Omoi no Kakera

Published from October 29, 2009 to June 30, 2014 by Rakuen Le Paradis, Jin Takemiya's yuri love story is a little old but one I feel like I will revisit later down the road. When I'm older and have more of a reason to avoid human contact.

I don't mean that in a bad way, I mean that as this piece was critical and in-depth in a way I don't usually ever see in shoujos or romantic American bullsh*t and I've read a lot of b*llshit. (...you don't have a Wattpad account without going through three bouts of bul*shit fever and promising yourself you're not gonna read this shitty af story with equally shitty punctuation but yknow what we all relapse.)

It was painful to read at times but such a short read (only 31 chapters really so if you wanna go and binge something real quick in between your 9am lecture and lunch, this is it) that I literally didn't stop reading it till I hit the end. And by the end I couldn't believe it was the end. Literally. I was stuck swiping my phone because that couldn’t have been the end, it just couldn't have been. It was so ambiguous and while I do love the power the author invests in a reader when s/he leaves their stories open-ended, I had to question whether this was the good kind of ambiguity or not. Nothing was tied together, everything was up in the air, and I got this terrifying feeling that I just read something that maybe MAYBE (god forbid) was all some dream. Honestly, I should re-read this so I get a better understanding of the story and offer a better critique, but alas. My zodiac sign does not have that in the stars for me.

The story was quite nice. It says each chapter are fragments from her past, but it means it is a fragment of all of their pasts. Our protagonist does not develop in a vacuum and so her story interacts with and influences others around her so we get a peek into all of their lives. Each chapter jumps around quite a bit from storyline to storyline and your only clue as to who's story is being told and how old they are is the narration and changing hairstyles of the characters. That being said, there are quite a few characters to keep track of, which is difficult to do as they all have the same deadpan-I-loathe-the-world kind of expression along with their similar facial features.

This is quite the leap as the story revolves around maybe 5 or 6 characters (one male gay character is briefly introduced and I was looking forward to their queer friendship developing but it was kicked under the rug almost immediately...which I disagreed with but weekly or even bimonthly serializations are hard to keep track of, even if you're the mangaka and they all. Look. Alike.

Not shitting on the author or anything, but their character designs were similar enough that I had trouble separating who was who and almost called plagiarism on Takemiya's ass.

The fragment style storytelling was something I enjoyed most of all. Each chapter ended with the words 'fin' so every chapter made my breath hitch because I thought it was the end, but it wasn't. Not really. It was just the end of that memory, of that fragment of history that makes up each individual woman. She cannot be woven from a single fabric, for she is the creation of threads wound together to create her. All that she is. And each chapter was a thread.

What breaks us, what hurts us, and what makes us pity ourselves are the very ingredients it takes to make us into who we are. Not every story is going to be perfect. Not every love is going to have a happy ending. But that can't keep us from trying.

And I loved that this was done in an LGBTQ+ friendly manner.

There were multiple lesbians or 'bians' as they refer to themselves in the manga, and they all had their own story. THERE IS NO ONE STORY TO THIS. And to try and emulate the multiple facets of gay identity without claiming there is the one, almighty gay way was something I was appreciative of.

I will admit, sometimes the high school girls had such potent, powerful one liners about love and identity and what it means to be out and what it means to not be out, wisdom way beyond their years that I applauded but felt was slightly forced. The protagonist was blunt. Her SFX even went BLUNT whenever she said something without tact. The meditations this manga had on who we are and how we come to these conclusions of our identity make it one to pick up for a quick meditation on life and growing up.

But it's not a romance. I already warned you about that. It doesn't have that much fluff. This is real talk. This is what happens you fall in love and your heart breaks and you have to pick up the pieces all by yourself. This is a coming-of-age story. Which is just a little gay.