When Hina bumps into Shiki on the way to school, it’s love at first sight. Hina’s confession leads to her managing the basketball team, which isn’t exactly what she was after, but what does Shiki want from this friendship anyway?
Cute. A very simple, fun, breezy two volume omnibus edition of a young girl falling for a somewhat manly-looking senpai with breasts. Look, I wouldn’t point out the boob thing, but apparently the story finds it super important to note.
This one is yuri paradise through and through - not a man in sight except for one mention of a brother, everybody is absolutely 100% fine with same-sex chicanery (would that the world was as accepting as stories like this), and the girl of your dreams is a basketball to the face away.
It’s also top-loaded with every romance manga trope you can imagine. You had best believe that in a short two volumes we’re getting the Dread Manga Cold and, with it, the Did I Say Something in my Dream By Which I Mean Reality variant. Does Hina have to win over a bad-tempered senpai and do so? I wonder! Are all the problems in this story caused by people just assuming rather than talking? Boy howdy!
Still, our leads make a good pairing, and once they iron out the wrinkles via the mad notion of saying what they mean, they have a very likeable bond together. While it initially seems that Shiki brings most everything to the relationship, Hina is not without her skills and she develops as the story goes, like a good kouhai should.
Ironically, the grumpy senpai, Miyamoto, and the captain of the basketball club are almost more fun to follow than our titular pair, as they’re a lot more established, as it turns out. Miyamoto inadvertently becomes more complex than anyone else in the story and she kind of steals the narrative whenever she shows up.
Characters are a bit of a problem throughout - this was originally a one-shot and you can tell because if you lifted Hina’s friends out of the story I don’t think you’d notice the difference at all. This is also one of those romances where love just comes out of nowhere without knowing much about the other person, which, I guess you have to move fast in a short series but I wish they’d had a bit more time to know each other rather than spend time taking things the wrong way.
The art is likewise kind of a mixed bag. The big spreads for important moments are gorgeous - there’s a moment where Hina looks especially sad early on and it is absolutely stunning to look at. The art is less confident with Shiki, however, whose head gets ill-proportioned enough times that it looks like she might be related to a q-tip on her mother’s side.
It works overall, really, although it doesn’t necessarily excel. It does get a couple chapters of actual post-coupling romance in, which I always appreciate, and those are actually arguably better than the courting. It’s nice to see a couple enjoying themselves and these two definitely do.
3.5 stars, largely for generally being really enjoyable, but I can’t genuinely round it up with the thin characters and plot (although it’s very close). Definitely worth a read, but there are better short yuri series out there (Beauty and the Beast Girl and Hana and Hina After School immediately spring to mind).