[Februaryuri 2024 rerun] The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All
(base post on Februaryuri here!)
(note that all that follows, unless mentioned explicitly or in the rerun section, was written in February 2024)
The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All (Ki ni Natteru Hito ga Otoko Janakatta), by Sumiko Arai
Publication
Ongoing (2 volumes (and originally a Twitter comic before getting serialized))
Published in English (Yen Press), 1 volume so far
Published in French (Mangetsu) under the arguably shorter title She Wasn't a Guy, 2 volumes so far
Summary
Aya Oosawa is a high schooler who, in spite of her "cool girls" group of friends' lack of understanding, is passionate about rock and rock bands. She regularly visits a record shop to listen to the latest releases and buy CDs - and also, maybe, to see the handsome store clerk, a young boy(?) with a mysterious and cool aura who has impeccable music taste.
Meanwhile, Mitsuki Koga is a high schooler the sit next to her who, behind her nerdy and reserved apparence at school, works part-time at her uncle's record shop, freely expresses her fashion sense there, is often cooler than she means to be, and is passionate about rock and rock bands. Until now, she's been very happy about keeping her two personas separate. So what did she just get into...?
CW
- None (after some point there's one boy character shipping the two leads that is an occasional trope in yuri that often irks me, but that's it).
Sexual elements?
Nothing so far (and it feels very unlikely to be honest).Comment
This one is on my list in good part because it's aesthetically awesome. Its sense of style is incredible, it just oozes coolness, and it's as much a tribute to rock and adjacent music styles as it is a manga.
Compared, for instance, to Whisper Me a Love Song which uses music as a flavor, here that theme really is the raison d'être of the manga. I think there have been entire threads of people spotting references scattered across the art (album covers, posters...), though I can't find any as I'm writing this; and the author created a whole Spotify playlist of songs shared in-universe by the two protagonists.
Also, this was originally a Twitter comic first and foremost, with each chapter only 4 pages long, and it kept this format - which is not a pace you see often! Consequently, it's a lot less longer than it may seem if you look at the number of chapters; and also this gives it a very specific storytelling format with 4-page units.
Story-wise, first thing first: the big amount of title could've hinted at one of those mangas that is weird about gender. It isn't. Koga-san simply has a really androgynous-coded expression with her usual outfit, and once the gender misunderstanding thing is out of the way, the two leads are gravitating toward each other just as much as before.
That being said, the manga does straddle the line between "they're definitely in love, and several scenes look like confessions" and "their common love interest is rock music". That's a staple of yuri alright - when you've reached a point where the leads are so clearly a thing that you can't honestly call it subtext or a slow burn anymore, yet they're not confessing or dating, and addressing that isn't really the end goal. It can be frustrating if you don't know what you're getting into, and it can feel queerbait-y if you're expecting things, but there's a discussion to have on that, still1: Sumiko Arai wrote several explicitly sapphic oneshots (see Extra section), and it's rather clear that this is just not her aim here, or at least not right now.
And so: it's ok not to be treading particularly new ground with the story here, even more with a Twitter comic format. We're here for the vibes. The celebration of rock music. The flirting and the extremely cool monochromatic panels.
And, you know - two characters admiratively blushing at each other while looking really cool and exchanging love-coded sentences about music is nice. I hope you can enjoy the ride, too.
Extra
There's a whole gallery of first drafts and official drawings of the protagonists to be found here.
Additionally, Sumiko Arai did several oneshots (or twoshots)! I really liked these two I read recently - there's a quiet sadness to each of them that was really beautiful, and both feel like they could someday be continued in interesting ways2.
Rerun section
First thing first: I am notably following the scanlation, and things are happening in recent manga chapters! Though we may have to wait until a third volume in print form to witness them on paper, I can at least say that, open admission of love or not, there's been a clear change to the statu quo of earlier chapters recently. This is exciting: it's not something I was expecting!
Aside from that, allow me to mull on publication stuff in the remainder of this section.
Indeed, the series got published both in French and in English since I first posted this review, which made me update the publication section accordingly. And that's great news!
I've bought and read the French version of the first volume, and it's rather nice3! (The second landed in early October, and is waiting on my shelf.)
... Well, ok, I could nitpick on a few translation-related things still. I'll mostly refrain, but I have to mention the back cover blurb that really emphasizes too much the "is Aya going to accept that she fell in love with a girl?!?" when it's actually not much of a plot point. I wish publishers were more chill about, you know, being sapphic and all. This feels way too aimed at people who would be enticed by that kind of plot (which is not usually a queer audience, who tends to be sick of it), and it rubs me the wrong way. But if you don't get fooled by that (or simply don't check it), it's an easy read!
As always, I'm also cautiously curious about how this translation will handle a future part when the two leads get on a first name basis, since the French version decided to make them do that in the first place - once again to reach a wider, not-used-to-last-name-basis audience, I suppose. I don't know if the English version does the same, but I've seen it be kind of a regular issue with translation choices in general in both languages, here or there.
And speaking once again of a large intended audience, I was pleasantly surprised by how much the release of this series was advertised in France - yuri or yuri-adjacent mangas usually don't get this much social media coverage and manga shop highlight, at least here, but this one sure did!! I guess it's a compensation for the all of the above publication choices, for better or for worse.
*sigh* Bottom line, I wish more yuri had this visibility...
As I said in my Tropical Fish review, it also depends on how it's done. Some series, I trust they will never pull a boy love interest out of nowhere, or use the sapphic vibes for marketing reasons, or things like that. This one I trust - but I understand how difficult it can be depending on how much/recently you've been hurt before. There's also the notion of ending at play, I suppose: whether we expect a work of fiction to end with the leads getting together or not, and whether it delivers on that, can influence how we mull over the final product, I guess. For now, this one, which has yet to end, is a consistent delivery of flirt and vague pining between two rock nerd girls somewhere in a big relationship limbo, and that's fun as it is.↩
The second one's premise vaguely reminds me of an old oneshot by Akiko Morishima, The Conditions for Paradise, but that's another topic. But if I had a nickel for each sapphic couple where one of them is settled and the other travels the world all the time and drops by every now and then, I'd have two nickels... (edit: well, here's a third!)↩
I was slightly cautious because the same translator is behind the French version of The Summer You Were There, covered later in this series, which has one big mistranslation at the start, and a few translation choices I have reservations about.↩