
a review by lynnpetals

a review by lynnpetals
Up until this point, I've been acclimated to the slow burn, will they won't they genre of romance, and it's been nice, but it has gotten me used to crushes treated as a unwatched pot of water. The moment it spills out onto the stove and is overflowing with pure love, you realise how long it's been boiling inside of you, and now you cannot contain it.
In the case of やがて君になる、there are two concepts that get explored thoroughly, identity and love. Identity is what defines all of our actions, and love is the action we take in response to another's identity. Yuu struggles with trying to understand what love means, but love isn't a thread placed down by the heavens above. Love is created by ourselves, and it's the actions we take that push us closer to others. Touko struggles with a loss of identity, feeling like she's nothing without her masks, and the only honesty she can find is to become those masks.
I think that this manga is pretty amazing. Not everything is perfect, but the imperfections are so outweighed by everything else, and that's 10/10 for me. Characters who maybe don't stay true to themselves, but they stay true to each other.
There's a selfish part of me that would've hoped that the manga ended in a tragedy repeating past history, forcing characters to fight on for their predecessors, but I'm much more content with the ending given.
One of the things I really liked was that for the most part, there wasn't crushing -- instead, it started out as a complicated, nebulous relationship that refused to be defined. It showed that sometimes, love does not have to be perfectly reciprocal. Sometimes we let others love, because we don't know what we ourselves truly want.
Here, the interpretation of love is a very raw and intimate one. It can be physical, it can be one way, it can be passive, it can be quiet, but as we grow and change, we don't have to worry about our love waning, becuase love isn't static. Love changes on its own as well, and sometimes it just takes breaking a promise for a waterfall to burst. Even if we try as hard as we can, we can't help but fall for the people that we told we wouldn't do it for, because that's the flaws in our soul.
If you want a personal recommendation, then please read this story while listening to 80s Cantopop, it gets me in the mood incredibly so. Bye! From here on are just some scratch notes I took while reading:
不过说实话,我还没有搞明白为什么七海学姐会这么说,感觉让yuu学妹突然不知道怎么应对。可能是说,两个一样都是不为了爱情而追寻的人,不会为了恋爱的压迫感而屈服。也许是这个真诚打动了她……
哇学姐你这可不行啊,这么帅气的配合,然后潇洒的问一句“你觉的呢?” (2)
WHAT
怎么就第二篇就已经亲上了!!
好大胆!不管你说什么!百合到底!
这是一个把行动放在心动之前的故事,好有意思啊;这已经不是那种“互相喜欢不告诉”的暧昧了,而是实实在在的揣摩什么才算是真正的爱情
有时候,爱情最重要就是失去了另外一个TA才意识到痛,不需要什么大规模
okay so far yuu is a struggling aro who doesn’t know how to tell touko-senpai that they’re not the same
wow this is such a fascinating perspective on how we view love; yuu struggling to understand what love truly means, and navigating it, where as touko is content with the feeling of infatuation and love, and she doesn’t need it back
“Akari’s smooth explanation sounded like she’d rehearsed it in advance. Arrange and rearranging the words on her own… over and over… until she found the perfect order.” What a delicate analysis, wow. So that’s the angle we’re taking on love.
Would love for this to break clichés and say “we don’t need all these gestures or clichés”, especially since this is built on the premise of a girl who wants to find love like she sees in her shoujo mangas.
Also, listening to Cantonese songs while reading manga is such a good feeling.
49.5 out of 54 users liked this review