It’s hard to remember that Yurine Kurosawa was once a cool, distant classmate to her friends when you see how much she’s blossomed. Now she’s a blushy-crushy mess around Ayaka Shiramine in particular and doesn’t even want her to run for student council president because Yurine doesn’t want to share Ayaka anymore than she already does. Although these two may not know it, Ayaka is not the only one thinking of running for student council and the two of them also aren’t the only quasi-couple at the school dealing with the concept of emotional distance.
Volume 8 of Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl brings in a classic, romance-manga trope, although not one we’ve had in the story so far, the student council rivals! Hikari Torayama and Nagisa Tatsumi would both make good student council presidents but would have a hard time working together since they can’t stand being together for long periods of time. That might sound a bit like Yurine and Ayaka’s early relationship but Kiss & invokes an additional twist by having the two girls living together due to family situations, a secret from their classmates, so they already have to put up with each other at home! One issue I’ve had with some of the relationships in Kiss & is that the relationships seem to be “resolved” a little too quickly but with Hikari and Nagisa’s I could buy into the idea that the two tsunderes had actually had ample time to sort through their feelings, especially once the election is over, and just needed a push to put everything into place.
Following that trend, volume 9 focused on another couple with a history and one I was excited to read about since they were two cosplayers!
Unfortunately this one fell flat for me. Mikaze Hagimoto and Asuka Sakurada’s relationship starts with their breakup before then going back to how they met and I just never felt like I really got to understand and know the characters. I do understand Mikaze’s initial set-up, that she feels awkward around her new classmates since she ended up being held back a year (because of sick days) and my impression was that her relationship with Asuka was, at first anyway, supposed to be a casual way to pass the time with someone who also already cosplayed. I felt like we didn’t see enough of Mikaze’s changing feelings however for me to buy into her conflicted feelings over staying together or breaking up as their graduation approached, I felt like we just needed more time.
Asuka’s feelings are more of a straight-up crush through and through so I was able to buy into her giddy feelings of getting close to someone she liked and her combination of disappointment and acceptance when it didn’t seem to work out long term. But when I started this volume I thought okay, so we’ve only had one failed relationship in the entire series so far, Chiharu Kusakabe’s unreciprocated crush on Maya Hoshino in volume two, but even that lead to Chiharu’s relationship with Izumi Akizuki later in the same volume, so I doubt this is going to be another non-relationship and in the end I was right! Putting the breakup at the beginning of the story just didn’t work but that was far from the only part of this story which felt half-baked to me.
There is only one volume left in the Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl series and, considering how much Yurine and Ayaka’s relationship has progressed I’m sure it’ll nail the landing. It would be nice if the series is able to touch base with the other couples as well but I’m not getting my hopes up that the story can fit in 9+ different relationships in one volume!