The author is a woman.
Ah, yes, that explains the beard stubble on the author's avatar.
I mean you can be sarcastic all you want but Hiromi-sensei is a woman.
[citation needed]
I can find no actual source confirming this.
Erica Friedman's book, "By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga," repeatedly references Takashima being a woman. In a chapter about the Kase-San series Friedman describes meeting her.
. . .
Here's another series being invaded by a simply awful character, a sociopath who sucks the oxygen from the room. Fukami's style here is beyond declasse––it's at least subconsciously malicious, because Fukami knows Kase is dating someone, and she's a) never brought it up with Kase, and b) she won't let that little detail get in the way of her own confession, and its obvious attendant expectation of reciprocation. Fukami holes up inside her own, silent world, stewing about Kase, but never even trying to imagine Kase might have reasons for doing what she's doing. Her self-centered-ness goes way beyond any frustration I have with Kase's cluelessness. Fukami is actually almost completely insensitive to Kase's needs being independent of her own. It's almost as if Fukami believes they're already in a kind of a romantic relationship, in all but name––which is the main way, I think, to explain her irrational anger at Kase moving out. It's not "sadness" at Kase moving out––Fukami acts like a spurned lover, one with some sort of claim on Kase. This is as frustrating a character as Shiho in Whispering You a Love Song, but at least in this case, Kase and Yamada remain the characters the story is articulated around (and Fukami doesn't seem quite so out-of-step with the other characters in her comic as Shiho does to me).
Still, it'd be nice if the stakes of this confrontation for Kase were outlined a little clearer. It seems like this could have been a story in which Kase might opt to out herself to her teammates, in order to potentially win their sympathy for her situation––even though the risk would be alienation from this social unit (the track team)––a social unit which seems more suffocatingly restrictive by the chapter. This would enable her to win allies on the team that could help pry Fukami's miserable, gripping fingers off Kase's arm long enough that Kase could move out, without this dunderheaded race coming to fruition. This wouldn't have been a very happy storyline, as it would be awful to force Kase to make such a choice in this way––but a major thread for a while now has been how the track team's private huddle hamstrings Kase's attempts to be with Yamada (the whole summer break storyline keeps underlining this, and the way Kase's refusal to reveal her lover to her peers makes so many situations a problem for her), so that the theme could have been the socially restrictive aspect of that little microcosm, and Kase might have had to struggle against it a bit. It could even be a storyline in which the resolution wasn't entirely happy, or satisfying––maybe not everyone on the squad is willing to acknowledge the way Kase wants to live her life. But I feel like those are pretty realistic stakes for such a conflict. In Yamada's case, I feel like her challenges in the conflict are all relatively clear. But for Kase, it's hard to know how much of the conflict Kase even perceives. I suppose this could be the way the storyline resolves even yet, but if that's so, then the jealousy angle is a severe detour, and a road we've already been down a couple of times with these characters. As it is, the repetitiveness and the slowness of this plot to advance are both grating...as is the Fukami of it all.
last edited at Apr 4, 2023 4:20AM
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