Hanakoi Tsurane

I like a lot of Natsume Isaku manga, and I had bought the first 6 volumes on kindle during some kind of discount deal a while back, but hadn't actually started reading it properly yet. I started it today (yesterday, I just haven't slept yet) and blew through not only the 6 volumes I had, but the remaining 3 which I bought before I was even done with volume 6.

It's this gorgeous love story about the two high school age successors of their feuding kabuki royalty families. I learned a lot about kabuki reading it, but also the love story is far more interesting and dynamic than it appeared for all of volume one, and at 9 volumes in, it is still ongoing. In addition to a relationship where lack of communication is given just a proportionate amount of angst before being communicated and resolved, with the communication improving as the story goes on, both main characters also have relationships with best friends and family members that are vital to the plot. The story currently spans about 3 years.

I highly highly recommend it. If you want to read it without spoilers, stop here and read it because I'm about to spoil something hinted in vol. 1, which finally starts unfolding in vol. 7.

I guessed in the first volume, seeing the complete difference in how Kikuemon remembers Juichirou versus how the other characters talk about their feud, that they were exes.

And yet the story delivered a far more poignant story by making them be not exes, but partners who were too in love to hide it, but too scared to do anything about it.

The "history repeats itself" trope is so incredibly common in stories, yet somehow, the way this story delivered it did not feel at all cliche or tired.

Part of the beauty is that it's not merely depicted as our protagonists succeeding where their grandfathers failed, but also that Kikuemon/Masaomi, who was the one to reject the possibility of acting on their feelings, is also the one who watches over them. His thoughts are not often made explicit, but when they are, it seems to hint that he kept his past with Juichiro/Akio locked away, and that watching his grandson actually making this thing work with this boy who is the spitting image of Akio at his age, it is dawning on him for the first time that the path he saw as impossible was not quite so impossible as he thought at the time.

I love those little moments with Shuugo and Junpei, who have no idea that Shuugo's grandpa knows they're dating, when Masaomi's words and thoughts are ever so slightly revealing to us, the readers who know the secret that, now that Akio is dead, Masaomi is the only one who knows. The moments that stick out the most to me are Masaomi seeing Akio in Junpei before anyone else and calling Kuma to train him; Masaomi picking up that Shuugo is still dating Junpei after two and a half years, that he's just gotten better at hiding it; the response Masaomi gives to Shuugo when he asks why he stopped performing with Juichiro: "未熟だった" ("[I/we/he] was unripe/young"), which we are told is a marked shift in how he's ever answered that question to anybody else.

The love that Masaomi and Akio never acted on is threaded through the story: Akio's reflections on his partnership with Masaomi on his deathbed are what motivated Junpei to start pursuing Shuugo with as much fervor as he did, and Masaomi's lack of an overt response to the knowledge that his grandson is dating Akio's grandson is itself a stunning revelation, even as he keeps his own internal journey under wraps.

I was so invested in this storyline that when I reached the end of volume 9, I almost had a panic attack before realizing that it said "continues in volume 10" and was not actually over.

I want desperately to see Masaomi tell Shuugo at least what really happened. Or maybe even someone else. And yet at the same time, he has never put words to what was between himself and Akio, not even in his own mind. I wonder if it would actually be a comfort for him to talk about it now, when Akio is gone. Shuugo and Junpei already know they're fighting a fight of optics, and they've learned to be conscious of it that; they've learned to be mindful in their interactions in public; they have friends who validate them, and they don't expect validation from family. The thing that looms over them is the issue of succession of their respective families. And I wonder if the realization that their grandfathers stood at the same intersection as they did and chose succession at the expense of ever being able to share the stage again will help or hinder them. I like to believe it would make them realize that succession isn't everything—because in exchange for the continued bloodlines, they eradicated from the world their performance duo in what the entire kabuki world agrees was a travesty.

I cannot wait to see how this story continues, but in the meantime I am writing fics about the tragedy of Akio and Masaomi. I just hope that, whether or not he finds it in himself to tell anyone about it, Masaomi is able to find his own peace by the end of the story.