Tsurezurebiyori
Our Wonderful Days

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If I were to describe Tsurezurebiyori with a few words, I'd say it's a story that thrives in its original simplicity.

What I mean is that nothing this manga does or symbolizes is new or unique. It's a simple story about a simple life of four high school friends. However, it doesn't take long to realize that, as far as execution goes, Tsurezurebiyori is a rather unique title for the yuri genre.

First of all, Tsurezurebiyori is not yuri at all for most of its run. There's barely any romance until the very last chapters. Instead, it's much more a story about friendship and what these girls ... mean to one another. They go through their daily lives like normal high school students do, lazing around, doing nothing in particular and just enjoying their time together. This might seem boring for some, but stick with me, because thanks to its great execution Tsurezurebiyori is one of the sweetest and most entertaining slice of life stories I've experienced in a long time.

One of the reasons why is because it doesn't use generic and done-to-death plot elements you mostly get to see in similar stories. There are no school festivals and no class trips. There is not even much drama present, and the one chapter that is heavier on drama is still rather well and uniquely executed. The manga really is just a simple story of a simple life that focuses its strengths in areas other than complicated plot. One of those areas, is atmosphere.

Tsurezurebiyori understands its atmosphere in a way few yuri titles do. One of my problems with the popular yuri manga Girlfriends was that there was an absolute overdose of dialogue. Those girls just never let you take a breather, which is, in my opinion, a rather important element of creating good ambiance and getting the reader immersed in a story. Tsurezurebiyori is different. Its dialogues are very simple and there are many pages that have no text at all. Sometimes there will be a page with a character sitting alone in a room, looking out the window. Sometimes there will be two friends sitting next to each other and just quietly appreciating their time together. The author follows the idea that 'words are not everything', and these quiet moments magnificently help to create a rather interesting and pleasant atmosphere that made the manga much more likable for me than it would've been otherwise.

But the atmosphere isn't just soothing and pleasant, it also can be very nostalgic, empty, or even lonely at times. There is one particular chapter where one of the girls, Nanaya, is alone for a day because everyone else is out of town. She has nothing to do and realizes how important it is to have people around her. Through great paneling and understanding of simple human emotions, the author manages to paint a picture of how sudden loneliness feels on a very impressive emotional level. This is the kind of atmosphere building that sets Tsurezurebiyori apart from its contemporaries.

And it helps the characters of the manga too. By themselves they're a very fun bunch of high school girls with some great dialogue and banter. They can play off of each other personalities quite well and they give off the feeling that they're getting to know each other more and more as the story goes on. But again, it's the subtle moments that show their feelings that make them so human and likable. Sometimes they're loud and happy, sometimes they're a little sad and sometimes they're just quiet - but it always feels that they're not empty and there is emotion in them, whatever one it might be. Throughout 19 chapters, these characters show many subtle faces, while stile maintaining their usual fun personalities.

All of this is supported by very decent art from the author, Hamuro Kei. I'd again like to point out their great use of panels and the structure of pages to make the atmosphere stand out.

I must say that, although I'm not exactly a very big reader, Tsurezurebiyori is the most fun I've had with any manga in a very long time. I'd even go as far as saying that it's the most fun I've had with any anime, manga or novel in a very long time as well.

It's a story that doesn't try to do too much, nor does it feel like it's doing too little. The author had set small boundaries of what they wanted to do with this manga and decided to push those boundaries as far as possible, while at the same time never overstep them to do something they didn't want to. Thanks to this great understanding of what is and what isn't possible to do with this simple story, Tsurezurebiyori brings just the right amount of everything to the table for it to flourish beautifully.

You won't find much originality in Tsurezurebiyori, but at the same time, its qualities are something you'll rarely get to see elsewhere.

Tsurezurebiyori is pure joy.


Even if it might seem at times, not all Slice Of Life is all the same. Sure, more or less, the protagonists pretty much always are a group of school girls, and the story is about their more or less mundane every day life, but this "reality" usually is heightened, concentrated, an unrealistic realism.

While Tsurezurebiyori fits the standard formula of four first-year high-school girls exactly, the story is much more than the usual static daily hijinks at the core of many other manga of the genre, and much more grounded in it's telling of everyday life, with characters that are a lot ... more interesting that the usual genki girls.

But really, the slice of life story is just the backdrop, on which the relationship between our two main protagonists, Mafuyu and Koharu, develops. I don't want to spoil anything, but I'll say, that the romance here is not the cyclic fizzling you get in so many Yuri manga or anime, but a very nice, if slow, arc.

There isn't much else to say, really.
Tsurezurebiyori is my favourite manga, and if you like Yuri, and especially if you like Yuri romance that actually has a bit of development and goes beyond the typical "blushing oh-but-we-are-just-friends", or just want to see the most adorable Yuri couple, then I recommend you read this manga.

The only bad thing I can think of, is that there are only three volumes. I happily could read 100 volumes about these wonderful characters.

Sorry for the shoddy review, I'm not really sure how to sell this manga, without spoiling anything.

In the Western world, slice-of-life anime tend to either get a bad rep or are just ignored unless they're genuinely good. Many of them are considered boring, or try too hard to make their characters act and sound younger and cutesier than their age would suggest. But in recent years, people have been putting in effort to make genuinely good slice-of-life anime and manga that aren't just vignettes or forced moe fare. This one, Our Wonderful Days, is definitely one of them. While the marketing for this manga makes it out to be a shoujo-ai, or a very light yuri, it's a slice-of-life manga through ... and through, and any shoujo-ai elements don't really appear until near the end of the series. I personally didn't mind, because I like this manga enough so that I don't really care what genre it's supposed to be. For what it is, it does its job really well.

The story centers on a girl named Koharu Hanamura, who just started high school alongside her two friends, Minori and Nanaya. She's surprised to find a transfer student, Mafuyu Shirotsuki, attending the same school as her. But as it turns out, Mafuyu was actually a childhood friend of hers who moved away in elementary school, and they had lost contact. The two of them are overjoyed to be reunited, and Mafuyu is welcomed into their little group with open arms. But as the two spend idyllic days together in the countryside, their rekindled friendship just might blossom into something more. That's really all there is to it. No love triangles, no misunderstandings (And the ones that are there are quickly resolved, THANK GOD!), no jealousy, nothing of the like. Our Wonderful Days is like Non Non Biyori in that it's just about a group of friends going through their everyday lives, whether it be going to school, spending time with family, hanging out, and so on. So if you're looking for action or heavy drama, this isn't the manga for you.

But don't let that dissuade you from reading the manga, because even with its lack of plot, it still has a lot to offer. For one, the artwork is very well done. I said in my Bang Dream manga review that having detailed artwork doesn't mean much if you just put all the effort into one thing and leave everything else to the side. In Bang Dream's case, it focused too much on making the characters look as detailed and possible while putting no effort into the backgrounds or anything else. This is thankfully not the case with Our Wonderful Days. Backgrounds are detailed, but not overwhelmingly so, shading is composed of mostly lines, but unlike in say, Laid-Back Camp, where the artist tends to go rather overboard with using lines for shading, especially during scenes that take place at night, Kei Hamuro, the mangaka, only uses them for things like objects and places. Even then, she doesn't go too overboard with them and occasionally uses solid gray shading for other things. There's also a lot of subtle nuances that are used for extra characterization, such as the way the girls wear their school uniforms (particularly their skirt length) and style their hair. It also helps that even though the girls are drawn in the typical anime style, Hamuro makes certain that you can tell the characters apart and tell who's who, rather than giving them generic moe bodies and faces that aren't interchangeable even if you swap their hair and eye colors.

Speaking of characters, they're pretty good here as well. Seeing as this is a slice-of-life manga, they don't really undergo significant changes nor are they the most three-dimensional. Thankfully, the manga still manages to make them interesting and relatable without relying extremely hard on typical moe tropes. Koharu seems like the cutesy moe girl, but she's actually pretty smart and down to earth. Mafuyu is shy and is in a place that's completely different from the place she lived in before, so she has to deal with not having any conveniences, but she holds her friendship with Koharu in high regard and is happy to reconnect with her after so long. Nanaya seems like the loud, obnoxious, cheerful girl, but she proves to be surprisingly insightful and responsible when the need arises, and is always there for her friends when they need her. The manga keeps the cast fairly small, focusing on the main four, though some teachers, parents, and relatives pop in every now and again when needed. All of the characters also have great chemistry, bouncing off each other in a way that convinces you that these people are indeed good friends, which speaks to the quality of the manga's writing.

Now, I could only find a select few flaws with the manga, and none of them really have anything to do with the manga's storytelling at all. For one, Our Wonderful Days is really short, only three volumes long, and it ends rather abruptly. I mean, I liked the ending well enough, but I know many who will feel like it was way too abrupt. I kind of wish the manga was longer so we could see these characters develop even more because I genuinely like them. Maybe Hamuro wasn't allowed to write beyond a set length? Who knows? Also, the first color illustration shows Minori's hair as being a grey brown color, but for some reason, it's changed to green, as shown on the covers of volumes 2 and 3, and there's no explanation for why Hamuro decided to change her hair color halfway through the manga. Why did she change it? I mean, I do think Minori's green hair looks better, but a continuity error this big could not have gotten past the editors that easily, right? And again, Our Wonderful Days is touted as a yuri manga, but the most you see are some girls blushing and a barely shown kiss scene between two girls, nothing more. I personally don't mind, as I liked how the characters' relationship developed, but many people will come into this expecting hot girl-on-girl action and will be disappointed by the lack of it. But for what it is, I think Our Wonderful Days is a sweet, nice, comfy, wholesome slice-of-life manga that you could probably introduce to people who are new to anime/manga, probably preteens at the youngest (Maybe 10-13). I gave it a shot, and I liked it a lot.

Overall, Our Wonderful Days is a nice manga that's great for a short read, even if it ends rather abruptly and could have done more with what it had, but put what it did have to great use.