Nanashi no Asterism
Nameless Asterism

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''It's a secret'' - literally everyone in this book

Love triangles can be something wonderfully dramatic (and thus entertaining) or completely pointless. So when you make a story that revolves around a love triangle, you have to put effort in it to make the triangle seem interesting. Nameless Asterism manages to do that… actually it does it too much, but I will get into that later.

The love triangle is simple:
Tsukasa likes Nadeshiko,
Nadeshiko likes Kotooka,
Kotooka likes Tsukasa
What's the problem?
They are all really close friends and they don't want to ... stop their friend group because of their love for eachother. But if you keep your feelings locked, they will try to get out, which the girls have to struggle with throughout the whole story. Their relationship gets even trickier when Tsukasa discovers about Nadeshiko's love for Kotooka, which results in Tsukasa having even more mental problem. The triangle gets even bigger when a third party is apparently in love with Tsukasa called Kyousuke. Shall we make the triangle even bigger? Let's make the triangle even bigger! The twin brother of Tsukasa apparently wants to stop Kyousuke to like Tsukasa because ''He has a sistercomplex'' *are kidding me with this shit? We are now getting into Citrus levels of love triangles!*. With all of this happening, all the three of the girls try to keep their friendship alive, but it receives punches nonetheless.

*sigh* yep, this sure is a complicated story. The biggest problem that I have with this is not the complexity of the story, but how this manga loves to overly explain their feelings. The first time they something like that it is actually pretty emotional, but it isn't after the 29th time. Because of this the middle is pretty boring until chapter 19. I am not going to spoil what happens in this chapter, but I am gonna say that finally some actual drama happens instead of drama in their heads.

The aesthetics are fine I guess. The art looks pretty good and I love the panels where they zoom in on the faces to show the details in the hairs and such.

So in short, do I recommend it? Well, if you love love triangles and kinda corny humor, I would recommend it. If you don't like complicated love stories and/or long explanations of feelings, it's not something for you.

And if you excuse me, I am going to watch K-ON! to shower my brain.

To clarify, before I start, I usually hate love-triangles. I feel like in many mangas they are a cheap plot device to create drama - you have the love triangle where you have the two main characters who are the obvious couple, and then that ex who won't leave/that unrequited love/the clingy other love interest who guilt trips one character to be with them.

Not in Nanashi no Asterism, though!

The three are all friends who all platonically care about each other a lot. Without spoiling too much, all I can say is that the love triangle is a *proper* love triangle. Not one of ... those two way love stories with that extra on the side. Oh no. Nanashi no Asterism likes to make these things as complicated and messed up as much as possible.


The characters are all great. Each have their own distinct personality and their own point of view on their respective situations. Theres a couple of side characters who I want to wind up being a yaoi couple (we'll see), though apart from that, I'm not really invested in anyone apart from the three mains.

Art's pretty good, very expressive faces which is important in these kind of angst ridden situations. On the whole, while it doesn't seem much on the outside - to me I was just expecting another cliched yuri story - this is really turning into a little gem of a story. It could easily change, of course, but as of right now this is one of my favourite yuri mangas out there.


tl;dr: Not your typical stupid love-triangle, it actually deals with the consequences and mess of being IN a love triangle and the struggles of what choices to make and what to give up. Though it still carries good comedic moments and the characters are all so cute and you end up cheering them on regardless of how hopeless it all seems to be. I would totally say it is worth a read!

There's a reason this manga isn't labelled yuri anywhere. Although it wants you to believe otherwise, there's no love triangle in the proper sense within the threesome either, despite constant references to the Summer Triangle asterism. After dragging you through five volumes of drama, pretty much nothing is resolved. Instead of wrapping up a mess of a love dodecahedron, the reader is supposed to imagine how things might end up like in the future, which is a cop-out no matter how you look at it. I picked 'mixed feelings' instead of 'not recommended' because the manga isn't bad in itself. The characters are interesting, and ... feel human and well-developed. The story is actually fairly decent other than the hasty ending, if you're into romantic dramas. The art is great (although shocked expressions are overused), and little recurring themes like astronomy symbolism (which is blatant) and food themed items (which is less obvious) are fun to track. Some readers will certainly enjoy simply watching this complicated web of friendship develop with trial by fire. But any reader that expects the ending to mean something will end up severely disappointed with this shaggy dog story.

Heavy spoilers follow...

Most egregiously, the very core of the plot, the fact that Mikage is aware of the other girls' feelings to the point that it brings her so much angst and drives the entire story, is left up in the air with an 'I'll tell them one day'.
Let me break down the main triangle to illustrate:
Nadeshiko → Mikage: This is the only love interest in the triangle that the manga actually develops. It's revealed at the very beginning of the manga and by the time it reaches the end, although Nadeshiko is aware that Mikage knows her love for her, Mikage stubbornly continues to keep it a secret from the rest for the sake of maintaining the friendship as she's always wanted, despite all the drama this mindset brought about. It's (very vaguely) implied that they might eventually end up together, with Mikage potentially giving in and accepting the idea 'What's wrong with coming to love someone who loves you?'.
Mikage → Tsukasa: We're supposed to think there's such a love interest because a triangle has three edges. The flags are even set in the first volumes in a way that parallels Nadeshiko's attraction to Mikage, but then it's never mentioned ever again. Throughout the manga (outside flashbacks) Mikage shows no romantic attraction to anyone. She simply appears to be interested in maintaining the threesome at a friendship level even if it means forcing her friends and herself to be straight to the very end.
Tsukasa → Nadeshiko: Mikage correctly surmises that there's hope for Tsukasa to be 'normal' again unlike herself and Nadeshiko. (She gives an example of how Tsukasa was excited to hear Kyousuke's confession... ignoring Nadeshiko's ex-boyfriend with the takoyaki t-shirt.) Thus, Tsukasa is left in the dark the whole time as Mikage pushes her to get a boyfriend. In the omake, it is indeed shown that Tsukasa eventually 'grew up', got over her love for Nadeshiko after being led on to selflessly support Nadeshiko's love for Mikage... and just found a boyfriend in the end. (This was apparently ironed over in the English translation, with the boyfriend mention replaced with a 'sweetheart'.)

And the side characters:
Subaru ⟷ Kyousuke: Subaru never grew out of his sister complex in the manga, although it's implied that he's changing as a person as he comes closer to Kyousuke instead. Similarly, Kyousuke's lingering love for Tsukasa was also left unresolved, although it's clearly shown that he's developing a crush for Subaru instead, so I can say that this pair is at least partially resolved.
Kashiwagi ⟷ Maezono: They appear twice in the manga and get married in the omake. Congrats.

The moral of the story is that friendship wins over love, so you had better change and not repeat Mikage's mistakes.