Ichinoi’s life has been a little bit more quiet lately. At 75 she’s becoming a bit more delicate and it seems like the world is changing around her rather quickly all the time. As she wanders into a bookstore, discovering that they have rearranged everything since she was last in, she decides to pick up some manga for a change and accidentally ends up buying a BL manga. Utterly taken by it, Ichinoi returns to the store for more volumes and forms a friendship with the shy, high schooler Urara who works as a clerk at the store. Seemingly polar opposites, the two of them talk about stories and art and show that there’s no age limit when it comes to enjoying stories.
During my grandmother’s funerals a few years ago I was struck by the thought of how unfair it was that, as her grandchild, I never knew her when she was my own age and when we could have truly connected. One of my uncles read out a letter my grandmother had written to her mother-in-law, updating her on how raising her deceased husband’s seven children was going, and the letter was full of wit and humor I didn’t remember her having during my years. I felt like the universe had cheated me out of something great. Ichinoi and Urara aren’t related in any fashion, and Ichinoi is considerably younger than my grandmother was, but yet they get to create a great and fun relationship that I think many readers regardless of age would envy. While Urara is all awkward angles and sorting out just what life is, age has made Ichinoi more laid-back in her approach to life, although she still has her cynical moments. Easy-going and with an open personality, it makes perfect sense that creating a new relationship still seems to come easy to Ichnoi and that she wouldn’t hesitate to reach out to someone unlike her for advice on what BL series to buy next.
Ichinoi seems to be a very “modern” old woman in the sense that many of her moods and thoughts feel very relatable to me, a Millennial. She resolves that she’ll need to live even longer so that she’ll be able to read more volumes in the BL series she’s enjoying, she gets caught up in the excitement of the event she and Urara go to, and even makes some of the art from the BL series her phone background! It should be no surprise that the younger Urara also feels relatable in her awkwardness but I was actually delighted that she seems to have a good relationship with her mom (even if their schedules don’t always match) and that her male, childhood friend Tsumu just seems like a nice guy (like with how he discovers her BL stash, doesn’t think anything bad of it, and then plays it cool so Urara doesn’t realize his discovery and become embarrassed). With characters like these, the story has a nice, “laid-back” almost iyashikei feeling to it, almost like the laid-back relationship in the story Ichinoi and Urara bond over!
Reportedly BL Metamorphosis has only has a little left so it will probably be five or six volumes total which seems like a good length based on the current pacing. I hope the series won’t end on a sad note, like Ichinoi’s death, but instead a happy one like having Urara draw doujinshi of her own. Until that ending comes however, I’ll be coming back to enjoy my time as the invisible, third wheel to this friendship.