punchline: existential dread's Manga

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 the characters to grow flesh and bones. in fact, the whole story is populated by immensely likable, and personable, characters, each with their own interwoven romantic woes.

ume obviously has a past, and it's the reason for all his reticence. he is, like yoneda kou's writing, very guarded about said past, yoneda kou only littering in tantalizing tidbits here and there. everything about this story is small-town charm - close-knit, inescapable nosy townsfolk (i mean that in the fondest way), homespun accents and mannerisms, and issues of social class - saki, 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, the love interest, takes the technical tract - he comes from working class roots, from a large family of brothers (and there's this one really hilarious anecdote embedded in the story about this that really brings his character to life). all the characters in this story are learning to navigate the transition from high school to adulthood.

ume, who rooms with his cousin saki, keeps his fiscal burden as low as possible, and guards the fact of his habitation situation very closely - presumably out of a mixture of pride and propriety and shame. in fact, ume keeps everyone at arm's length - not out of callousness, but out of a deep-seated, private past hurt that wounded his ability to connect. i can make several educated conjectures, but i'm not going to spoil it for anyone.

a chance meeting with the earnest, straight-shooting take thaws ume's frosty exterior despite his fumbling attempts at maintaining distance. their friendship sparks into a slow burn romance. ume has probably always been attracted to take from the get-go - yoneda kou makes it fairly obvious without ever stating it outright (she's a narrative genius, what can i say). take takes time to reciprocate and develop a mutual attraction. ume is sometimes deliciously self-aware of his uncontrollable attraction to take, and tries in vain to deflect it - which in turn only makes take fall for ume more: ume, in all his contradictions and kindness and unspoken sadness. every time ume lets his guard down around take, take finds that he can't resist teasing ume back. and when ume recoils and reasserts his distance, take is genuinely hurt.

the meat of the manga is the relationships between ume, saki, take, and take's friend, 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. and they are always trying to read each other, gauge each other's measures of character, gauge what things are being left unspoken by other parties, etc. it's like i'm actually being transported to the same small town they inhabit, aping their mannerisms, reading their thoughts, socially gauge each interaction.

Does the human cease to exist every sunrise one becomes a beast? Is one capable of being loved in both forms? A mature, sophisticated spin on the werewolf genre that dwells on personhood and what it means to be human.

[insert placeholder for a longer, wittier, more thought-out review. i swear i'll do it. one day.]