i keep coming back to this story and ruminating on it. i love it so much.
ume is a wonderful protagonist. he's the perfect mix of restraint and vulnerability. he keeps everyone at arm's length not out of callousness, but out of a deep-seated past hurt that wounded his ability to connect. (yoneda kou's really good at writing those kinds of protagonists, and only littering in tantalizing tidbits here and there about said past. anyone want to swap theories??? i have many!)
everything about this story is small-town charm and i love how yoneda kou explores social class in japan as well: ume's cousin attends a prestigious (private?) school on a scholarship, while ume, who transferred in from another prefecture or town (under extenuating circumstances that have only been hinted at and have yet to be revealed), lives off the charity of his aunt and uncle, and attends the general-ed tract at the town's public school. take takes the technical tract - he comes from working-class roots - a large, boisterous family of brothers (and there's this one really hilarious anecdote embedded in the story about living off of hand-me-downs that illustrates so much of his character - his kindness and consideration, his family's financial circumstances, and also his amusing bluntness - in one fell stroke).
the meat of the manga is the relationships between ume, saki, take, and ochi, and watching them puzzle each other out. the dynamics between them are all *delicious*, replete with body language, hedging, lies, truths, double-speak, and small-town tact. they're all such well-developed characters that dialogue off of each other, always trying to read each other, gauge the other parties's measures of character, gauge what things are being left unspoken, etc. it's like i'm actually being transported to the same small town they inhabit, aping their mannerisms, reading their thoughts, carefully gauging each interaction and mining them for all their hidden depths.
i think any romance literature that takes the time to explore more relationships than just the principal pairing is literature worth reading. the incipient feelings between ume and take develop not in a vacuum, but in a petri dish—kou leaves space and matter for all the characters to bloom. her approach really is so understated and elegant.
forgive the essay, but i have this surfeit of affection for this story and i really needed to express it haha
i keep coming back to this story and ruminating on it. i love it so much.
ume is a wonderful protagonist. he's the perfect mix of restraint and vulnerability. he keeps everyone at arm's length not out of callousness, but out of a deep-seated past hurt that wounded his ability to connect. (yoneda kou's really good at writing those kinds of protagonists, and only littering in tantalizing tidbits here and there about said past. anyone want to swap theories??? i have many!)
everything about this story is small-town charm and i love how yoneda kou explores social class in japan as well: ume's cousin attends a prestigious (private?) school on a scholarship, while ume, who transferred in from another prefecture or town (under extenuating circumstances that have only been hinted at and have yet to be revealed), lives off the charity of his aunt and uncle, and attends the general-ed tract at the town's public school. take takes the technical tract - he comes from working-class roots - a large, boisterous family of brothers (and there's this one really hilarious anecdote embedded in the story about living off of hand-me-downs that illustrates so much of his character - his kindness and consideration, his family's financial circumstances, and also his amusing bluntness - in one fell stroke).
the meat of the manga is the relationships between ume, saki, take, and ochi, and watching them puzzle each other out. the dynamics between them are all *delicious*, replete with body language, hedging, lies, truths, double-speak, and small-town tact. they're all such well-developed characters that dialogue off of each other, always trying to read each other, gauge the other parties's measures of character, gauge what things are being left unspoken, etc. it's like i'm actually being transported to the same small town they inhabit, aping their mannerisms, reading their thoughts, carefully gauging each interaction and mining them for all their hidden depths.
i think any romance literature that takes the time to explore more relationships than just the principal pairing is literature worth reading. the incipient feelings between ume and take develop not in a vacuum, but in a petri dish—kou leaves space and matter for all the characters to bloom. her approach really is so understated and elegant.
forgive the essay, but i have this surfeit of affection for this story and i really needed to express it haha