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Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane After reading the first volume, my initial impression of We Were There (Bokura ga Ita) is that, depending on how it develops, it could be either ordinary or remarkable. I haven't read any spoilers for what happens after this volume, but between the positive things I've heard from manga-savvy friends, and the not-insignificant fact that it won the 2005 Shogakukan Manga Award for shoujo, I'm thinking it's the latter. This high school romance begins on Nanami Takahashi's second day of high school, as she begins trying to make friends with her new classmates. She has very mixed success, but the other girls draw her attention to Motoharu Yano, the most popular boy in class. Nanami finds Yano attractive but contradictory and off-putting--he says and does whatever he feels like, with no apparent concern for other people's feelings. She develops a crush on him in spite of herself, though, and it isn't long before she starts to learn about his painful past (given away in the back cover copy) and begins trying to make sense of it. Nanami herself is a very ordinary girl, who doesn't fall into the traps of being either saccharine or clueless. She wants to make a lot of friends, but that's her understanding of how to get by in high school, rather than being a burning desire for popularity. She frequently assumes the best of the people around her, which may be why she finds Yano's sporadic unpleasantness so frustrating. As a heroine, she's accessible and fairly sympathetic, which I appreciate. This is the kind of story that requires a delicate touch to keep it from being either too predictable or too melodramatic, which is my only reservation about it right now; the stage is still being set in vol. 1, so I'm not making up my mind about the storytelling just yet. (Although, again, I'm biased towards it.) It's visually appealing: the artwork is wispy and fragile, and while the backgrounds are rarely very detailed, it mostly strikes me as an effective use of white space, keeping focus on the characters at all times. In other words: recommended, and I'm looking forward to volume 2. Review copy provided by VIZ Media. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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