Genre: Seinen

Age Rating: Older Teen (16+)

Price:  $23.99

From the Publisher:

Kayako Kirishima and Masami Endo are about to discover that their recent friendship is turning into obsessive love. But when today's hopes and yesterday's dreams meet tomorrow's problems, will they be able to continue? With clear outline and confused feelings, Kiriko Nananan demonstrates that it is possible to make a Blue manga from black and white.

In an earlier review, I was pretty harsh on the first volume of S.S. Astro, a seinen-ish manga from Yen Press with lesbian, or yuri, elements. In part, my criticism and disappointment were the result of having just read Kiriko Nananan's Blue. Complex, subtle character interaction and wonderful art make this single volume tale of a delicate, aching love between high school girls stand out far and above most any manga out there.

Nananan's linework is bold and stark, pushing all her visuals into a high watt sheen that makes her characters appear to be under a spotlight. This does wash out much of their features, but at the same time dramatizes nearly every flinch of emotion on her young character's faces. It's an odd contrast, and, because every character in the book is a teenaged woman in school uniform, the distinctions between each is subtle, sometimes maddening.

However, in the assured hands of Ms. Nananan, this purposeful eliding of her character's identities slows the reader down, forces you to focus on even the most minute of details, like each fragile, tenuous emotion of these young women is held up for inspection, and even the slightest of gestures takes on the larger, pregnant implications of two teenagers on the verge of love.

I want to go on and on about this work, this single volume of brilliance, but instead I'll leave it to you to discover what a great book Blue is and what a phenomenal talent Kiriko Nananan is.

PS--I want to especially note the wonderful translation by the folks at Ponent Mon. I have this in the original Japanese (which I can't read, but I got it after having read a story by Ms. Nananan in the fantastic but sadly out of print Sake Jock), and I almost didn't get it in English because I mostly wanted it for the art. But I'm so glad I did. Ponent Mon's translators have such a wonderful way of expressing their author's words, some of their Manga is worth getting just for the prose (I'm particularly thinking of Kan Takahama's Kinderbook).

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