Feeling incredibly gay repressed and depressed as of late so take my irritation with a grain of salt but I can’t understand why y’all wouldn’t understand the 10 year gap. This is biographical. You can’t understand how societal push can cause a break up like that?? Seriously? A lot happens in ten years growth wise. I’m in an area more accepting about lgbt ppl and I still separated from the girl I loved in high school bc of societal pressure and fear. I’m just happy the irl couple was able to get back together and be happy.
People seem to get it, and that is an important and impactful matter to explore in a gay manga love story.
It's just that the structure here doesn't make it easy to connect the dots of it's themes. It is short, but the writer could have used those few pages differently if they wanted to really explore lgbt fear and pressure and happiness.
It's great that you felt a personal and warming connection to the manga; maybe that was part of the author's intent, to not go in to much detail of the relationship so that readers could bring their own experience to it?
(*Apologies ahead of time if breaking it down below feels unfair to the mangaka's irl story or what it meant to you, but here's how I saw it...)
There are three pages of 'Confession Connundrum' (which is cute, but typical and written more like a comedy manga; it's not even about the complexity of gay anxiety, both Hanna and her classmate make no big fuss about same-sex crushes.) Then there's one panel showing the relationship (not even a page, just one box saying they were happy. Then, suddenly, the breakup. And the breakup is the only part that mentions social pressure or fear, with one sharp but cryptic line that, "same-sex couples can't get married legally." (Were they talking of marriage? Were things getting serious and they were contemplating the future? Had Hana not told her parents she was dating? Was Hana graduating or the teacher moving on, and they were at a crossroads?) Then, ten years pass, and the only thing we learn about Hana's life over that time is that she never forgot that relationship... and that she she grew her hair out. Then they come back together (did they plan to meet again, it did they suddenly see each other on the street and sparks flew again?), and we get half a page showing that everything is fine. They still can't get married, it is still a world where being gay has challenges, and they lost ten years of time with each other (or maybe they had ten years of other relationships that prepared them to make it work this time? we don't know,) but Teach is back in Hana's life and she looks cool. The end.
Of all the stories in Ryo Tsuzura's True Yuri Stories collection, this is one that could be well served some day by longer serialization (although Tsuzura's mostly does very comedy, so maybe it's best to leave it short like to, and read into it what we may...)
last edited at May 13, 2021 12:49PM