Full review on Bloom into You/Yagate Kimi Ni Naru.
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[ ! WARNING ! ] Contains Spoilers for Bloom into You, please only read this review if you have already read this manga, as this is a very great manga I wouldn't recommend getting spoiled.
Anyways, here's my review.
Bloom into You was a very intruiging read, and held a lot of meaning and emotion in it's beautiful story.
To recap, the manga talks about an asexual girl, by the name of Koito Yuu, who doesn't show any romantic or sexual interest in others (being asexual and aromantic, if I'm not mistaken). Yuu ends up meeting Touko Nanami, after Nanami gets confessed to by another student. Yuu stumbles into the situation, witnissing the whole thing. Touko states that she is not interested in being in any relationships with other people, just like Yuu. In a short amount of time, Nanami becomes quite fond of Yuu, and wants her to join the student council, in hopes of getting even closer to her. It is revealed quite quickly that Nanami actually likes Yuu, and that Yuu has trouble feeling any emotion in return.
It'd be hard to explain the whole read, so I'll try to summarize the rest, even though there are a lot of smaller symbols and meaningful parts I may have not included:
Nanami asks Yuu to promise her that the relationship will be one sided, where Nanami likes Yuu, and Yuu doesn't love her back.
Nanami wants to become like her sister, and later on realizes that her sister isn't the same as how she thought she was, which changed her life.
Nanami played the main character in a play, that talked about someone with amnesia who doesn't know how to act around people she used to know and has now forgotten about, which plays a really important role in the story and is very powerful, and I think it was made pretty clear that it had meaning.
Nanami ends up understanding that she shouldn't try becoming just like her sister, who wasn't exactly as she pictured her. She decided to "be herself", as cheesy as it may sound.
Nanami's friend, Sayaka, ends up confessing to her that she actually loves Nanami, and Nanami is obliged to turn her down due to her interest in Yuu.
Over time and over Nanami's developement as a person, Yuu ends up gaining feelings for her, and confessing to her, and she thinks that Nanami rejected her due to her breaking of the promise mentioned previously.
Yuu an Nanami clear up the misunderstanding and give birth to a relationship with mutual love.
[ Artstyle ] : (7/10)
Pretty good artstyle, cute character designs and lovely scenery. It's not that much out of the ordinary though...
[ Story + Premise + Plot ] : (9/10) (dkm for adding story, premise and plot all in one)
The story and plot kept me quite interested along the whole manga, and it just felt as though it got increasingly better. Bloom into You's beautiful story is far from forgettable and will forever have a place in some of the greatest romance manga of all time. To many people, the meaning put into Bloom into You is something that has literally changed their lives and made them understand so much more about a lot of topics, being sexuality, love, and identity.
[ Pacing ] : (8/10)
I've seen people complain about the pacing, but I think it's notably due to the start of the manga, and how it felt like it just jumped right into the story, which sortof felt uncomfortably quick. Other than that, it's well paced and relatively lengthy, it starts to slow down near they end, or atleast that's how it felt for my first read.
[ Characters and Character Developement ] : (9/10)
Yea, Bloom into You has some noticeable character developement in both Nanami and Yuu. First off, Nanami changes her mindset on who she should become entirely after realizing that she doesn't have to become just like her sister, who wasn't even how she pictured. Secondly, Yuu slowly grows from her experiences with Nanami, and starts understanding love better, and most importantly ends up gaining feelings for Nanami. The character developement is a strong and main theme in Bloom into You, and it's done well.
Now, the characters. A few of the characters just didn't have enough energy or didn't feel as unique as they should have been, but some still had great personalities and generally were well made. Yuu was an extremely likeable main character, and that was great. Nanami's general character was pretty unique, and I felt as though it had a grain of realism, but that just may be me. At times, I really could relate to Nanami's situation. Many other characters, such as Maki, did have personality and character, and their strengths and personalities were often quite clearly displayed.
[ General Execution ] : (9/10)
The story was very well executed, and it's characters combined with story and pacing truly amplified this. It's hard to elaborate on something like this sometimes, so I'll leave it short. Great execution overall.
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[ Overall Score ] : (9/10)
Bloom into You easily became one of my favorite manga of all time, and I even became invested into both rereading it and watching the anime just because of how much I much I adored reading Bloom into You.
