Manga Thoughts: Farewell to My Alter
Sep. 12th, 2021 04:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerManaging to see some short manga stories by Nio Nakatani had been collected and translated did get my attention; it could, perhaps, have been an aid in packing away Nakatani’s Bloom Into You as a completed work. Some time ago now I did see one person’s suggestion to “follow artists” rather than “follow the franchises they started,” which might not be quite as much an issue with manga but did come back to mind as I finished reading the collection Farewell to My Alter.
The title story of the collection was described as Nakatani’s debut, and remembering some impressions the art of Bloom Into You had looked just a little odd to start with it was a bit of a surprise to not have that feeling with this story. There was, anyway, much more than that to a tale of twin sisters so inseparable they flip a coin to see who takes what name whenever there’s something good or tough coming up for one of them. With the back cover happening to mention “girls’ love,” it also got my attention one part of the story was a high school boy their age who’s known them for years but, making it one particular kind of manga, is getting to the point of “but I can’t wind up with both of you”; discussing this among themselves the sisters do kiss each other but immediately say “well, that wasn’t exciting.”
Other early stories in the volume went in more “fantastical” directions (with one out-and-out “generic high fantasy” with a small twist and one featuring a bizarre emotion-absorbing snail and, I suppose, something that could be read by those more dedicated than me as intimating girls’ love), and I appreciated that variety. They were followed by pieces I knew had been drawn for an anthology series of girls’ love tales, although two of them did have “fantastic” elements (with one about a “fox-eared girl” and her own reciprocal interest in human ears, and one about “online avatars.”) The last of that group was interesting in a different way for featuring an adult couple working at getting ever closer together. Nakatani’s regular endnotes mentioned the very last piece of the volume (which did involve some boy-girl interaction) had turned out the way it had after some “science fiction” “wouldn’t come together.”
Anthologies of short, self-contained manga stories remain unusual enough to me to get my attention, although I am wondering if right now I’d rather take the sure thing of all the stories being by one person. (I’d bought the first of the Éclair anthologies the pieces in the middle of this volume were for, but never quite got around to its follow-ups.) Maybe I’m now in the position of “waiting to see whatever Nio Nakatani works on next and gets translated,” although this volume being translated (by Yen Press as opposed to Bloom Into You’s translator-publisher Seven Seas, although Yen Press published Éclair) might hint attention’s been built up in general.
The title story of the collection was described as Nakatani’s debut, and remembering some impressions the art of Bloom Into You had looked just a little odd to start with it was a bit of a surprise to not have that feeling with this story. There was, anyway, much more than that to a tale of twin sisters so inseparable they flip a coin to see who takes what name whenever there’s something good or tough coming up for one of them. With the back cover happening to mention “girls’ love,” it also got my attention one part of the story was a high school boy their age who’s known them for years but, making it one particular kind of manga, is getting to the point of “but I can’t wind up with both of you”; discussing this among themselves the sisters do kiss each other but immediately say “well, that wasn’t exciting.”
Other early stories in the volume went in more “fantastical” directions (with one out-and-out “generic high fantasy” with a small twist and one featuring a bizarre emotion-absorbing snail and, I suppose, something that could be read by those more dedicated than me as intimating girls’ love), and I appreciated that variety. They were followed by pieces I knew had been drawn for an anthology series of girls’ love tales, although two of them did have “fantastic” elements (with one about a “fox-eared girl” and her own reciprocal interest in human ears, and one about “online avatars.”) The last of that group was interesting in a different way for featuring an adult couple working at getting ever closer together. Nakatani’s regular endnotes mentioned the very last piece of the volume (which did involve some boy-girl interaction) had turned out the way it had after some “science fiction” “wouldn’t come together.”
Anthologies of short, self-contained manga stories remain unusual enough to me to get my attention, although I am wondering if right now I’d rather take the sure thing of all the stories being by one person. (I’d bought the first of the Éclair anthologies the pieces in the middle of this volume were for, but never quite got around to its follow-ups.) Maybe I’m now in the position of “waiting to see whatever Nio Nakatani works on next and gets translated,” although this volume being translated (by Yen Press as opposed to Bloom Into You’s translator-publisher Seven Seas, although Yen Press published Éclair) might hint attention’s been built up in general.