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hirugaymi · 7 months

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Sasamiya's guide book rant: a bit upsetting

Sasaki to Miyano is a very casual read, a simple, cliche BL story with gorgeous art and interesting main characters that hooks out from beginning to the end of the romance and gets you to a satisfying conclusion.

But to a person who's been hooked in this silly story like I'm committing substance abuse, the real key of Sasaki to Miyano's storytelling are its side characters, and I am not happy about what I found.

The Slice of Life genre, and consequentely shoujo manga/BL manga tend to rely on the side cast for most of its lighter moments: jokes, exposition and expanding the story.

Harusono-sensei has a habit of discreetly releasing the lore of these side characters in contexts that extrapolate her main manga story unless said lore has influence over one of her MCs.

Merch products with little story snippets, captions for her birthday art posts, little comments over her Fanbox exclusive livestreams, artbooks, light novels and Volume Extras all paint this interesting landscape of characters much richers than you'd firstly assume when picking up SasaMiya or HiraKagi to read for the first time, and as an avid fan of this Manga Universe she's built, I was anxiously waiting for the SasaMiya guidebook in hopes of getting to know one of her most recent additions to her cast: Shirahama Kyouji.

Offically debuting in the manga by chapter 42, Shirahama was previously established as Tashiro's childhood friend from the basketball club in the First Year's Novel. In 2019, when Tashiro's birthday art was posted, his name was revealed to the readers for the first time through a quote-retweet from Harusono clarifying that no, she had not invented a character out of the blue, this guy's always been Tashiro's companion. In 2020, he made another appearance in his friend's birthday art, later then becoming an established member of Miyano's now group of four friends.

In the guidebook, like she does with all her side characters, Harusono establishes his gimmick: Shirahama is a boy who wants to be popular with girls and is upset at his state of perpetual loneliness.

His current function in the story is to be the one guy who's more aware of romantic social cues, considering Kuresawa's is constantly talking about his girlfriend, Miyano is the main character who's dating for the first time and Tashiro is...

What the fuck is Tashiro doing?

Being the guy with no girlfriend was Tashiro's thing at the start! He's the one whos compained about wanting to live some kind of high school romance even if he studied in an All Boy's School (ie: the Bazaar Drama CD), he's the guy who was afraid his friends would leave him for their S/O's.

By Shirahama's official debut I started noticing a process I could only call "straight man-fication" of Tashiro's character. The author quite literally transferred his gag to Shirahama.

I abhor this decision with my whole heart, not because I don't believe Tashiro can be anything but a funny character, on the contrary, he's proved in both his novel chapters that he can be interesting and funny, specially if he's interacting with his narrative foil.

Enter Hanzawa and the contradictions of his hinted romance storyline

Harusono has established pretty well who Hanzawa is by the latter half of SasaMiya, her most developed side character apart from Hirano, who has his own manga, his family issues and his overall aversion to romance when it came to his own life made for an interesting one-time side character beyond his gimmicks with the rest of the cast.

Hanzawa's role in Tashiro's chapter in the First Years LN is to guide him into believing he can and wants to be responsible for something for once. Tashiro's role in Hanzawa's later development is to show him there's need for balance in everything and that the man deserves to rest for a while instead of trying to work his brain into repressing his personal issues.

This is a fine dynamic on its own and that, in my honest opinion, never needed to be turned into the hinted romance the manga has been giving us in the newest appearances of these characters. In the guide book, these two characters gain a whole pages long fully colored extra about the two of them missing each other.

Tashiro doesn't feel like himself when he's nostagically reminiscing the departure of his upperclasmen, his internal monologue feels divorced from the guy we cam to associate with a carefree and lighter nature. But that's fine, isn't it? Giving the carefree guy a serious moment is a classic Anime Character Development move.

Tashiro's been serious before, in moments mostly associated with Hanzawa and with worrying about him (the Movie extra where he gives him a juice bottle).

What bothers me the most is what Hanzawa becomes here.

In this guide book comic, Hanzawa's attachment to his high school life is comically exaggerated as he repeatedly refuses to leave his classroom at the last day before the Third Year's graduation ceremony and has to be forcefully dragged by Hirano.

When these two out of pocket moments for these characters appear associated with each other by matching internal monologues, they feel OOC to me.

I do not think Hanzawa's story needs a romance. I absolutely do not think Tashiro's pair should be his overachiever upperclassman.

I think Harusono's haste is apparent when you look at what these two characters became and associate it with Shirahama's persistent appearances in the story. It feels contradictory to all these established characters, but specially unfair to Shirahama, since his role in the narrative as Tashiro's companion is lost and he becomes a flanderized mess of exposition dialogue and Miyano's personal tutorial to dating life.

Not the first time she does that to a character, don't get me started on my poor boy Ogasawara.

If the guide book's a guide to anything that's bound to happen in SasaMiya's last volume and the upcoming spin-off, I don't think Hanzawa and Tashiro (or poor Shirahama, he doesn't deserve this) are on a good path.

I love SasaMiya and this has not hindered my enjoyment of the series at all, but it does hurt a bit, specially considering their individual potential.

#sasaki to miyano #sasamiya #bl manga #manga analysis #i just have a lot to talk about this one #you had a perfectly good aromantic character in your hands maam #“I hope you die” is weak. “I hope one of your favorite authors butchers one of your faves and you can't do shit” is real and it hurt #im not saying ppl who like the two of them as a pairing are wrong #i just personally enjoy them as senpai/kouhai and nothing more because their solo potential is much better #im still recovering from her straight up admitting she pushed ogasawara to the sidelines #MOST PPL DONT KNOW THE BOY'S AN ORPHAN #im just upset

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