#5 of 5 stars
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“We were all so clueless that it was kind of hilarious.” (p. 209)
Five teenagers, in their final year of high school, quietly embark on a quest to disentangle the venal contingencies that bind their soft and elegant egos to the fabric of whatever constitutes their self-identity. This journey is neither planned nor intentional, but through it all, there is a fever of inevitability that refuses to break, a chancing of emotional uncertainty that harangues the good with the bad, with the hope of discerning the best.
I HAVE A SECRET fits nicely among Sumino’s better titles for its indisputably slick concept and clever, low-key execution. Five kids each possess the ability to read other people’s emotions, but there are two meaningful snags: (1) each character reads emotions differently, and (2) none of the characters know the other characters possess such a skill. The result is a puzzling together (or apart) of teenage anxiety, romance, and overconfidence through five different lenses and just as many multipliers of consequences.
Kyou is the most level-headed of the group. He is also, however, critically introverted and resists the urge to speak his mind to those he cares for most. Internally, this registers as cowardice. Externally, this registers as forlornness. And since Kyou reads others’ emotions as punctuation marks floating above people’s heads, he’s self-conscious about monitoring his behavior to soothe the emotional well-being of others. An exclamation mark? Excitement. Eagerness. An ellipses? Deep in thought. An interrobang? Hyper-cautious.
I HAVE A SECRET is an equally funny and tense read for how it renders scenarios that are equally perfect, and equally horrible, for Kyou, or others, to analyze in situ. Kyou, for example, has a massive crush on Miki-san, the exuberant and athletic girl at the front of the class. If the boy reads Miki-san’s floating punctuation as that of a girl aching for emotional validation, does he step forward and fill in the gap? The girl’s personality is as bright as a shining sun, but there is a hesitancy and an emptiness about her. Does Kyou’s knowing this give him the right to help her? Even though she has no idea who he is? Would this endear him to her? Or would he be abusing her emotional availability?
The ambiguity surrounding these questions and others fuel the novel’s industrious annexation of young adults in search of belonging. Readers learn early and often there are no easy answers.
Kuroda-san is a girl frequently chided for saying or doing something awkward. She enjoys being different, even if it means “hid[ing] the truth behind some other truth” (p. 150). She enjoys doing the unexpected. It humors her and gives her energy. Kuroda cares for her friends deeply and meddles incessantly, but affectionately, because it adds color and fragrance to the world. And how, exactly, does Kuroda see the world? She can read the heart rate of others. Perhaps that’s why, beneath the veneer of the excitable and “looney” Kuroda, rests the unsteady sense of self of a girl constantly modulating her behavior.
Alas, reading into the temperance of the hearts of others can prove troublesome. Does an even heartrate imply calmness or depression? Does an elevated heartrate imply quizzical affection worthy of a nudge in the right direction or does it imply a tepid nervousness inching ever so slightly toward trauma?
These boundaries are indefinite. And the blurrier the boundaries, the less palatable one’s desire to become his or her own person. Readers won’t be surprised then, when Zuka-san, a sporty and popular boy, and friend to Kuroda, gives the girl a reality check by declaring the fact that they can’t succeed at being who they want to be is precisely what pushes them to keep on trying (Zuka: “We know who we wanna be, but we suck at it. We can’t keep up the charade. We slip up at the most critical times – especially me lately – but I think that’s why it never gets tiring,” p. 153).
I HAVE A SECRET successfully pivots in this way, from purposefully jocular (Why is Miki changing her shampoo every three days?) to calculated tension (Why did the quiet girl who sits next to Kyou stop coming to school all of a sudden?). It uses its characters’ unique abilities to read the emotions of others to position them to help one another, to harm one another, to believe in one another, to scare one another, and to find themselves in one another.
The novel asks difficult questions about the evanescence of young love: Miyazato-san can see arrows between people who have found true love, but sinks deeper into sadness upon realizing nobody’s arrow ever finds her. The novel also asks difficult questions about the credulity of knowing oneself and exposing that knowledge to others: Zuka knows his apathy is his blind spot, but he also believes it’s sinful to cling to others, “hoping to one day find the humanity [he] never had” (p. 201).
One particularly commendable facet of this book is its pacing and scope. The book takes place over the course of the teenagers’ final year in high school, spring through autumn/winter. Each character snares a chapter, and each chapter takes place several weeks following the previous. This structure gives the characters and events room to flex and breathe and impresses upon readers the fundamental impermanence of things. Another day, another test. Another week, another club activity. Life moves on. Emotions shift. People change.
The narrative voices aren’t too differentiated, with a few exceptions (e.g., Miki is too hilariously high-energy to miss), but the shift in emotional sensitivity from character (chapter) to character (chapter) is so unmistakable that Sumino can be forgiven for not varying perspective as deliberately.
And yet, I HAVE A SECRET, for all its mucking in the shadows of what a darkened heart is known for, is a novel with a positive outlook. There are romantic misunderstandings and platonic pledges of fealty, sure, but the book makes a conscious effort to show readers that it’s worth exploring the difficult stuff so as to get to the better, kinder, gentler aspects of personal relationships. The challenge, of course, rests in not giving up until one’s time is true.
Light-Novel Reviews||ahb writes on Good Reads
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Mitsumi’s got a plan. High school. College. Post-graduate academia. Proficient work in governmental affairs. Active retirement as an influential civic leader. Mitsumi’s got a plan.
Now, if only Mitsumi didn’t get lost on her first day of high school.
Such are the inevitabilities when a raucously overconfident but eternally kind teenager faces off against the largest challenge of her young adult life. Mitsumi is a kid from the sticks attending a school located in the world’s largest metropolitan area. Tokyo’s a bright, big, busy, noisy place; it’s a daunting springboard. As for Mitsumi? She’s got a plan.
SKIP AND LOAFER is a wonderfully fulfilling manga. The humor is warm-hearted and the characters are all purposefully but flexibly crafted. It’s a coming-of-age manga whose guiding principle is that awkwardness and uncertainty are the mandatory guardrails of maturity. Everyone thinks they’ve got a handle on things until they don’t.
Mitsumi is late for her first day of school but she’s incredibly book smart, and it’s impossible for her peers to get a read on her because she’s constantly resetting everyone’s expectations of what they are going to get from a dreamer like her.
Yuzuki is tall and standoffish, but the girl’s stoic and cynical nature instantly crumbles when Mitsumi belts out the anthem of a children’s TV show during karaoke. The bespectacled Makoto slouches, mumbles to herself, and hates being alone, but when she realizes the clumsy yet ebullient Mitsumi is just as content to stumble through life as to glide (even if she’s stumbling under the impression she’s gliding), the dour glasses-girl realizes it’s okay to stretch and enjoy life’s oddities.
On the surface, a great deal of the protagonist’s exploits are simple and familiar. The manga repeatedly pivots around Mitsumi’s fish-out-of-water scenarios that include karaoke, dressing fashionably, operating a fancy new cellphone, visiting a nifty new café, and joining a school club. None of these endeavors or scenarios are original. However, Mitsumi’s social awkwardness always wins the day.
For example, after stressing about her class intro, the girl accidentally earns the rep of a gangster (Mitsumi: “I deserve a place at the top!”). And when the girl tries tracking down the student council in search of someplace to volunteer, she can’t help but creep up on unsuspecting classmates, glower over their shoulder, and dryly pester them about their ambitions (Mitsumi: “Do you have some time today?”). Everything that should be casual and typical of the first week of high school becomes, in the words of the bookworm Makoto, “bizarre,” and it’s all thanks to Mitsumi.
SKIP AND LOAFER also includes numerous kernels of curiosity, floating just beneath the surface. One of Mitsumi’s classmates is clearly attempting to manipulate the country girl and take advantage of her humility. Elsewhere, the leading male protagonist, described in-text as a “stupid himbo,” apparently shies away from a past he’s not too proud of. And Mitsumi’s aunt, Nao-chan, who helps house the peculiar protagonist, is queer-coded. SKIP AND LOAFER is a genuinely funny and obtuse manga whose imperfect characters are well aware they have plenty of room to grow and plenty of time to do so.
Comics Reviews||ahb writes on Good Reads
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
For all of MARVEL’s gargantuan, multi-universe cast of hero and criminal geniuses, the tendency to label this or that character as “underrated” is admittedly frequent and often attributed to the genuinely unremarkable. Indeed, there is a sea of B-level and C-level villainy that constitutes the bulk of the publisher’s history yet sees so few published pages. Many have contested it’s only a matter of assembling the right creative team to bring forgotten criminal talent to life (on this, Brubaker’s comments on Batroc the Leaper are prescient). All of which brings readers to TASKMASTER, an extraordinarily entertaining comic with clear and precise writing and a specific, polished visual aesthetic. Indeed, though relegated to B-level or C-level familiarity, Taskmaster deserves this treatment.
Taskmaster is brilliant, stubborn, and exceedingly content to give in to pragmatism. If he’s trapped in the ventilation system and a hero plans to use his laser eyes to fry him, Taskmaster will scream madly and run like hell. If he gets into a scrum with the general of the Dora Milaje, Taskmaster dutifully acknowledges the woman’s military expertise and takes as much as he gives. He’s not above tactical counter-planning and he’s not above manifesting an escape route on the most common of missions. In short, the guy does his homework. Every time.
Which is probably why he hates Nick Fury for pulling him into a black SUV for the sole purpose of snaring the biometrics of three amazingly well-trained or exceedingly well-guarded individuals. TASKMASTER is a cat-and-mouse comic. The book sends Taskmaster not unironically on a series of very specific tasks (kinesics; that is, to study three high-profile people) just as he flees a death sentence courtesy of the world’s deadliest assassin (who believes Taskmaster guilty of killing Maria Hill). The broader tale of a criminal needing to clear his name from a crime he didn’t commit is neither new nor fascinating. And the same can be said of the criminal-as-hero secondary theme. However, both narrative tapestries are torn asunder when the man of the hour is a psychotic fiend in a skull mask who thinks nothing of revealing a hero’s secret identity or of slicing someone’s throat in the middle of a street in broad daylight.
TASKMASTER is very sharply written. Taskmaster himself is chummy but frank. It’s not that he doesn’t take himself seriously; it’s the opposite; he takes himself too seriously. The result is a clever and purposeful combination of sinister humor and villainous glee. For example, when Taskmaster fights off White Fox, he earns his fair share of scrapes and cuts. But when it’s clear an easy exit isn’t in the cards, he straps in for some real fun (“Okay! We could’ve done it nice… So no we do it nasty.”).
The book’s art relishes the dirty close-ups warranted by the bloody fists of super-powered street fights, the disjointed limbs of a vibranium-infused melee, and the headaches induced by facing off with the famed Black Widow. Taskmaster’s skull mask is cool, but so are the harsh, angular shadows and wayward trickles of blood that make this comic book come alive. Vitti’s art is ideal for this type of comic. There no exaggerated movements. There is no glamorous posing. And every character who brawls legitimately looks the part.
An argument can be made for an anti-climactic ending or a tautological narrative that merely sends the characters back to where they were at the beginning, but TASKMASTER is only four issues long. And what this title accomplishes in only four issues is admirable. The characters are engaging, the art is engaging, and the story reinforces the protagonist at a granular level without going overboard. Reading this collection, one cannot help but agree: Yes, Taskmaster is underrated.
Comics Reviews||ahb writes on Good Reads
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
So, then, where are they going, and how much energy will they expend to get there?
Hikigaya, Yukinoshita, and Yuigahama have found themselves invested in one another to such a precarious extent that when one suffers the perils of an overextended youth, they all suffer. It wasn’t always this way. Three minds. Three hearts. Three intuitions. They each had their own way of experiencing youth, fighting their way through its many thorny tendrils, and escaping with one or two hopes, or presumptions, for the future. But as readers learn through MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY…#12, the survival of like minds and like hearts begets the convergence of a likewise intuition. The novel focuses on these three teenagers’ increasingly dependent emotional fortitude.
More specifically, the novel focuses on the wayfinding and crossroads of which Yukinoshita must navigate. Yukinoshita has a decision to make. Lots of decisions. Few of which will spell happiness for the intelligent young woman.
Readers already know her family’s social and political prowess as businesspeople, politicians, and community influencers. Readers already know her sister, Haruno, fits into the mold of the marionette so inexplicably well because the woman’s taste for what’s new, changing, and energizing will never be sated. Readers already know Mrs. Yukinoshita, her mother, carries “final boss” level ego to the point at which girlish, youthful independence is viewed so tepidly, the woman treats it no more seriously than a fashion trend or a fad.
Does Yukinoshita wish to follow the family blueprint? Lead the family business with incisive grit? Become a shrewd socialite with a kind smile and a barbed tongue? She can. Absolutely. But it wouldn’t be her decision. It wouldn’t be her path. Even if she succeeded. Even if she applied all of her intelligence and tact, and met everyone’s expectations, the Adult Yukinoshita at the end of that path wouldn’t be legitimate. She wouldn’t be real.
Independence rarely comes easy. And so, Yukinoshita, nearing her final year of high school, has a decision to make. Lots of decisions.
“Dreams, hobbies, clubs, or any of the possibilities that could have been born there would be cleanly melted down to be re-poured into the mold of the adult that society demanded” (p. 147).
MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY…#12 picks up precisely where the previous volume left off (and, notably, concludes in such a way that the following volume will likely do the same). Yukinoshita seeks emotional support from Hikigaya and Yuigahama. She wants to negotiate the cost of seeking her independence. But she fears the thudding swell of anxiety in her chest is more a harbinger of things to come than the clarion call of an cleansing truth.
Hikigaya understands. He acknowledges the once trivial silences that permeated the relationship between he and Yukinoshita and Yuigahama now carry more weight than he alone can bear.
“The time we’d spent together filled less than a year. Of that time, there’d been lots we’d remembered, more we’d forgotten, and much we’d pretended to forget” (p. 21).
And so, in that one year’s time, they’ve muddled through a wild number of exploits, frustrations, games, stubbed toes, and genuine surprises. But they’re friends now. And friends help friends in need. The question, however, for Hikigaya, is to what extent he’ll venture to hold fast to this new reality to prevent it from spiraling beyond his control. Will he succumb to debating Haruno on the veracity of his interpersonal relationships? Will he set aside the heated nausea roiling in his gut and contrive a plan to rebut the venomous ferocity of Mrs. Yukinoshita’s overzealous parenting?
Admittedly, these are somewhat rhetorical questions. But the novel goes through commendable lengths to show readers why these questions need to be asked as much as what the obvious and nonobvious consequences are for daring to respond to them. Yukino Yukinoshita can make a decision for herself. She can decide her future for herself. That’s not what this is about. The real challenge is whether anyone will support her when she reaches her final threshold. And if that support fatefully arrives, who is to say the preexisting barriers to her independence will yield?
Hikigaya is less focused on but nevertheless mindful of how his dedication to Yukinoshita’s sense of self necessarily overlaps with how he trusts, perceives, and engages the other young women in his life. The boy’s humility is slow-dawning, almost agonizingly so, and his modestly successful bargaining of adolescent pathos feels freshly grievous for how long and raw it grinds on his heart.
In a surprising but serviceable departure from the standard narrative, the author of MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY…#12 introduces a handful of interludes, intercalary chapters, to showcase Yuigahama’s feelings for Hikigaya. The interludes, however, match the muted tone of the overall novel. In short, they make good on the girl’s dark note in the previous volume: “I’m not as nice as you think I am” (#11, p. 184). On the inside, Yuigahama is not an aster flower, eternally craning her neck to wherever the sun might shine. She’s clever, yes. And she’s resilient, yes. But she’s also exhausted. Interminably exhausted.
Yuigahama weighs the truth and the fear of her affection for Hikigaya with Yukinoshita’s affection for Hikigaya. But again, Yuigahama is a clever and resilient girl. She sees everything. She understands the type of relationship Hikigaya needs, and the sundered reality in which his identity best thrives. Yuigahama also understands, with deeper and deeper sadness, that what Hikigaya seeks is not what she is willing to give up.
Elsewhere, the interlocking uncertainties continue. Iroha Isshiki, the first-year student council president, is as annoying as ever. But beneath the girl’s veneer of caustic ebullience, she chokes out a good idea or two. She’s still “an ultra-cunning devilish imp” (p. 162) and a “bewitching little devil” (p. 184), for how she cajoles other students into helping her throw together a prom-style graduation celebration with only a month left in the school year. But she sobers up and drills into Hikigaya for his long-marinating and increasingly unpleasant Big-Sister turned Madonna-Whore complex. The cutesy and irate little girl aptly matures in real time.
And then there’s little Komachi. Hikigaya-the-younger-sister completes her high-school entrance exams and it’s a mad dash. There’s a lot of bottling up of emotions, a lot of respectful nodding, a lot of pre-made breakfasts and promises of lunch-date celebrations. But in the end, with a hug and some tears, the splinter plot of the entrance exams lend the novel a pleasant breath of fresh air. Hikigaya admits he’s too attached to his kid sister. He knows he has to let her go. But he also knows, in some funny little way, that no matter how much Komachi demands they “wean” themselves off of one another, a bit of support every now and then is a good thing.
MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY…#12 is a daunting read for way the author has dutifully structured the novel as what may be the rising action of the novel series’ climax and denouement. The book is full of emotional conflict. Unresolved intellectual curiosity. Vague implications of resolution. Simplified assurances of a redoubled conflict. And more.
The prom-style event receives pushback. Will it be canceled? What will happen to the hard work of the student council? Of the Service Club?
Mrs. Yukinoshita is intent on berating Yukinoshita into doing what’s best, even if it’s not in the girl’s personal, best interest. Will the young woman comply? What will happen to all of her hard work?
Yuigahama spies heroism in Hikigaya’s latent, bull-nosed humility. Will she fight for it? She believes she’s fooled others, fooled Hikigaya, into tending to the needs of others, because her own needs have already been met. But what if, in the end, Yuigahama’s merely fooling herself? Alas, this deep and ancient pool of human pathos cares not whose toes tease its temperature.
And what about Haruno’s shame? A woman who is “beautiful, enchanting, with an intoxicating ring to her voice, like it would haunt you till death,” and yet, while “she never does show her true face, but she’ll deliberately show you the cracks in the mask. I still don’t know what her truth is,” Hikigaya muses (p. 56, 58).
Among the unfurling flights of pity readers have discerned within the heart of Yukinoshita-the-elder-sister, from the previous volume to the current, the woman’s sneering attitude toward emotional vulnerability remains at the dreadful vanguard. Haruno Yukinoshita hunts down, strangles into submission, and then gleefully toys with the intuitions of others; she is a marauder of the heart. But why? MY YOUTH ROMANTIC COMEDY…#12 offers a very narrow, but very probable glimpse as to the answer.
When Mrs. Yukinoshita talks down to her youngest daughter, Haruno asserts boredom and chitters away about the inevitability of such things. When Hikigaya proposes dependability in the face of vaunted social pressures, Haruno slaps him down with barking laughter and a snide comment on the frailty of youth. When Yukinoshita says she wants to talk about her future, from square one, Haruno swigs a bottle of champagne and pretends to be drunk, because the honesty of youth in search of independence leaves a bad taste in her mouth (Haruno: “Giving up and letting go is how you become an adult,” p. 54).
Haruno’s real shame, or her errant ferrying of intermittent shamelessness, one might argue, rests in her deliberate ushering of her younger sister into the hazards of adulthood. That is, forcing Yukinoshita to make or endure the same, or a greater, magnitude of personal sacrifice along the way. Haruno’s gusto amounts to the cold, dry, venal ecstasy of driving a counterpart so earnestly toward success that failure amounts to a shrug of the shoulder, a flip of a coin, or a watered-down drink in a dim, lonely, smoky bar. Why? Because Haruno Yukinoshita is a bitter woman.
Light-Novel Reviews||ahb writes on Good Reads
