vignette00's manga / #reencounter(43)

Sometimes Nakamura Asumiko is good, sometimes she writes 19 page oneshots where nothing really happens and we muse glancingly at how time changes the way we see the heroes of our youth, and sometimes you get the feeling she had a thought as to where this would go and then it was the deadline to send the thing to the printers.

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.

High schools friends reconnect as employees/owners of a bar. It's sort of like a grade B version of an Antique Bakery doujinshi. The main couple are thinly characterized around tropes (a refuse-nothing-chase-nothing flirt and a no-nonsense definitely-no-i-swear-i'm-straight foil), there are some interesting but confusing and brief side characters. I lost interest midway through, but felt like I had to finish for completeness' sake.