[Februaryuri 2024 rerun] Run Away With Me, Girl

12 Dec, 2024

(base post on Februaryuri here!)

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

Run Away With Me, Girl (Kakeochi Girl), by Battan

Publication

Ended (3 volumes)
Published in English (Kodansha), 3 volumes
Published in French (Akata éditions) under the title Entre nos mains¹, 3 volumes

Summary

Maki and Midori dated in high school - and then high school ended and, just like that, Midori ended their relationship too, convinced that it was playing pretend and that they would find husbands someday.

Ten years later, Maki is very much not over Midori, and when they meet again by chance and the latter acts rather flirty toward her, Maki doesn't know what to think... until Midori tells her she's going to get married. But as Maki meets Midori's future husband, and realizes how toxic he is, and also that Midori's pregnant and didn't want it, she starts to wonder how much she should intervene.

Comment

Just skimming the chapters again to write this review made me so eager to reread this manga (edit: I did since then, see the Rerun section!). First because it's pretty - its art is very distinctive and there's a dreamy quality to it, with some amazing pages and atmosphere - and second because it's absolutely gripping. It's also really heavy on all forms of domestic abuse, so it's not a light read, but... still, what a read.

The base plot - two 30-ish women fall in love, one of them is married - pops here or there in yuri, and it's admittedly very simple here, but the execution is strong and realistic. Notably, there's a real care in depicting the gears and details of an extremely abusive heterosexual relationship that is scarce in the genre: it's often enough to show that the husband of the story is a jerk to some varying degree, period². Here, though, there's this sickening, inescapable inertia and hold of a long-lasting abusive relationship, this difficulty of getting out of it. Midori's horrible domestic situation gives her (the veneer of) a "normal life", and how she tries to downplay everything wrong in it to keep some apparent stability is chilling.
I'll admit that it's not perfect - there's a flashback that gives tidbits of background trying to "explain" how the husband got like this that is, to me, much more on the clunkier side; but the rest is terrifying and very well made.

All this being said: you should also know that some of the later chapters are absolutely exhilarating and really heal the reader from the hard moments; and boy do we deserve that. It gets better. It does! And these moments of freedom, of breaking a pattern of abuse, of joy and of respite are absolutely wonderful - and the art captures them to perfection. There's true elation in these pages.

Oh, and the fact that Maki made another lesbian friend online, Komari, to whom she can complain, who struggles with her own lesbianism, who is wonderfully supportive, and who simply is a great (secondary) character in her own right, is the cherry on top. The plot at its core is very simple, yet extremely well executed overall; and Komari is a brilliant addition to it.

If the CWs here are not too much for you (but it's ok if they are, take care!), I really recommend this manga. It's concise (3 volumes only!), tight, and somehow I feel like it's one of the most accessible titles of this list even to people who are not much into mangas or manga tropes.

Extra

I just discovered that there was another work by the same author currently being translated to French with online release (but not to English as far as I can tell). It's not yuri though, and there seems to be a big straight love triangle with cheating involving two sisters(??), so, ugh. Still, considering how I liked Run Away With Me, Girl maybe I'll give this a try out of curiosity?? (edit: I still haven't tried it, but I'd like to thank my past self for this reminder!)

Rerun section

This is a small section just to say that when the first run of this Februaryuri ended, I did reread Run Away With Me, Girl in March - in French. It was wonderful to discover it again. I was also amazed by the extremely fluid quality of the translation - kudos to translator Blanche Delaborde for that - and some of its panels live in my mind since then. A silly example would be this one, saying something along the lines of "I really need to go back to writing my PhD manuscript tonight...", and I sure have had this exact thought countless times.
So, yeah. Consider this as some simple, heartfelt praise for the French edition of this series, in spite of its strange title choice.

#cohost #februaryuri 2024 #yuri