Uka figures she might be punching above her weight with regards to Kai, but she’s the one causing almost all her problems. It turns out that being with people who appreciate you for who you are might make all the difference, even if some of them are ex-girlfriends of the guy you like.
This is good, good shojo and make no mistake. It has both the complexity of characters and, so far, a general unreliance on the genre’s greatest hits in favour of being something rather novel and not at all unwelcome.
Let’s jump ahead a bit - so far, Serina is amazing and absolutely not what I was expecting from an ex-girlfriend. She stands up for Uka during a moment of brutal bullying and she’s appreciative when the favour is returned. Might we actually have a break-up that was just because the two people involved weren’t feeling it!?
Yes, I grant that this could be a long con of the highest order, but two volumes in and I dearly hope this series is smarter than that, simply because it seems like it is. Kai’s nice to Serina, she’s not awful to him, it might happen. I still find Uka a little annoying with her lack of confidence, yet it’s impossible to not cheer her on every time she gets ahead.
And I like that nobody is especially oblivious here - Uka might be supposedly plain, but it’s super obvious that Kai likes her (a picture is worth a thousand words). Of course, the question for Uka is just how much, and that’s where she begins tripping herself up.
Which, of course, is not helped as she’s eaten by self doubt. Uka remains a wonderfully sad example of just how badly you can get wrecked by a terrible experience during such a formative time as middle school. Her withdrawn nature feels so much more real than what we usually get - her default is to be alone because she’s taken it to heart that nobody wants her around.
So it makes sense that she also just accepts it when she overhears that everybody goes through “Kai phase” and that he never reciprocates, despite how much he’s still there to nudge her along in the right direction with some kind words. She’s one of many, nothing special, but she might want to ask him that, of course.
Importantly, however, Uka makes the big moves herself. She slowly starts to realize that maybe she does have friends. Her class now is not her class then and they appreciate her exactly as she is, plus or minus one troublemaker. The moment with her desk is just super satisfying.
It’s certainly not the much more nuanced Skip & Loafer, very little is, but it’s got a lot more going on under the hood than many other series I could name. How does the dreaded Manga Cold play out? In a way that’s not only atypical, but just as satisfying.
And I like how it has so far gone with novel and unusual ways to get its point across - art class really feels like some downer art therapy, for example, and the hike that starts this story is a pretty long arc that may have a cliche romance thing on top of it, but it’s all the other stuff that really distinguishes itself from the regular hits of the genre.
Kai remains Kai, but he’s enough of a real support of Uka and general shojo boy that I don’t dislike him. He’s very aloof with others, but you can see that the distance between him and another person shrinks when Uka’s around.
He’s got his work cut out for him, yes, but right now he’s mostly just there to give her a better perspective on her lousy past being a part of what made her into the person she is now, but with an environment that embraces her (Uka’s friendship with Ayumi is also incredibly satisfying). Yeah, I suspect Uka would rather have skipped her past, but her present is making up for it.
4 stars - it’s just solid. It might not wow me a lot, but it definitely has its hooks in and there are a couple of really strong moments. It’s definitely above average for the genre, in my books, and a good time. I said if this stayed strong I’d end up giving it four stars, and here we are.