Umibe no Onnanoko
A Girl on the Shore

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This is not a review, but a record.

3 years ago I started reading Oyasumi Punpun, but ended up dropping it after 1/3 through because I felt I wasn't mature enough (I was 17) for that story. Since then I have been putting it off. 2024 comes and I thought it might be time to try again. However, before I got to that I decided to purchase A Girl on the Shore in order to prepare myself for what is known as the author's magnum opus. I wasn't expecting anything about this 2-volume-long manga.

Yet, it broke me. The first chapter made clear that this tale was ... going to be complicated, and it closed with a shot of the beach and Sato crying. As if by magic, I could already feel the emotions coming off the paper. I read another 3 chapters and was impressed. These four chapters were easy.

After the second night of reading, 6 chapters, I was surprised with how much I cared about the 2 main characters in such a short time. I felt anxious during the day, as if I couldn't separate reality from fiction and was part of the story and living the experiences the Sato and Isobe were going through. That's not like me.

During the third night, my reading slowed down because my teary eyes were making my vision blurry. I was actually worried for the lead characters and even though I wanted to finish it, I put the book down because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to sleep otherwise. I went to bed knowing this was the best story I've ever read.

I finished A Girl on the Shore on the following morning, skipping breakfast. And even after putting the hardcover in the shelf, I'm still feeling anxious. I don't know for how long my eyes will wettten just by thinking about this story. Sometimes people say they were traumatized by the eclispe (Berserk) or a certain character death in a story... I wonder if this feeling I got right now is what they're talking about.

In the end, I don't know if I'm going to read Punpun this year. I'm genuinely scared it will ruin me.

The elusive insecurities of adolescence are an ever-popular area of exploration, and supposed relatability, although all of that is entirely dependent on the author's ability to reinforce their characters as emotionally symbolic individuals. At a glance, Asano's subject matter is somewhat accessible, depicting acts of intimacy through the lens of a trauma-induced need for a companion. Nevertheless, his composition of such dramatic trappings isn't as thematically potent as a topic of this nature would benefit from. Naturally, the ages of the cast holds a major role in this narrative obstacle, limiting the story's directional complexity. However, that's hardly a justification for the lack of momentum, the inherent aggregation ... of ideas in a piece of fictional writing. More specifically, the characterization here is underwhelming, and of course, the length of the manga plays a part, but not allowing the reader to gradually immerse themselves in interaction is a disadvantage. It's worth wondering why the two leads interact at all or any character for that matter, exhibiting baseless aggression and simply ridiculous instances of misguided intensity in the narrative's atmosphere. 

In a sleepy seaside town, there exists resentment for an invisible entity, a burning rage toward the idea of being confined to the same realities. Asano's portrayal of the community's dissonant relationships and imminent suffocation is a far more intriguing concept, barely touched upon in the final few chapters. Creating a parallel harmony between the location, disillusioned youth, and their sexual experimentation would be borderline novel. The latter has become a representative feature of this manga, perhaps for the wrong reasons. The scenes of intercourse are not erotica or even meant to be cases of character arousal, and I say that to emphasize the difficulty of capturing a depressive mutual relationship, regardless of the type of explicit acts or the ages of participants. That itself is the strongest merit of Umibe no Onnanoko, even if the provocative expressions are dictated by impulse rather than believable curiosity. In a town this small, around people this familiar, one's sense of self comes into question, and the desire for physical or emotional validation is rampant.

this manga was practically just porn straight porn the ending was even more atrocious that what i was looking at do not recommend this book it is nothing like any of his other works which are 129 times better. most of the book was just sex scenes between middle school children its rweally not something nice as they are underage and sexualises them of course sex scenes have their meanings but these however i felt did not i could not work out how they meant anything and the story would have been better off without them.

the plot was not something that gets you hooked and ... was confusing at times.