Simply put, I genuinely loved this series, it portrayed an excellent and well-written story of two people discovering themselves and learning about 'love' in an organic and relatively natural way.
Nakatani Nio manages to find the beauty in a simple story. Through Yagate Kimi no Naru, with generally no extremely drastic and overtly complicated storylines, Nakatani is still able to present a story that perpetuates itself and keeps itself interesting. Even though it is merely a slice of life essentially depicting the average life of Yuu and Touko.
Yagate Kimi no Naru has an incredibly well-written story, which feels natural and organic, and despite a teeny little bit of fan service, it generally does not seem all too forced. The story presented in Yagate Kimi no Naru is a story with many underlying themes, ranging from loss, grief, and gender roles in society, not to mention the obvious being of love. All in all, Nakatani is able to use this wide palette of themes to create an emotionally captivating and truly beautiful masterpiece of a work.
The artwork is also great, although admittedly not the absolute pinnacle of manga artworks. The specific angles and pacing were done in a really captivating way, really being to wring out and exploit all the emotion from a particular scene. The artwork presented in Yagate Kimi no Naru also has a sense of symbolism in it, certain scenes with invoke a great deal of emotion or which present an incredible idea and theme can oftentimes be accompanied by artwork which aids in that depiction.
The character is also really well written, the two main protagonists, Koito Yuu and Nanami Touko have a great deal of depth to them, and throughout the series are truly developed, which is something Nakatani explicitly puts in the manga itself. The main theme of this manga is very obviously 'love', however, Nakatani is able to give the main protagonists more humanising traits, instead of making them embody this singular theme.
Nakatani is truly able to flesh out and give each of the characters in the manga a personality; a reason for them to be unique to themselves and to others, and Nakatani does not skimp on the side characters either, all the characters in this manga have defining characteristics only to themselves, which demonstrates a great deal of understanding and thought went through the development of this series.
In conclusion, despite this manga being a yuri and a shoujo-ai, it is and should not be defined as simply that. It is a beautiful and captivating story with well thought-out characters and an organic development of love, and the main protagonists just happened to be female.
