Manga Thoughts: Bloom into You 5
Sep. 3rd, 2018 04:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerGetting to a representation of a budding same-sex relationship I have fewer acknowledged hangups about (although maybe no more qualified to say anything about without unknowingly embarrassing myself), I turned to the fifth volume of Bloom Into You. This time, I seemed able to pick up the story on the fly; there have been times when even eagerly awaited and swiftly devoured volumes of manga, if in series that have run long enough over here the gaps between volumes have opened to the same lengths as in Japan (where it ought to be easier to follow their stories serialized, even with all the anxious reports crossing the Pacific of manga magazines folding in this age of smart phones), can be a little hard to get back up to speed with.
The back-cover blurb did remind me of the high school play the characters had got involved with; resolving why "its ending doesn't feel right" pointed straight back to "stories-within-stories can just happen to bear on their surrounding works." With that hurdle cleared, Yuu took Touko to the aquarium, something that just might give an impression of "subtle forward momentum" (although the background art inside the manga did seem blander and less "romantic" than the cover illustration). At that point, I realised the manga had run through the entire blurb with a good several chapters left.
A sort of "side story" followed with the student playwright Kanou going to an author's book signing only to find out the author didn't quite match her expectations, which I was ready to see as a subtle microcosm of the whole manga. From there, things got back to the main characters. At the beginning of the story I'd thought Touko a "with-it" sort of person compared to Yuu's uncertainty about just what if at all she feels (Yuu is challenged at one point in this volume to say whether she has feelings for Touko with "well, I do" added to the challenge and can't respond, although there was a lighter note later on where she and a male acquaintance happen on a girl they know crying and Yuu struggles with being told "this is girl stuff, you handle it!") Now, though, it's reiterated that Touko is somehow trying to "play the part" or "act out the role" of her deceased sister (although there I have to admit the first moment that was established, which would seem to have been pretty significant, seems only to have eluded me at the time). She talks about how her feelings for Yuu are the single thing that makes her "herself," and in recognising the revised play as a commentary on herself she does start getting worked up.
Where I'd paused in between the last two chapters of this volume contemplating a blow-up sufficient to build a last cliffhanger on, though, Touko just drags Yuu to the roof and asks to kiss her for the sake of what makes her herself. Yuu refuses permission with a comment that this shouldn't be the sole thing Touko hangs her identify on, and that really did strike me as "things changing," but in an unconventional way. In some ways I can think of the manga as moving away from "Yuu's the one who has to change," although it does leave me wondering if this might even mean a conclusion will be sprung upon us soon.
The back-cover blurb did remind me of the high school play the characters had got involved with; resolving why "its ending doesn't feel right" pointed straight back to "stories-within-stories can just happen to bear on their surrounding works." With that hurdle cleared, Yuu took Touko to the aquarium, something that just might give an impression of "subtle forward momentum" (although the background art inside the manga did seem blander and less "romantic" than the cover illustration). At that point, I realised the manga had run through the entire blurb with a good several chapters left.
A sort of "side story" followed with the student playwright Kanou going to an author's book signing only to find out the author didn't quite match her expectations, which I was ready to see as a subtle microcosm of the whole manga. From there, things got back to the main characters. At the beginning of the story I'd thought Touko a "with-it" sort of person compared to Yuu's uncertainty about just what if at all she feels (Yuu is challenged at one point in this volume to say whether she has feelings for Touko with "well, I do" added to the challenge and can't respond, although there was a lighter note later on where she and a male acquaintance happen on a girl they know crying and Yuu struggles with being told "this is girl stuff, you handle it!") Now, though, it's reiterated that Touko is somehow trying to "play the part" or "act out the role" of her deceased sister (although there I have to admit the first moment that was established, which would seem to have been pretty significant, seems only to have eluded me at the time). She talks about how her feelings for Yuu are the single thing that makes her "herself," and in recognising the revised play as a commentary on herself she does start getting worked up.
Where I'd paused in between the last two chapters of this volume contemplating a blow-up sufficient to build a last cliffhanger on, though, Touko just drags Yuu to the roof and asks to kiss her for the sake of what makes her herself. Yuu refuses permission with a comment that this shouldn't be the sole thing Touko hangs her identify on, and that really did strike me as "things changing," but in an unconventional way. In some ways I can think of the manga as moving away from "Yuu's the one who has to change," although it does leave me wondering if this might even mean a conclusion will be sprung upon us soon.