Manga Thoughts: Bloom Into You 8

The release date of the final volume of Bloom Into You was marked in my calendar, but when right after that date I checked the online store of the area comics shop I’ve been patronizing, I found the volume listed as “special order.” For once, I was the one skipping over reading list entries. As I prepared to make another manga order, though, I checked again to now see the volume in stock. Even as I ordered it, however, I was uncertain just what I’d make of it myself. When a review of the very first volume had happened to suggest one of its main characters Yuu could be read as sort of asexual, that got my attention. As multiple volumes kept stretching out Yuu’s uncertainty about just what she felt about Touko Nanami, it certainly seemed a change from “are my feelings even allowed?” (and the apparent additional familiarity, however reflective of hard truths in Japanese society, of same-sex couples keeping things very much between themselves), but did get to poising me on the horns of a dilemma in which anything not “a reluctant realisation things just aren’t working out and a rebound partner for Touko” might seem to amount to “whatever Yuu is dealing with, it’s something you get over.”
( In full bloom )