Twinkling in its own special way
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Natsuki Takaya
Translation: Sheldon Drzka
What They Say
Sakuya Shiina lives with Kanade, her male cousin and foster parent. In times of pain and sadness, she’s always taken comfort in looking up at the stars. One day, a mysterious boy suddenly shows up at Sakuya’s house on her birthday. He leaves her with kind words, but she has no idea who he is! She discovers later that the new boy in her class is Chihiro Aoi, none other than the strange boy who dropped in on her! Sakuya is shaken up by Chihiro’s sudden but permanent appearance, while he treats her coldly. Things remain awkward between them until an incident at the club information session! In the end, will it bring them closer together or will the feelings between these lone stars remain forever in the dark?
Technical:
The front cover here is a fairly simple image of Sakuya over a colorful background, with cherry blossoms floating by. It’s not bad, but to be perfectly honest, I feel like Takaya’s art style isn’t especially well suited to being blown up like this, making it look perhaps a bit overly flat. The back cover has your usual synopsis and a continuation of the background from the front, along with… a close up of Sakuya’s closed eye in a star outline? I kind of get and can appreciate the idea here, but it frankly just doesn’t look very good. In terms of extras, you get a meaty chunk of color pages at the front, a number of bonus comics, some musings from the author interspersed throughout, and a rather impressive collection of translation notes at the back. And those notes are actually really, really nice, as between the specific Japanese terms and the bits about stars, the dialogue could occasionally be considered a bit obtuse for your average reader. But since they’re quite thorough, you should be fine as long as you keep in mind that they’re there for when you need them. Paper quality feels solid, honorifics are used, and sound effects are left in their original format and subtitled. Oh, and of course it should be noted that this is an extra thick book, packing the contents of two normal volumes into a single big one. It’s also a rather insignificant detail, but the packaging actually seems to be completely lacking any “from the creator of beloved manga Fruits Basket” on it, which is a shock as publishers generally love slapping those things on front and center.
The art here should feel largely familiar to fans of Takaya’s more famous work, Fruits Basket. What that means is a style that’s a little on the more simple side, and isn’t especially strong in shading or details. It’s really not a showstopper visually, but it also kind of doesn’t aim to be. The real strength, though, comes from the way emotion and comedy comes across. So though the art may not blow you away with its incredible depth, it perfectly plays with its pacing and just works. Backgrounds appear fairly frequently, but are also a tad simplistic.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Sakuya Shiina is a high school girl who lives along with her older cousin/foster parent, Kanade, who’s known for being something of a good-for-nothing shut-in. And though it’s her birthday, she’s not having such a good time, as she’s tormented by talk of her parents abandoning her and Kanade being no good. When she gets back home, though, she finds that Kanade is joined by a mysterious guy named Chihiro to help celebrate her birthday. She assumes he must be Kanade’s friend though and just rolls with it, and he blends in pretty smoothly, even giving her a rather nice dress as a gift. And when he gets ready to leave, he tells Sakuya just what she needs to be about her living situation. The big twist, though, is that the next morning Sakuya and Kanade realize that neither of them actually knew Chihiro, and he just effectively welcomed himself in as if it was natural! It’s a real great little opening with just enough of a twist to help draw you in.
As the book continues on, we’re more properly introduced to Sakuya’s friends, who are also the only other members in her stargazing club. Yuuri is an overly energetic boy who tends to take the brunt of the abuse from her other friend, a girl named Sei with a masochistic personality hidden under her charming exterior. They make a real nice core of characters who play off each other well, and their interactions are frequently pretty damn hilarious. Anyway, Sakuya spends some time trying to hunt down Chihiro. But when she eventually does find him, he says that he thinks the real world is trash, refuses to share his true self with her, and even says that he hates her completely and utterly! And to top things off, he ends up transferring into her school and class, forcing them into proximity!
With all that out of the way, the core of the book is set, and things become about Chihiro begrudgingly getting involved more and more with Sakuya and her group. It’s all pretty amusing on the surface and has some great scenes, but the true oomph here comes from the way things are moving in the background as well. Of course there’s the basic character quirk that Sei and Chihiro are two-faced, but pretty much every character (those two included) clearly have some further motivations and problems lurking just beneath the surface. Whether it’s some rather nasty words being abruptly thrown at Sei, or the way that Chihiro clearly has some sort of connection to Sakuya that he’s not letting on, there are a ton of small moments that give these characters some depth rather subtly and smoothly. The real trick, now, will be seeing how well they play out as more and more continues to come to light.
In Summary
With a charming exterior and a cast of characters that play off each other quite well, this is definitely a solid start to the series. The humor lands quite well, and the emotional scenes of course pack some punch as well. And though it’s hard to say it has any gimmicks or big things to set it apart, it still manages to feel quite unique just by pushing things in subtly unusual directions. Furthermore, the book succeeds with its characters not just by making them good tools for conveying humor (which they absolutely are), but also by subtly seeding depth through the tiny looks into what truly moves them that are sprinkled throughout the volume. In the end, at first glance this may be a book that looks like a generic run of the mill romance, which in some ways it definitely is. But through the tiny details of its craft that are finely polished, it shines in a somewhat different manner, creating a series with some true potential that’s definitely worth giving a shot.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 22nd, 2016
MSRP: $19.99
