Yoru to Umi
The Evening and the Sea

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(TLDR at the bottom)

Honest to God here, it's been a long while since I've read this manga. Whilst I remember the overall theme of it, I cannot quite examine this as I would do with other stories I've finished not long after relatively. I've simply been meaning to write something on this for a while. Forgive my incompetence. It is likely I will delete this review and re-read this story another time.

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Yoru to Umi is a drama about understanding one another, and the border that lies between two individuals.

When I first headed into Yoru to Umi, I didn't really pay heed to tags and thought ... it to be some girls' love story that hides in the manga medium. MAL tags aren't exactly the most reliable, but that's not the point right now. My speculation was proven wrong, what I received instead was a story of two girls trying to connect to each other closer more so in a way of friendship, rather than anything else.

Yoru to Umi follows a quiet Yano and strange Aya trying to connect with each other after a few first interactions. Their journey together is no straight line. It's bumpy, with the two having their fair shares of ups and downs all the while as their connection forges. They come across as quite human though, with both characters having their fair share of internal struggles, even those characters who don't play a major role fall into this category. It's nothing flamboyant and comes across as quite an honest feel. It didn't however push boundaries with these characters, and simply played it safe. In other words, it executes well but said core, concept and characters had no memorable quality to them for them to be perceived as top tier characters amongst the huge medium of manga. But for the most part, they are pretty good, and even their motifs are actually quite nice to think about.

The art of the manga is amazing. From character designs to aquatic double-page spreads, it was nothing to take lightly. Even after a long while, the cover jogs my memory with vague captivating pages of art that had my full attention. Everything was made with quality being the set goal in mind. There was nothing here that felt off with respect to design, neither did it have a cheated emptiness to it. It was just stunning.


TLDR: Good manga with strange characters having good attributes to them from realism to behaviour. Looks really nice too, as some aquatic stuff.

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But that's all I unfortunately have. It's a good story to spend time on if you have a few hours. It's one that is most powerful with its art but it allows for the substance to not be as weak as one would so believe it to be. In my time reading manga, this story is not entirely conventional, and to some extent may annoy users if you want to expect one thing from it. After all, it doesn't deliver in satisfying one particular element, but that is something you have to find out for yourself. It makes sense why such would not be delivered, however. Regardless, it is a nice niche story to spend time on and is pretty fast to read. I would recommend it to those looking for a hidden gem, perhaps. The hidden gem of the Night and Sea.

I appreciate this more than I enjoyed this. It is trying to be something, something a little different to your typical 2 character manga. I'm not entirely sure it quite accomplishes it at a level where I could call it a good story.

Some stories can have quite unrealistic relationships, in terms of closeness, love at first sight, drop everything to be with this person you just met, unroot your life completely because of this dude, that can be quite overwhelming. This does the opposite, but veers too far in its own direction goes back to feeling too strange and frustrating. They want to be close, ... they want to be together but they respect each other's boundaries; they respect them too much, and their relationship ends up feeling limp and unfinished. Its progression chapter-to-chapter felt unfocused and pointless. Overall it feels unfinished. Overall it needed more drama, more conflict, to challenge the characters, and it felt like the author didn't know how to add that here because they made the relationship so very delicate that if it was poked too hard it would simply evaporate, but if that really is the case, is that something worth caring about?

The art is amazing, though. Just by the art alone, I think this is worth reading.

THIS IS NOT A GIRLS LOVE

There won't be any spoilers in this review :) I wasn't sure whether to give this a 3/10 or 9/10 score so here I go explaining what this series excels at and what it lacks.

Story:
The story is about 2 people in high school who try to understand each other and get along. So it's slice-of-life with a little drama to it.

Art:
Visually, this is absolutely gorgeous so although I gave it a low score, I'd still recommend reading it if you're looking for beautiful manga.

... Characters:
Now this is the main reason I decided to give this the low score of 4/10. I'm really no fan of characters who are so distant to their love interest/friend that you or the characters wonder why they even talk to them in the first place. So I don't like the constantly pissed-off and rude characters, that's basically it. If you don't mind that, then go ahead and read it, although I don't think the characters overall are well-written, but that's just my opinion

Final statement:
I'm mad that this is advertised as girls love in bookstores and here on MAL (until recently) when it clearly isn't. There is already so few GL manga and it's so frustrating when you see something this beautiful and wait so long cause you think they're gonna get together in the end and then it turns out to just be friendship.
I hope this has been helpful to determine whether you're gonna wanna read this or not, thanks for reading :)