Why do you need someone LIKE me when you have me right here?!
Saki and Kanon continue to be the best of friends, but Saki’s feeling incredibly conflicted about it for some reason. Between sleepovers and wise stylists and everybody’s past coming back, it’s Saki’s time to deal with a lot of things all at once.
This is the volume where this series tipped over to fantastic from really good. Sometimes the writing feels a little off to me for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on, but this gets so much right that it’s hard to complain about it.
Yuri that deals with queerness is one of those things I always appreciate and we get the big revelation this volume that Saki is absolutely closeted to hell and back and she’s really struggling with it. Especially because she thinks being honest will cost her her best friend.
Saki ends up having Kanon sleep over because of a situation, not necessarily a bad one, at Kanon’s home and the undercurrent of terror and self-torment is expressed so wonderfully that it’s this close to being heart wrenching.
This comes after a hair adventure that cutely pivots from what you expect is about to happen in the most cliche way possible into a real bonding moment when somebody recognizes a lot of themselves in Saki and extends a hand that she doesn’t quite know she needs yet.
Minus some really fun stuff with Kanon’s dad, Kanon is definitely a life goal more than a character this time out, which is actually a bonus. Kanon is great, but Saki hasn’t had as much of the spotlight and boy does that turn out fantastically this volume.
Saki is incredibly sympathetic - scared of her own feelings, having been forced to deal with what sure looks like homophobia in the past, and petrified that she’s feeling things that Kanon never will (although my guess is that Kanon’s own backstory as about to be revealed will put the lie to that).
And it doesn’t help that Kanon’s actions could be read as either incredibly flirty (the lip reading in bed is something else) or just super friendly because this is a girl that Kanon just gets along super well with.
We see during conversations with both Kanon’s dad and Rinne that Kanon has changed in really positive ways with Saki and thinks a ton about her, but what does that mean? The uncertainty and anxiety that weighs on Saki is conveyed note perfect.
Brutally emotional and delightfully revelatory, the decision to focus on Saki and reveal so much about her this volume really brings her into her own and it also throws a light on a problem that the story is taking pains to look at - because Kanon has such a rough time compared to most people because of her hearing, where do the problems of the people she’s close to fit in?
That’s a hell of a question for a piece of schoolgirl yuri and I’m glad that this is shaping up to be much more than just that. There’s some real emotional heft here that’s making smarter moves than I admit I was initially expecting from it.
4.5 stars - some of it still feels a bit stiff, but man do I love the dilemmas and complexities in this volume, which pile on the other stuff to just make one huge mess that I’m excited to see the outcome of when it gets untangled.