[Februaryuri 2024 rerun] Even Though We're Adults

28 Nov, 2024

(base post on Februaryuri here!)

(note that all that follows, unless mentioned explicitly or in the rerun section, was written in February 2024)

Even Though We're Adults (Otona ni natte mo), by Takako Shimura

Publication

Ended (10 volumes) (This made me discover it has ended! Aaaah!)
Published in English (Seven Seas Entertainment), 9 volumes so far
Published in French (Akata éditions) under the title Si nous étions adultes, 10 volumes

Summary

Ayano, a kind-hearted teacher with a stable life, goes drinking at a pub after a hard day’s work. There, she meets Akari, a woman her age who, along with some light-hearted flirting, offers her a drink. After a few more glasses than expected… both end up kissing outside. As Akari confesses that Ayano is her type, the latter cannot deny she is interested, too – and the two spend part of the night together.
Ayano, however, has a husband, and doesn't know whether she'd just send her usual life upside down like this. The secret is soon out to all parties in messy ways - and slowly, awkwardly, the three of them try to figure out what to do.

Comment

This work is just extremely solid. It has a realistic premise that isn’t entirely groundbreaking in the yuri genre¹ but shines here, notably just to see it so well-executed comparatively to virtually anything other piece of media involving cheating: it's out of the bag really quickly; and most characters, having decent intentions, just don't really know what to do. And they're actual 30-something adults, which is really rare in yuri. Also a secondary character has depression and is a bit neurodivergent-coded, which doesn't hurt this manga's case.
Overall the whole story has this quiet, realistic vibe (see also the Extra section), coupled with Takako Shimura's soft art quality (while avoiding the pitfall of hard-to-differentiate characters from her previous works). And it quickly makes you root for a lot of its characters, wishing them healthy communication and some kind of stability in the end. It's honestly one of the easiest yuri recommendations I could do to someone who's looking for something that is not high school yuri, stays realistic, and is mostly CW-free.

Extra (a.k.a.: two more reviews in a trenchcoat)

First thing first: yeah, I don't know what happened with the French title. It translates to "If we were adults..." which is poetic but, you know, a bit misleading? Anyway.

Takako Shimura is a big name of the LGBT+ manga scene: she's notably known for writing Wandering Son² and Sweet Blue Flowers³.

Even today, the first one is That One Decent Manga with Trans Protagonists, for better or for worse[^4]. Readers have rightfully been hurt by the way it has its only extremely FtM-coded character, with dysphoria and all, ending up "actually a cis girl"; and it weirdly raises very few questions in terms of sexuality and queer relationships, most of the caracters being straight in the end if I recall correctly. Still, for something from the 2000s written by (as far as I know) a cis woman, it nails a very decent amount of stuff. It introduces at least three trans kids, the aforementioned one plus two young trans girls, struggling with gender and puberty and society in painfully realistic ways, but with their moments of euphoria, too; and there's also one older trans woman. I couldn't guarantee you it all aged well, and it has a veeery slow pace at times, but still: it's far from a cringefest, and it has some strikingly realistic scenes, which (sadly) is something already when it comes to trans topics.
I mostly skimmed the manga and mainly watched the anime, which adapts the early volumes. Overall, Wandering Son is flawed but good in a quiet, beautiful, painful way.

And about Sweet Blue Flowers... Well. Sweet Blue Flower is a reference in taking and breaking some old yuri tropes. Released between 2004 and 2013, it's one of those works that marks a turning point for the genre. It follows two childhood friends, Fumi and Akira, during their whole three high school years. It builds a web of love stories between the two schools they attend, not all of them centered on our two leads, and definitely not about the two just getting together - it's much more of a 3-year time frame where characters slowly puzzle themselves out and explore their needs and wants. There's notably several coming out, there's discussion of bisexuality, there's explicit sapphic desire, there's... a lot of things, really. And a lot of terribly realistic mess, told in a quiet way. Of course, there are also very problematic things in it that aren't really addressed in a satisfying way and may repel you, including a brother way too creepy around his sister or some incest between cousins. Also some of its characters really look alike, and when you're already trying to adapt to large casts spread over two different schools, it can be... challenging.
There's an anime adaptation that covers something like the first third of the manga, so it's really incomplete. But just as Wandering Son's adaptation, it has something soft and beautiful, too - in its ambience, its two charming protagonists, its feeling of handling real humans living their life and understanding themselves – in short its slow, accurate realness. Also I highly recommend its OST, which captures that vibe, too.

Whoops. Turns out I wrote something like a small extra review. I'll leave it be.
If you're interested, Frank Hecker wrote a whole book⁴ of in-depth analysis of Sweet Blue Flowers, called That Type of Girl. You can find more info about it here (edit: and its pdf version is freely available here).

Anyway. Yeah. Takako Shimura is a big name. Even Though We're Adults is her most recent queer work - and, I think, the tightest in its storytelling yet.

Rerun section

This addition by Frank Hecker at the time of cohost felt like a nice highlight of two elements on two of the mangas mentioned here:

• I seemed to recall in Sweet Blue Flowers some teacher-student elements and incorrectly mentioned so at first; I was corrected with the important precision that each time it depicted a student crushing on a teacher, the student was firmly rejected.
• the treatment of Ayano's husband in Even Though We're Adults deserves a bigger mention, as he usually is more of an obstacle to the leads' happiness in this type of story, and here instead is a character in his own right.

I added a few words on the second point that I'll copy here:

The key to this kind of plot usually is to have a terrible, abusive, or even just a jerk of a husband - so that one lead can help the other out of that situation. ETWA doesn't go this easy way. As far as I can tell up to volume 5 (and with each volume I anxiously hope that it'll stay that way), Ayano's husband is, as you say, somewhat sympathetic: a bit harsh and angry and sad because of the situation at times, but mostly in reasonable ways - he is not just a plot device. He's a person who will meet his wife's love interest, invite her over for dinner, and have awkward and interesting conversations with her with no ill will. It's a fascinating nuance and departure from the blueprint of such stories, and a good part of why this manga's storyline is interesting: it's an actually tough situation with no easy narrative answer.

I also added a few musings on three student secondary characters, also in Even Though We're Adults:

[The cast is mostly made of adults, but] there are actually three kids as secondary characters in the manga: a trio of young girls in the class in which Ayano teaches. It's a sweet side plot, where Ayano tries her best to be a supportive authority figure and help two of the young girls (who are in love and hide it out of fear of bullying) feel safer - while mending their relationship with the third one who is angry about feeling left out. I think there's something very realistic in this - in the way she wants to act as a safe person to queer kids, as a teacher who's queer too. It's also a clever way to make Ayano mull over how to manage relationships and conflict in her own life.

It's weird to think I'm still missing the second half of this story. I can't wait to reread this and continue my reading, too.
... Please apply this message to roughly all of the mangas I will post during this month, haha.

#cohost #februaryuri 2024 #yuri