A day after reading it and I'm still not sure how to feel about it.
It's partially a sad story, partially in happy, in that she has a lot of issues and things she struggles with, but happy in that she starts to understand and/or make progress. While her issues and illnesses and thoughts are all intertwined, I felt like there was a lot going on and it was difficult to process, despite having some of the same issues.
I'm not a fan of the art style. I don't hate it, but I don't like it that much. The other day I spoke about how much I loved the pink in "If you could see love". This has a similar thing (but with MUCH more pink), but I don't the effect is as good.
The audience for this is people questioning their sexuality, those with mental health issues, or those who perhaps have never been in a relationship. (I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone in those groups though) It casts quite a large net, which is both good, but as mentioned earlier, can lead to a lot going on. Considering how personal the story is, I feel like we are missing some information - her therapist (seen once) appeared useless (why was she forced to check out books by herself to start to come to an understanding about herself?), and did her family not try to help her? What about her friends? (Also, who ARE her family and friends? They have no personality)
I understand there are cultural elements at play, but I also have a degree in psychology, have mental health issues, am roughly the same age, am bisexual/lesbian (still working that out lmao), and have lived in Japan, so some of the parts just did not mesh with my lived experiences, those of people I know and just... seemed off? I'm not doubting these things happened to her, and she's more than welcome to keep her life private, it just made things difficult for me to understand. While I can relate to some of the issues and situations, I can't relate to her.
Shout out to her for actually writing this though - she is using a pen name (as said in the manga), and publishing on the net ensured privacy (not needing to do face to face meetings with publishers etc), which obviously changed as the idea gained traction. So yes, she is able to protect her identity and live a normal life to a degree (I would not be comfortable publishing something like this with my real name!), but at the same time, it means her parents etc would never read it (not that they seem like that type of people), but combined with what I understood, she'd also never tell them the truth of how hurt she was, so I feel like things are just going to repeat with their relationship... It takes a lot to speak about these things in Japan, but I also feel like that is changing.
There was a lot of "how was this not thought of before", "why didn't anyone see this", "how did you come to this conclusion" type of questions for me - they can all be answered as "we're all different". Valid. However, I don't understand her thought/feeling process, which made it difficult for me to relate. Some of the narrative felt too rambly/like a stream of consciousness for me; which would make sense since it was originally published on pixiv, but when put into a book, the effect is different. A bit more depth would have been amazing. Having more variety in the panel work would also have helped, as it blended together (dialogue bubbles are often in the same place each panel, so there is no variety).
A short note: I read the English version and I wonder how many of my issues with this relate to translation? For example, when she was working and eating yam cakes. The heck are those? Why do they have water? (Inspect image closer) ohhhh! She's eating konnyaku! Completely different things, so I wonder how often translation choices like that affected my understanding of the manga.
I did enjoy how frank she is about all of these difficult topics. I enjoyed the hotel scenes - the different ladies taught her different things. I really didn't like was the Freudian thoughts of her desire to be held by women, apparently caused by her clinginess to her mother (which she also says is related to domestic abuse, though she says she never experienced any). She seems to relate this to her being a lesbian as well. These ideas seem to be the first thing that "made sense" to her, but really don't when you think about them, but it seems like she was happy to have an answer so didn't think about it further. Up until then I quite enjoyed the story, but that threw me way off.
I feel like it could adversely affect younger/impressionable readers as well (you know how when people see stuff on tiktok and instantly believe it? Like that, but in a sense worse as people tend to believe the written word more, especially when the book is based on serious issues her life story, therefore people will say everything she says is true. I see some of this in reviews, saying it is a must read for whatever group or its something that affects everyone universally, or that "in the manga, she said (issue) comes from (reason), which is true", when the reality is that people are so very different and things like sexuality and mental health issues are never "caused" by one thing.
The fact that it was about her wanting to be held as well, I found the book to be less about coming to terms with being a lesbian (to the point where the title is almost misleading), and more about wanting to have a place to belong (which she discusses) and having positive physical contact with people.
I feel some of the content warnings aren't true, and are maybe from people who have read her other works? I would like to read her other works in order to understand her more, and I'd also like to reread this one, maybe in a year or so, to see if I get it more. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did.
Please note that I am not rating the author's life - the rating is a reflection on how it was told (artwork and 'story'), and that reading this book in any language other than the original Japanese could lead to some different ideas/thoughts (translator word choice, bias, our own cultural bias etc) than what the author desired.
