stories and the characters from reality. At times bordering on being absurd, Miyazaki weaves magical realism into her narrative smoothly and doesn’t compromise the central theme of relationships.

Each story has a character facing some form of a crisis and meditates on humanity’s propensity for loneliness and isolation. What is truly magnificent about this manga however is the way that humor is used to cut the tension, giving the collection a pure and dreamy feel. The last story in particular was fantastic for referencing manga legend Osamu Tezuka and it had me smiling from ear to ear.

While a little offbeat, Henshin no News is a hidden gem and I’ve never read anything quite like it. It subverted my expectations with every story and managed to make me feel extremely sad for each character while also making me laugh. It is a breath of fresh air and managed to be both serious and lighthearted at the same time.


four-stars