A Romance Recommendation Double Feature (Patreon)

Hey everyone, happy holidays! I've been dealing with some complicated feelings about my art and thinking of plans to make improvements, but that never stops me from my fervent manga-reading and scouring the internet for new stories to get inspired by. Maybe the down times enable me to get more lost in stories than when I have things to do. There are two manga I've picked up recently that I feel like talking about, and they both happen to be romance stories which makes it fun to group them together. I suppose most of the things I get sucked into are romance in general, but moving on!

First and most importantly, I want to give a solid recommendation to this manga by Arai Sumiko called "The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn't A Guy At All".

The basic premise is a high school gyaru has an interest in American Rock music and at some point developed a crush on a clerk at a local record store. It turns out that this clerk is actually the girl that sits next to her in class, being mistaken for a guy because of her manner of dress in casual settings (as well as a mask over most of her face while in the store). This manga feels very modern to me, and not because of anything about the writing or concept, but because it really feels like a product created for the internet, removed from the rules set in place by major manga publications. I don't know if it has a set posting schedule, but the chapters themselves are only 4 pages at a time which feels very progressive in an industry that demands either incredibly fast chapter turnarounds or girthy chapters at a slightly slower pace. The first chapter is so short, I'll just post it below because I think it sets everything up so clearly.

I wouldn't let this chapter inform your opinion of the pacing of this manga, though. The 4 page chapters feel like nice chunks of a larger whole that when read straight through feel no different than a standard weekly 18-or-so page chapter. I couldn't tell you if the author writes in that same 18 page limit and splits it for workflow reasons, but all of that is sort of inside-baseball a bit and probably won't affect your reading experience. The pacing is good and the chapters fly by without you realizing it is my point.

So with most manga that makes it's way onto my recommendation list, the art immediately grabs me. The pages feel very in line with the subject matter; the dominant neon-green that fills every corner makes the comic feel as if it was band posters printed by the members themselves on a risograph or screen printer, with a limited color palette because it's cheap. There's a lot of detail in the inks too, hatching in crevices, hair with lots of waves or textural highlights, and a pleasing amount of clothing folds to give depth to drawings that already play with camera angles and different focal lengths in ways that show off the artist's grasp on form in space.

Now, I'm going to digress a bit because this manga gave me something to think about with regards to the creation of comics that I haven't put much thought into before. I was showing Mariel pages from this a few days ago and I was expressing to her that I really enjoy that the author really pulls the figures in the panels VERY tight into view and doesn't leave a lot of excess space for backgrounds. It feels like a conscious long-term decision so that they can churn out pages at a pace they feel good about and not get bogged down in the details of the backgrounds. You never feel like you don't know where characters are in a scene but we don't get true establishing shots that you would see in other manga. The backgrounds fill up just enough space that you get what you're looking at but it's all about the characters.

I bring this up because I was telling her that I think it's good, and her reaction was sort of on the other side and she felt that the pages felt claustrophobic and too detailed which made it hard for her to focus. This is something that we've both felt about another manga (that I personally LOVE by the way, this is no shade) called Devil's Candy by Rem and Bikkuri; Rem is one of my favorite inkers ever and the comic is gorgeous but its very often that I am overstimulated by a page with so many effects, gradients, details on figures, etc. Here's a page for an example:

There's really no place for the eyes to rest on the page and the level of detail and contrast is too much in every corner and even when there's no action in a scene, the feeling persists. It feels like Rem probably draws her artwork at a pretty large size or maybe has something personal against panels without a lot in them which is just an artistic choice in the end. I wanted to bring this up because I get the feeling from Devils Candy but I don't get it from Arai Sumiko's manga and it made me curious about what other people feel about this topic. Do you feel like you don't mind a lot of detail or even notice something like that? I've felt since even at the beginning of Red Muscle that I want to keep pulling my drawings in closer and closer in the frame but I never felt like there was a tipping point on something like that where it became TOO close up.

I've gone on so long about the art, but we should shift to talking about the story which is really quite fun and dramatic in a way that feels truthful to these little high schoolers. SPOILERS AHEAD!

Oosawa (the gyaru) gets closer to Koga (the rocker) as the store clerk over time and gives "him" a playlist of songs that she ends up seeing on Koga's phone at school and her reality sort of falls apart in a way. The deception could never carry on forever but Oosawa doesn't really know how to handle her feelings about Koga keeping the truth from her and tries to distance herself even though they're both on the school festival committee together. Koga doesn't really have friends because she stays in her shell so to speak, and her Uncle that owns the record store and a classmate that knows her secret convince her to tell Oosawa the truth.

Getting to this point is a good handful of chapters and ALMOST all of what is released so far (as of writing this there are 31 chapters), but this is not the end goal of the manga. The two girls are now able to communicate about their shared musical interests and be friends, but Oosawa has not lost her feelings of attraction for Koga even knowing that she's also a girl. I think the end game is for them to end up together and it's so cute and cheesy to see Koga still unconsciously put the moves on Oosawa because of her demeanor that charmed her in the first place.

There was also this funny moment that I didn't pay as much attention to the first time around but noticed as I was rereading to talk about this manga; this one chapter is about Koga's uncle and some of his old friends/regulars at the record store feeling a different energy at the store, only to notice the two girls being flirty and childish that sends them all back in time to their youth in a single panel. I didn't even catch that they looked different the first time!

This manga is really popular on the site I've been reading it on so maybe you've heard of it before me, but if this is the first time you've seen it I cannot recommend it enough! It's really high on my radar of things to pay attention to currently and I think I can learn a lot from studying it.

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The second manga I want to talk about is one that I'm not AS crazy about but still felt a pull to discuss it: "A Side Character's Love Story" by Akane Tamura.

The basic idea of this manga is that a girl who feels like she has no drive or initiative has a crush on a coworker of hers (they work at a grocery store) and he turns out to be just as much of an awkward fellow that has similar feelings for her. They over-politely try their best to get closer and eventually start dating and learn the ups and downs of caring for and supporting a partner, even though they both start a little further back than most people because they've grown up a bit socially stunted.

It's hard to make this one sound as interesting, and what I'm getting out of this one is different than the first manga I talked about. To me, the appeal of this story is about seeing two people that are really struggling to feel adequate in comparison to the charismatic coworkers around them both push themselves to be good partners for each other and develop their emotional literacy for themselves and for each other.

This is a manga that feels like I get more out of it conceptually than with the beat-by-beat events unfolding. As someone that can get feelings of anxiety in social situations, it really tackles that feeling of attempting to put yourself out in a vulnerable position and it coming out strangely because it's the best you can do. You sort of have to meet the manga halfway to get how strong the emotions they're experiencing are. I've seen some people leave comments that the main characters sort of feel like children and are really robotic and I can see why they felt like dropping the story. It's really in the little details that keep me in; like when Nobuko (our female lead) feels like an early date with Irie (our male lead) might not be fun for him or can't tell what he's thinking about, she catches him looking at a notepad full of their date plans and backups as things may not go as expected and it all hits her that he really cares about making it go well and her affection for him grows.

It's cute and I wouldn't call it too saccharine, it just sort of feels sad in a sympathetic way and there's a relatability there for me. They sort of go through all the steps of a first love, feeling comfortable with touch, more japanese specific things like dropping formal speech and using first names, and then slowly getting into more vulnerable feelings like sharing hugs, kisses, and getting over their fear of sexual intimacy with someone.

I think something about it that did catch my attention unexpectedly was when Nobuko has to begin her job search as she graduates college and knows (culturally) that she is out of time with the way things are at her grocery store job and needs to look into a proper place of employment, as all graduates in Japan must do. To me, while the romance part of the story felt juvenile and maybe predictable with how a romance between characters like that would go, it's something else to see that personality type struggle so hard in Japan's incredibly demanding job interview season. It provides a huge window into another culture in a more tangible way than most manga, and I get similar feelings when I've seen documentaries on Japan's school system and how insanely serious and competitive it gets. It's a whole different world compared to anything I've seen in North America and it's understandable why Japanese kids get so stressed out from it all that suicide rates are so high, which is heartbreaking. Job hunting as it's relayed through Nobuko's eyes feels like an extension of that, and we see her struggle to answer questions in a way that inspires hiring staff to pick her above the droves of others competing for the same positions. Nobuko continues to take practice interviews and see tutors for developing better communication skills all while taking exams for an alternate avenue of work. Knowing how much of a toll that would take on an emotionally closed up person makes me really feel sympathy for her.

Overall, it is a sweet and tender story that's enjoyable to sort of breeze through and not spend too much time on, it's ideas are loud and clear without having to dig. The characters put in such emotional effort to say their almost-primitive but tangible feelings of love and admiration as directly as they can without much thought if their confessions of honesty are too cheesy or not. If that cheese factor lines up with your own sensibilities at all, you might get something out of this manga, I think.

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That's all I've got for you today! Even though it takes time, I've been getting a lot out of writing these little recs. They really help give me clarity of thought which helps me work through and form more complex opinions that could lead to a more nuanced understanding of what I want out of stories and how to tell better ones. This is writing practice in its own way too!

I'll keep on the lookout for other manga to talk about, see you next post!