Everybody should read this manga.
The manga is about a boy, Tasuku Kaname, who has recently moved to a new town and shortly after is almost outed as being gay. When he is lamenting how his life is over because people may have discovered his secret he sees a woman jump from the window of a building that turns out to be a small lounge/cafe with a number of odd patrons; including the owner, named Anonymous, who is perfectly fine after walking back in and asks him if he still wants to die. After following Anonymous up to the viewing platform of a cliffside she tells him that he can tell her anything but she won’t ask him to and that when she’s done eating her ice cream she’s leaving. Kaname then confesses to her that he has a secret that he hides and would rather be dead and use the worst words that would be hurtful to him if he heard them than have people know. Anonymous invites him to visit the lounge the next day and then says a number of gay people visit there too before jumping off the viewing platform.
She then floats away because of course she does.
This manga is basically an exploration of a young boy hiding the fact that he’s gay and interacting with other people in the lounge who may be gay or trans and their lives and problems. It’s incredibly respectful in how it treats these issues and explores how the main character has such difficulty coming to terms with his homosexuality and the ways others view it. There is a lot they explore in a very short amount of time, with a homosexual lady and her wife that build housing to a younger boy in the most recent volumes who enjoys cross-dressing and bullies the MC because he himself doesn’t know what his sexuality is
The manga does not shy away from Japan’s abhorrent views on LGBT issues and some of the most damaging aspects in the manga are that casual “well as long as you get along with the neighborhood this place will still get queer rumors if gay people use it as a meeting place” type bullshit or when his teacher tells them that anyone can like whoever they want and the bullying kids ask him if he has a boyfriend and he says “Don’t be absurd”
The artwork is very very nice, with a stronger lined shoujo/shounen ai style. The boys are all pretty with long eyelashes but not distractingly so and there are very impressive backgrounds and altered perception paneling that a lot of series focusing on LGBT issues don’t tend to have (as a lot of shoujo/shounen ai works tend to focus more on character art than backgrounds, unless you’re Amatsuki or something).
The characters are the strength of this work as it’s focused on how issues affect people in a lot of ways and as such they have to be strong to move the narrative forward. When the narrative focuses on Kaname’s issues or the other characters and how they deal with prejudice or social pressure or everything else that comes with being LGBT it really shines. The weakest part is when it focuses on Anonymous and how “mysterious” she is because it seems pretty unnecessary and they don’t really develop it at all. She’s an interesting character but she’s not a complex one and she really isn’t the focus of a lot of the manga.
I definitely recommend this to people.
Oh shit, wait, I mean.
Shimanami Tasogare: It’s pretty good.
OniBarubary, October 2016
Manga OT 