Bloom into You Vol. 6 (Bloom into You (Manga))

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Now the story leaves the epitome of "oh I can't do this since it will make her sad" and lying to yourself so much so. At this point, we have seen gradual change happen with the characters, especially that of Yuu, which was a nice change to witness, but it only leads down to the monotonous path of not staying true to yourself you usually see in most romance anime/manga. Now I don't have a problem with generic storytelling, if something is the norm, it doesn't mean that it is bad because other stories follow the same structure. It just means that it is the norm. Not good. Not bad. So from Vol 7 onwards, that is exactly what you get, misunderstandings creating a regular situation. Honestly speaking, this is the best part of the entire manga. But there isn't much to say from it other than, you have seen this before if you are familiar with the genre, and that what you expect to happen, will likely happen. Chapter 33: Running Start - Yuu goes shopping with her sister, asking about how her sister met her boyfriend and who asked who out. Thinking of Touko, she asks if it’s better to not say anything to avoid ruining the friendship, but her sister denies this, says that it is inevitable for relationships to change. Secretly, Yuu’s sister suspects Yuu is thinking of Touko and is supportive of her feelings.

We finally get to see the play, Touko becomes a more confident person, and Yuu grapples with her feelings for Touko! I enjoy how much this series delves into the nature of identity and how love interacts with it. Probably, also influenced by the experience with Yuzuki, Sayaka realized she could only fall in love with women. And in that way, she had a love at first sight with Touko due to her beauty and also, as she mentioned it, her curiosity of how someone got better grades than her.By the way, these thoughts that Sayaka had to go through are similar to what Yuu had to face to realize she had fell in love with Touko. Iruma captured very well the scence of the manga with this. But, Haru was the first in confessing her love. She said it was at first sight. Like the love of Sayaka for Touko, so she understood that feeling putting on the spot of Haru. But she was scared. She immediately remembered her horrible experience with Yuzuki-senpai, due to starting a relationship with someone that she didn’t really love and then ending in the worst way posible. She didn’t want to experience the same thing again. So, she took her time. She thought a lot. She understood her feelings for Haru were different from her Senpai. She understood Haru’s feelings were real, not like Senpai. She understood she was happy spending time with her despite of her carefreeness, something unusual in someone like her. She understood she would fall in love with her even if it not was equal at the moment. Because Haru made Sayaka experience sort of new beautiful things and, of course, this include real love. That's why I think Haru is the perfect match for her, even though Sayaka found problematic to face her personality when they first started their friendship but we know how love works. In general, yuri has had a rather mixed history, and a myriad of series that don’t take themselves seriously and/or suffer from poorly-written characters and narratives have made the rounds in the past few years. Thankfully, Yagate Kimi ni Naru (Bloom into You) avoids these issues, placing well-written characters into an engaging and thoughtfully crafted narrative to create a moving coming-of-age story. There is a certain thing I do when I want to be sure I'm judging shoujo-ai or shounen-ai fairly - I think about wheter I would rate it the same if the story was about a heterosexual couple. And by that I mean examining whether the character depth and relationship developement is interesting by itself or whether those are replaced by just being gay and the romance itself is shallow. In other words, it's removing fetishizing of yuri or yaoi from the lenses of judgement - "Is it good because they are the same sex, or is it good because they are actually interesting characters?"

The first volume tells the living experiences of Sayaka from Elementary School to Junior High. We have the possibility to learn how Sayaka was at that time and how much she has changed through the years due to a lot of events told in the novel. We also learn that these changes were heavily influenced by love. The novel explores the story of Sayaka from her perspective, that is to say, in first person. Something that it’s hard to do well in a manga, I think.

She is being selfish, yes, that is her entire character base but for someone smart as her, what is the point, if she wanted to become the same as the person she desired, who mind you, I don't believe was selfish anyway, already failing her task. What was the point of being so selfish? As we know, Sayaka was three years in love with Touko and she couldn’t “win” her love in return because of Yuu. We also learned from Yuu that she had gotten a girlfriend named Haru (someone who I think is the perfect match for her and I will explain why after talking about the third and last volume). But we didn’t know how was her past in details, although we knew about her Senpai in Junior High. First, a girl from her former swimming classes when she was in Elementary School and then a Senpai (Yuzuki) from her chorus club of the Junior High. As we know, this last one was the worst experience for her, as well the first approaching to "love" because she was very young to understand what had happened with the girl from the swimming classes. The ending was quite wholesome though, nothing much to go on about that other than it was wholesome. I think that it ended off on a sweet positive note with very few questions being answered in that ending.