KIMI TO TSUZURU UTAKATA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ONE SHOT DramaKimi ni Okuru Eien

REVIEWS

• 

  SteveExplorer

  100/100
  A must-read for anyone looking for a compelling manga in good taste

  The very first thing I feel the need to tell you is that this manga is utterly devastating. It most certainly will leave you feeling empty, sad or overwhelmed so read it at your own discretion.

  With that out of the way, let me start explaining why you SHOULD read this. Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata is a manga written and illustrated by Yuama. It tells the story of Hoshikawa Shizuku, a girl who has abandoned her future and how she comes across a girl as bright as the sun to light her path. It presents itself in a particularly enthralling way. Both of the characters are shrouded in mystery, yet the end result of their relationship is already revealed at the start. Rather than following a traditional storyline of introducing the obstacles after the characters, it instead raises all of the questions beforehand and leaves the job of answering them to the story along the way. Because of this, the story may feel lethargic at the beginning but don't leave just yet. It only gets better and better as it goes on. By letting us learn about the characters little by little, Yuama slowly lets us form a strong emotional connection with them. Dialogue and the interactions between the characters are written to be as effective as possible at connecting with our souls. Everything that happens in this story are things we experience in our own lives. It’s naturally less difficult for us to feel empathy for things we can relate to. Of course, achieving all this is far easier said than done. Yuama has done a magnificent job creating this manga and it clearly shows that she cares about it as much as we do, if not even more. With the way she develops the story, the conclusion still leaves you completely devastated even if you know fully well what is going to happen.

  Given the nature of the manga, it has an extremely sharp sense of time. The title of the manga itself strictly sets summer as the time limit of the story and the unfolding events constantly remind the readers that it is coming to an end. Due to this, there's no room left for dilly-dallying and it gets straight to the point. What meaning Shizuku and Kaori obtain through being by each other's side is wholeheartedly explored with no distractions. Even though their relationship wouldn't last, the present is more important to them than the foreseeable future. Maybe the main takeaway here is that the significance of something doesn't lie in how long it stays for and instead what you found for yourself by embracing it.

  I think not enough people bring the art up and I will not stand for it. It may be true that it's eclipsed by the compelling story but Yuama is undoubtedly an amazing artist. I almost feel spoiled by how good her art is. Great art can and will elevate a manga in ways words can’t. It’s hard to accurately describe it since it’s highly subjective but I think my favorite part of her art is how she draws facial expressions. Rage, sadness, distress, confusion, acceptance, joy and loneliness. You can feel it all right through the screen. Her way of structuring the panels does a great service conveying those raw emotions. I also find the character design of Shizuku to be a very memorable one. I'm sure many people other than myself will find themselves relating to her.

  In the end, we are all treading along with our own words and feelings. By doing so, we continue to share our ideas and thoughts however worthless they might be. Maybe not every story is worth telling. However, the story of these two girls was one absolutely worth being told. You should definitely read this manga and think about its meaning for yourself. And if you have, please do read the story from start to finish one more time to catch anything you may have missed. I promise it'll be worth it.

  Alas, I end this review by quoting Asaka Kaori.

  “Every good story has an ending! It would be a shame otherwise!”

  

  Continue on AniList
• 

  ZNote

  80/100
  When a cry in the night is heard, and the hand that reaches out is warm.

  

  (Guilt at being who you are, what you did, and what you created, all intermixing for a lonely path)

  The Summer You Were There is a story about a single, prolonged cry into the literary night that came dangerously close to getting lost in the wind. Hoshikawa Shizuku was the author of that cry, but shortly after having completed her first novel, she cannot bear the thought of it staying online anymore. Perhaps even egged on (albeit unintentionally) by the online commenters that are baffled by the novel’s content and can only respond the way commenters sometimes do on sites of that nature, she deletes a year’s worth of work and seeks to discard the manuscript. Her apprehension is the result of a brutal, crippling self-loathing, the sense that she is simply better off completely isolated and forming no connection with anyone. With a heart and disposition as brittle as hers, there’s dramatic logic to this. It’s not just that stories serve as the bridge between understanding feelings, but that for Shizuku, the thought that the story could potentially bridge the gap between someone else’s heart and her own heart is something that cannot be allowed to happen.

  She’s in for a rude awakening, clothed in a sunny disposition from her next-door seat neighbor. Dropping the manuscript on the street, Shizuku gets what seems like the worst twist of misfortune as Asaka Kaori quickly scrounges it up and takes it home to read for herself. Expecting the worst, Shizuku prepares to confront Kaori and say that it’s okay if she throws it away. But Kaori has the complete opposite reaction, fawning over the novel and asking what Shizuku’s next one is going to be. But Shizuku’s cry in the night was meant to be final, as she doesn’t plan to make anything else. Kaori, finding the notion unthinkable, thinks that Shizuku’s next novel should be in a happier direction, so she proposes an idea – to pretend to go out so she can understand making a story like that.

  

  Both in its title and as the end of the first chapter so signifies (see above picture), The Summer You Were There is operating on a clock that’s counting down quickly. Because time is of the essence, it gives the story an acceleration that avoids a lot of unnecessarily-frilly extras to cloud the plot and pussyfoot around. Yet even in the short time given, it manages to put to the page just how aware of Shizuku Kaori truly is – Shizuku’s story was, in essence, her baring her soul before an unknown audience, but the manga wrestles with the idea of what happens when the unknown audience becomes the known. It is not like Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s Misery, that of an obsessed fan whose fascination and complex about the work or the author begins a spiral of effectively horrifying brutality; Kaori, perhaps in almost too saintly a fashion, does not have any ill will within her.

  And it is precisely because of that metaphorical glow that Kaori has the ability to so get under Shizuku’s skin, but without pushing her away. There’s always a question of to what degree of interference, passive or active, is needed in order to get someone to open themselves up when there’s a part of them that they’ve shut away. No matter how begrudgingly it ends up coming to pass, the time they spend together increases, and Shizuku’s confusion about what Kaori is trying to do builds to the point where Shizuku makes her ultimate confession about where her self-loathing comes from. Both in telling her published story to Kaori (as an unknown reader) and her own real-life story to Kaori (as pseudo-girlfriend), it completes the soul-baring that Shizuku thought she had finished when she published her last chapter and deleted her novel.

  In reality, the novel Shizuku published online is only a small taste of what actually laid beneath. Through Kaori’s devoted persistence, she offers Shizuku a chance to at long last say or do what she has needed all along: reconciling and being candid about her own regrets. While girls’ love may be the vehicle that gets it all moving (it happened to be the subject of Shizuku’s novel, too), it’s not really about girls’ love specifically. Rather, it uses girls’ love as a character study through confession rather than playing itself as a straightforward romance. Every dialogue and conversation between Shizuku and Kaori is centered around Shizuku’s own personal redemption, not necessarily of what she did (though it does take that route), but because of what she did ultimately did to herself.

  Though Shizuku is the main character, Kaori’s own heart has its share of woes and worries. It is only fair that the girl that insisted upon Shizuku’s honesty likewise be honest herself, even if it comes at times that she doesn’t want it to be so. The Summer You Were There manages to pull some of its most brutal punches not through what specifically happens in the plot event-wise, but rather in some of the character interactions that generate directly because of it. A normally innocuous comment gets reframed as being unintentionally insulting, even if everyone involved knows that no offense was meant. Much of the actual drama itself is telegraphed rather blatantly, but due to its trajectory of Shizuku and Kaori transforming before our eyes piece-by-piece, it smooths out any rougher edges the narrative might offer.

  

  (Once you catch on to the manga’s sense of storytelling, there are few surprises it offers. Its strength lies in its more-muted melodramatic tone and consistently life-affirming exchanges concerning guilt and forgiveness, both from within and without)

  The Summer You Were There began as a story about a single, prolonged cry into the literary night that came dangerously close to getting lost in the wind. It was pained, wounded, and rough-edged. But it took one single arm and hand reaching out to caress that cry until it could finally begin the long, arduous, and necessary healing. It’s entirely possible that in the midst of sadness, you’re convinced that no one cares, or that no one hears. I cannot be the judge of that, and you know yourself better than I.

  But a voice or person that offers you help is worth believing in, I think.

  
  Continue on AniList
• 

  Animusswtor

  100/100
  Two Girls saving each other. And saving me in the process. THE most I have ever cried in fiction.

  You know, I'm kind of a little bit of a bumbling mess, still, after just having finished this, but I really want to get my incoherent ramblings that dare call themselves "thoughts" in my head out into the world for others to read.
  Because I think this deserves even more recognition than it is getting at the moment. Much more in fact.

  Instead of an actual, "structured", review that tells you what this story is about - cuz, honestly, who in their right mind reading a review wants to know what something is about (well, at least I don't and am looking more for the emotional aspect), read the synospis for that - I am here to tell you, how it made me feel.
  Or more accurately

  __Just how much it broke me__

  ---

  Not everything needs to be happy. All that matters is that they’re both content.

  I’ve touched upon this in my ongoing activity updates that you can find here already, but the way this manga manages to combine so many powerful, delicate and sensitive themes, and implements them into what is essentially a pairing of just two major characters with such an intricate sense of care and passion - like you will find in almost no other anime or manga done like this - without feeling overbearing, or overwhelming (well, it’s certainly emotionally overwhelming), without overstaying its welcome, never feeling like it tries to do too much, all while building up and maintaining a (mostly) healthy romantic relationship steadily progressing forward in the background, strikes me as something of incredible beauty.
  I am
  IN AWE
  of every single page of this manga, that - alongside all this - has such a powerful way to convey these themes and emotions in its art and paneling that I haven’t seen in a very long time in romance manga. Especially when it comes to the facial expressions and little details that make a character feel more human.
  I genuinely think that there is no better portrayal (that I have seen) of ACTUAL realistic anxiety and insecurity in animanga than Shizuku Hoshikawa, and that alone makes her a contender for a spot in a list of top 5 animanga protagonists, IF NOT even higher than that.
  (yes I have seen - and read - Bocchi the Rock, yes it is one of my favorites, but while Bocchi is more of an accurate portrayal of how it FEELS, Shizuku is one of how it ACTUALLY IS.)
  Kaori Asaka, her counterpart in the relationship, hiding behind a mask of an energetic and lively personality, while her real feelings - that she can only talk about with no one else but Shizuku, but even then not even to their full extent, until the end, that is - slowly gnaw and eat away at her from the inside, in this intense portrayal of a struggle that I imagine not many of us can actually relate to, nonetheless manages to be a powerful way of showing how a situation like hers can affect the people involved, be it the one actually inflicted with it or the people around them, that everyone can take away at least SOMETHING from it, no matter how small.

  But that is not to say these two main characters are the only strengths this story has, no on the contrary, every single one of the side characters - which admittedly aren’t that many - has a specific role that they fulfill in exactly the way they need (what would Shizuku ever do if she didn’t have Seri and Ruri to handle Kaori’s condition, because she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to on her own.) and they serve as an incredibly nice addition into an already powerful narrative, making it clear that the mangaka had all of this planned out from even before the first second they started to draw the manga - which kinda should be obvious when looking at the title

  ---

  Speaking of
  Obviously, I have to address the elephant in the room here, that being the title of the manga itself:

  The Summer You WERE There

  is exactly what it promises to be. Since the moment I started this, I knew how this was gonna end, YOU reading this probably know how this is gonna end, but that is besides the point. The point is the journey of how it eventually gets there, and how it impacts the other characters - and you as a reader - and for that I can very confidently say that I can’t think of many, if any, that handle it as well as this one.

  __These two girls Saved each other. And saved me.__

  Barring the Aria Series, Kumiko in Sound Euphonium and maybe, JUST MAYBE, the Requiem for Innocence prequel VN for The House in Fata Morgana, I don’t think I’ve experienced ANYthing that has hit me on such a personal level as The Summer You Were There has in, dare I say, probably the last 5 YEARS. Which is HUGE, because I’ve only really started to watch anime 6 years ago, and read manga or LNs 4 years ago, meaning this includes pretty much 90% of what is in my lists.

  When it comes to
  emotions
  this does NOT hold back.
  It goes all in into the depths of your heart and digs its way ever further until it reaches the deepest point that even you yourself couldn’t have ever imagined existing, and
  Rips it all to shreds.

  Giving the most satisfying feeling of
  CLOSURE
  I have seen ever since reading the final chapter of Girls Last Tour all those years ago.

  So please, if you’ve come this far in my little review, PLEASE do yourself the favor of reading this story. By the time I reached chapter 9, I was 100% convinced that this is gonna end up with a full score on my list, and that sentiment hasn’t dwindled a single bit over the course of me reading this.
  If anything, it just got cemented further and further with every single chapter, all the way into the last.

  ---

  At this point, though, considering the actual themes the story portrays and how raw and real it goes about it, I’m going to give out a little content warning for things like
  Depression, trauma, guilt, anxiety, bullying, su*cidal tendencies, mental health, atonement and forgiveness, loneliness, escapism, and most importantly: loss, denial and grief.
  Because this story is NOT for the faint of heart, and you should not go into this having a negative mindset and should only dive into it when you know you will be able to handle it.
  No. I’d rather say I ADVISE you not to go into this if you are not sure if you are able to handle it.

  I do consider myself quite an emotional person, which I think should be pretty apparent already when you read through all my activities and reviews and stuff on here, but even then there is only a small hand of things that not only made me cry but that made me bawl. And when I say „bawl“, I mean

  __BAWL. Like a little bitch.__

  This is one of those.
  There is not a single chapter after chapter 5, where I haven’t cried, and I’m not talking about simply tearing up a little bit, no, I mean a full stream running down my face, and I can say one thing for certain after having now gone through this experience of the final chapter:

  I am an empty, broken man.

  And I wouldn’t want to have it any other way right now.

  ---

  10/10
  This needs more recognition,
  and an anime adaptation.
  That would be pretty cool, too.

  This is not (just) a yuri manga, this is art.
  It is
  catharsis
  in the truest possible sense of the word.

  I might even prefer this over Bloom Into You
  Not because of its romance, but because of its drama aspect and the way it weaves these powerful themes into these powerful characters.

  I‘m looking at a potential number 2 in my Animanga 7x7 for the end of this year already this early on. (look at my profile bio if you want to know more about that.)
  Something that surpassed even my own highest expectations, in a way that I wouldn’t have thought possible until now.

  ---

  I’m still crying.

  In fact

  I don’t think I have EVER cried as much with something fictitious, or media related as today.
  Maybe not even Aria. Maybe not even Torchwood season 2 (those who know, know.)
  That’s how much this means to me right now.
  I don’t think I have ever taken breaks
  INBETWEEN PAGES OF A SINGLE CHAPTER.
  Today
  I did.

  Never before have I uttered the words
  „I don’t want to read these final pages“
  in my life.
  Today
  I did.

  I have never started to laugh uncontrollably because of how hard I was crying, making me look like I’m a complete and utter psychotic maniac.
  Today
  I did.

  ---

  To reiterate, or rather correct my earlier statement above:

  I am not an empty, broken man.
  I am but a mere shell of an empty, broken man, drifting along in the winds of this world‘s indescribable loneliness.
  That….. hurt…
  a lot….
  But I think it also saved me, in a way.

  And I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

  ---

  

  I do, too, Shizuku.
  And I also want to believe that this story is real, at least that way I can justify crying myself to sleep because of this last night.
  I want to ask the author of this, just once, if what they wrote here comes from personal experience, because this gets almost TOO real at times.

  Continue on AniList

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