vignette00's manga / #childhood friends(39)

Main character Shun has grown up with twins Eiji and Hide as if they were all brothers. A misunderstanding makes Eiji believe Shun is in love with Hide, when in fact Shun has been pining for Eiji since middle school. When they all get accepted into the same college and end up sharing an apartment, the misunderstanding comes to a head. it's a classic Yamamoto Kotetsuko comic, so there's a saccharine, cute ending with everyone happily paired away. Hide turns out to be hopelessly naive, with an equally shy and innocent love interest, and Eiji turns out to be more of the perverted old man of the two twins. It's cute and sweet enough, just not much more than that.

This story reminds me of a Japanese term "腐れ縁" (kusare-en), which means basically a destined but unwanted bond you have with someone. Sora and Tetsuya are childhood friends who become estranged, then reunited, then estranged again, all the way from childhood into adulthood. Tetsuya wants to protect Sora, but thinks the only way to do that is to make Sora depend on him, and Sora wants Tetsuya to recognize his own agency in a way Sora's father can't, which leaves us with two people talking at cross-purposes with an extra dollop of sexual tension on top. So of course Tetsuya runs away to college and gets a girlfriend, only to be called back to rescue Sora, and of course Sora has to escape from Tetsuya's smothering, only for all three of them (Tetsuya, his ex-girlfriend, and Sora) to reconnect when they're older. Things would be easier if Tetsu learned how to stop projecting his own insecurities all over his partner before he got back together with Sora, or if Sora learned how to advocate for himself before he reconnected with Tetsuya, but -- kusare-en. Which is how we get three volumes of bad communication, followed by a strangely paltry climax bringing Tetsuya and Sora together. I'm making this sound bad, but actually I really enjoyed it. It feels a little like Mimurake no Musuko (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/mimurake_no_musuko/), a similar three volume work about childhood friends, with a slow meandering plot and people behaving selfishly but not, necessarily, badly. I think what Kinoshita is trying to convey is the careful interplay of saving someone and helping yourself: Sora and Tetsuya couldn't be together until Tetsuya stopped needing to see himself as the cool, collected white knight and Sora was able to choose Tetsuya because of love and not because he needed Tetsuya to save him. With that theme in mind, the aimless plot makes sense. They needed to fail first before they could learn to succeed. An extra shout-out to Ryoutarou, Sora's best friend, and Yui, Tetsuya's ex/girlfriend, for being the MVPs of this series. Ryou is the pitch-perfect almost-ran boyfriend, and you get the sense that Kinoshita had to make him small-minded and less forceful so that he wouldn't actually end up the better boyfriend for Sora. He's awfully similar to Ogawa from Emotion Circuit (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/emotion_circuit/an/emotion-circuit-chapter-4.html/1/) only Sora has none of Maki's self-awareness. Yui gets the Cornered Mouse/Chopped Carp treatment, as she's clearly too good for Tetsuya and is unfortunately delegated to being a stepping stone (twice) for Tetsuya and Sora's relationship, just like the ill-fated Natsuki and Tamaki.

In both style and writing, incredibly similar to Shoowa's "Non Tea Room" (http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/non_tea_room/), which is also about a love triangle where all participants are hiding more than they are revealing (and where some of the participants are in a band!). Here, Miki's childhood friend Keisuke introduces Miki to his current crush: a kouhai named Chiba. Miki, who has had a crush on Keisuke for a while, sublimates his feelings into seducing Chiba. What he doesn't expect is for Chiba to 1) fall hard for Miki and 2) to decipher Miki's real feelings about Keisuke. All the characters end up finding themselves torn between selfishness and their better selves: Miki wants to make things work with Chiba (who he sees as the epitome of everything he'll never be -- earnest and cute and a good kid) but can't seem to really commit, Chiba lets his doubts about Miki's feelings (which are well-founded!) inspire him to put Miki and Keisuke's friendship in danger, and Keisuke doesn't know how to prioritze his crush on Chiba and his friendship with Miki. There's a woodness to the placement and body language in the art, but in some areas the construction really shines. Chapter 2 is a particular stand-out: the bookends of "you sure are loved," the speech bubbles of Chiba and Miki as they talk about first names, the thread that goes from Miki's monologue to Keisuke's childhood memories. Despite Furutsuji's lack of titles to her name, there's a deftness to the characterization and writing. Keisuke feels straight despite his crush on Chiba, and he plays "straight, devoted friend" to Miki in a way that makes their friendship real, fleshed out with concrete, unique details that many other manga forget to add. Miki is the more experienced of the three, and starts off the story with a wicked streak, but he has a vulnerability that draw you to him like it must have drawn Keisuke. It's not that he's helpless, but you can tell when he's going to make a bad decision or let a bad decision be made on him. And Chiba toes the line of victim and victimizing. I don't buy the other readers' comments that sympathize with Chiba, who was, it's true, used by Miki in the beginning. Miki puts in a good faith effort to make right by Chiba's feelings. It's Chiba who uses Miki in the end, and I think his exit from the story is both poignant and fitting. He's not villanized, but Furutsuji doesn't want to vindicate him either. In the end, it's a story that feels really modern and young, but not immature. The resolution is kind to everyone, even Chiba, who has friends that will pull him out of his heartbreak, just as Keisuke is there for Miki's heartbreaks. A solid read all around.