Ririko Tsujita

Once again, this series is pretty episodic. In the first chapter, Kanoko has transferred to a new school where a "cutesy" girl and an "all-natural" girl appear to be engaged in a battle over Minami, one of the guys in their class. In the second chapter, Kanoko has transferred to yet another new school. This time her attention is caught by a pair of guys - one sees himself as the class star while the other is just as good at a lot of the same things but refuses to even try to steal the spotlight. In the third chapter, Kanoko opts to be on the sidelines of a movie set - someone on set appears to be trying to hurt one or more of the actresses, and Kanoko is intrigued by the mystery. In the fourth chapter, Kanoko has transferred to another new school, where she watches the drama unfold between a girl who lives in her own romantic fantasy world and a cranky guy who lives in his older brother's shadow.

The volume ends with Tsujita's debut story, "The Moon to the East, the Sun to the West." Yoko is naturally expressionless, which leads a lot of people to misunderstand her - everyone except her childhood friend and boyfriend, Daikichi. He's loved Yoko for years, and Yoko has become accustomed to having him around, so it surprises her when he stops by one evening to tell her that he'll be moving away soon and wants to break up. Why was he crying when he said that, and how does Yoko really feel about this situation?

Huh. According to Wikipedia, although this series is 3 volumes long, it somehow spawned an 11-volume spinoff. I don't really get it, because it already feels like the author is running out of ideas.

The first couple chapters were pretty good, albeit more of the same sort of thing the first volume offered. I liked the way the first chapter subverted reader expectations, and after so many chapters featuring various kinds of "mean girls," I liked that the second chapter focused on male classmates. Their teacher was fun too, even though her manipulative behavior felt kind of wrong (even if it did have a positive result).

Unfortunately, the third chapter didn't feel like it fit in at all. As usual, Kanoko was people watching, but it was like she'd wandered out of her own series and onto one of the sets in Skip Beat. The explanation for why she was allowed to continue being on set was extremely weak, and the story itself was kind of confusing, definitely the weakest part of the series thus far.

The final Kanoko-related chapter in the volume tried to return to the "school drama" stories of the rest of the series, but it didn't work very well. Yumemi's commitment to living in her own fantasy world was too over-the-top for me, even though I sympathized with her motivation.

The bonus story was surprisingly decent, even though I don't normally like it when manga volumes include authors' debut one-shots. Yoko, like Kanoko, was an unconventional heroine, someone whose face was constantly impassive no matter how she really felt (granted, her emotions didn't seem to be very intense). Meanwhile, her boyfriend wore his heart on his sleeve. Their relationship didn't exactly give me warm fuzzy feelings, but I did like the way things worked out in the end.

This series really would have worked fine as a one-shot. In fact, Tsujita did such a good job with the first and last chapters in volume 1 that it made this one feel unfocused. Also, it was kind of odd that the only friend of Kanoko's from the first volume who showed up in this one was Tsubaki (who was baffled and maybe a little annoyed that Kanoko was completely uninterested in him and not at all embarrassed about sharing a hotel room with him).

Extras:

Four-panel comics after a few of the chapters, an author sidebar, and a 2-page afterword by the author.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (plus d'informations)

[1/31/2021 - I originally read and reviewed this back in 2014 and reread it just now. My original review still stands. The only thing I'd add is that this was harder to read than I remembered - the letterer had their job cut out for them, lots of narrow vertical text boxes and asides with tiny text. It doesn't look like this series ever got a license rescue, so after I read volume 2 that's it. I'll never find out if Kanoko ever got to settle down in one place. ::sigh::]

Kanoko's family moves frequently, requiring her to switch schools often – in this volume alone, she attends four different schools. Kanoko seems to take this all in a stride. She sees herself as an impartial observer of her fellow classmates, a sort of young anthropologist. She doesn't attempt to make friends, because any form of favoritism would interfere with her impartiality. What she doesn't count on is that some of her classmates might try to be friends with her anyway.

In the first story, Kanoko accidentally finds herself becoming friends with three people engaged in a sort of love triangle. In the second story, Kanoko is at a new school, observing a seemingly perfect girl whose behavior seems to be a little “off” in a way Kanoko can't quite explain. In the third story, Kanoko is at a school where the girls move up in the social hierarchy by dragging each other down. A weird girl nursing a grudge against one of her classmates holds Kanoko's secret notes hostage in exchange for help. In the fourth story, Kanoko keeps an eye on one girl in particular, a narcissist who firmly believes she is destined for greatness. In the fifth story, Kanoko visits the school from the first story in order to meet up with her old friends.

I purchased this because I'd seen good reviews and the series was short, only three volumes long. Sadly, Tokyopop fell apart before releasing the entire series, so only the first two volumes are available in English.

The first and fifth stories were a perfect frame for this volume. The revealed Kanoko's hidden depths in ways that the other stories didn't. On the outside, she appeared perfectly happy about having to attend a new school every few weeks (the amount of time she spends at each school isn't stated, so this is a guess). She had a steady supply of new students to observe, and there was not even a hint of self-pity in her signature statement whenever she transferred to a new school: “I'm the only completely objective observer in this story. I enjoy the drama of love and hate from a safe vantage point, too far away to be scorched when things get too hot.”

However, would someone who was content to always be an outsider be reduced to tears at the knowledge that she now had friends who'd wait for her after she got in trouble at school, or worry that her friends had changed and left her behind? For the most part, this volume barely hinted at the emotional effects that constantly switching schools had on Kanoko, but those hints made for great glimpses under her “impartial observer” surface.

Aside from Kanoko, the only character who appeared in every story was Tsubaki, one of the first friends Kanoko ever made. I wasn't impressed with him, at first. He paid attention to and flirted with Hanai purely to poke at Natsukusa and didn't seem to care that he risked hurting Hanai in the process. However, I thought it was kind of nice that he was intrigued enough by Kanoko (and concerned enough about her?) to find reasons to visit her at every school she transferred to. It wouldn't surprise me if a future volume turned their relationship into a romance, although, personally, I hope their relationship remains at the level of friendship. As things stand, a sustained friendship is, on its own, a huge step for Kanoko.

The drawback to the series' premise was that there wasn't a whole lot of time to get to know anyone. Readers got a glimpse into various characters' school lives and a closer look at the things that made them interesting to Kanoko, but that was it. By the time Kanoko managed to dig a little below these characters' surfaces and maybe even make more friends, it was time for her to move on. Not even Kanoko was explored as deeply as I would have liked. She was always on the sidelines, and Tsujita rarely showed what her home life was like. I knew she had a mother who worried about her and an aggressively positive and oblivious older sister, but that was about it.

All in all, this was a decent read. I enjoyed the various stories and was even surprised by how some of them turned out. Also, reading something with a heroine (sort of) who had absolutely no interest in romance was kind of refreshing. Although I'm a little peeved that Tokyopop never got around to releasing the third and final volume, this is one of those series that one could easily stop reading after the first volume – the first and last chapters are that effective.

Extras:

A few character profiles, four-panel comics between each chapter, and a two-page comic-style afterword from the author.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (plus d'informations)