More gay panic attacks in rural Japan.
The awkward plucking and prying of emotion that defines two girls' pseudo-relationship continues its rocky and uneven progress toward . . . what? Shimamura's nonchalant predilection for simply enduring her teenage years is perhaps the only constant worthy of mention, whereas for Adachi, the girl's slow-burn affection for her best friend spills over and into other facets of her otherwise dull life. ADACHI AND SHIMAMURA #2 is more personable than the previous volume, more efficacious in its voice and tone, and thankfully dumps much of the novel series' mild fascination with magical realism.
Few readers will be surprised to learn that little happens in this novel beyond the worrying and querying of friendship and almost-romance at the prickly fingertips of overly cautious and uncertain youths. This novel series isn't about overt expressions of joy or thanks and it isn't about conscious and deliberate behaviors whose romantic inclinations are obvious at a glance. Nope. ADACHI AND SHIMAMURA #2 is about the unease of knowing just how much is unknown and about raising expectations higher than need be (so that when those expectations are fatefully dashed, the failed accomplishment is easier to accept). This novel is low-key anxiety, from cover to cover.
Less the part-time truants they once were and now the serious-but-not-quite teenagers typical of their station, Shimamura and Adachi approach the year's end with a shrugged shoulder and an arched eyebrow.
Adachi, however, is slowly going out of her mind upon realizing she's sinking deeper and deeper in love with her best buddy. She blushes horribly whenever there is the slightest physical contact. She mumbles her words whenever Shimamura asks her a direct question. She agonizes over sending an email, making a phone call, or responding to an off-topic joke. Adachi spends much of this novel fretting ("Here in the dark, recklessness looked an awful lot like courage, and as a result, I frequently made an ass of myself," p. 76). But Adachi makes good on her internal locus' new love. The question isn't whether she can get closer to Shimamura, the question is whether this newfound closeness will produce the intimacy she so desperately craves.
The narrative split is more balanced in this novel, and as such, readers drift further away from Shimamura's aloofness and more toward Adachi's nervousness in terms of the story's primary guidepost. Splinter plots involving the relationship between their classmates, Nagafuji and Hino, are clever, but ultimately distracting. Overall, ADACHI AND SHIMAMURA #2 is a step-up from the previous installment, containing a stronger emphasis on characterization and a firmer grasp of agency. Here, there are far more idiosyncratic thoughts and behaviors pushing the story forward than in the previous volume.
For example, Adachi is a nervous mess throughout the book ("a flustered little chicken," p. 106), but the author spends more quality time with discerning how and why she's a nervous mess. The girl's home situation is fragile and her reluctance to acknowledge her homoerotic attraction, thankfully, are not taken for granted; readers will appreciate this sentiment.
Further, the author's treatment of Shimamura as unsympathetic but flexible is a slight but acceptable recasting of character. The girl's tendency to go with the flow is articulated as a deliberate act of tolerance rather than an offshoot of latent warm-heartedness. This shift means Shimamura comes off as indifferent and somewhat cold, as opposed to simply lazy. The author's subtle recasting is a peculiar but welcomed adjustment. Now, Shimamura and Adachi's voices and personalities are further apart by a more significant and therefore exploitable margin. Differentiation was a burden of the previous novel, but it appears the author has finagled away around this problem in its entirety.