Rai: I’ve read a lot of yuri manga. Like, a lot. And while the increasing number of girls love manga is amazing for a hardcore fan like me, it’s becoming harder and harder to find yuri series that are completely original.
Unfortunately, Our Wonderful Days by Kei Hamuro falls into this category. I’m not saying it’s bad per se. It’s actually really cute and sweet. But to put it bluntly, it doesn’t consist of anything I haven’t seen before.
This manga is about a group of high school friends. The main characters are Koharu, a bubbly, carefree girl, and Mafuyu, a reserved but smart-mouthed girl. These two were very good friends in elementary school until Mafuyu moved away. Now they are back together in the same school and their friendship is starting to rekindle. See? Not the most unique premise. Besides Haru and Mafuyu, there are two other characters named Nana and Minori who have their own close relationship.
It’s basically a slice of life story following the girls’ daily routines as they go to school and hang out. There are after school activities, visits to each other’s houses, and everyday conversations between the characters. As for the shoujo ai aspect, we get very subtle hints that Mafuyu has a crush on Koharu, but it’s never explicitly stated.
I love slice of life – it’s one of my favorite genres. I have probably consumed more of it in the past few years than most people will watch in their life. However, there wasn’t anything in Our Wonderful Days that really makes it stand out as a slice of life series. It doesn’t provide anything new because the premise is so… simple.
That being said, I like the characters’ dynamics. My favorite is Nana. She is the comic relief, not-so-reliable type, but there’s something about her that makes me laugh. Maybe it’s because she reminds me of a certain someone (*cough* my fiancé). On the other hand, I really relate to Mafuyu. She is quiet and doesn’t know how to deal with people who are very extroverted. But once she is comfortable, she’s sarcastic and even a little savage at times. Nana’s and Mafuyu’s Funny Man/Straight Man interactions are quite humorous.
Even with likeable characters, Our Wonderful Days was still lacking in one category besides originality: yuri. There are undertones like I mentioned; it’s just some are so subtle that you could miss them if you aren’t wearing your yuri googles. To make it worse, it’s extremely slow. Not everything needs to be overtly gay, like Citrus for example, but I was expecting the girls love to be stronger, based on the description. Mafuyu’s crush on Koharu does gradually become more apparent as things go on, but the romantic elements (if you could even call it that) don’t really pick up until toward the very end of the first volume.
Admittedly, Koharu’s and Mafuyu’s prospective relationship is cute. I think they’d make a great couple. Some parts even made me say “Aww” under my breath. Nana and Minori look like they might have something going on as well. They’re living in the same apartment, and Minori already acts like Nana’s wife. I want to see where this is headed. I just hope the next volume adds some more pizzazz and moves things along more quickly.
Rai’s rating: 3 out of 5
Helen: Koharu and Mafuyu live in a self-described “sleepy-town”, but that’s not the only thing that’s sleepy about Our Wonderful Days.
Mafuyu is an old childhood friend of Koharu’s, recently reunited by moving back from Tokyo, and the two of them along with two of Koharu’s other friends, Minori and Nana, have just entered high school and explore how it’s changed their lives.
Minori and Nana lived in an even more rural area so some of the fun in the story is seeing them get to try things out for the first time, like grabbing food at a convenience store after school, but these situations almost always turn into a gag when Mafuyu says something mean about it. Mafuyu is blunt past the point of rudeness all the time and frankly that’s her only character trait…though the other girls aren’t much better with their own one-trait personalities.
This is a quiet story but not in an iyashikei kind of way, it’s quiet in a nothing ever happens kind of way. You would think that a story with such a small cast would be able to spend more time developing the characters but it really doesn’t. We know that Minori and Nana live together in an apartment to avoid having a long commute to school (and already act like a couple so you’ll know they’re getting together), that Mafuyu gets a bit jealous when she’s not the center of Koharu’s attention, and that Koharu is rather spacey (but surprisingly good in academics) but that’s it. Koharu’s character design kept reminding me of Yamada from the Kase-san and series and frankly, if a reader wants a quiet, slow-paced yuri then Hiromi Takashima’s work does a much better job at making the readers invested in the characters (although there is also a bit more drama than has been seen so far in Our Wonderful Days).
While the story doesn’t make any major missteps, it also seems to have no ambitions or plans for the characters and all but the most yuri-obsessed readers would be better off giving some of Seven Seas other series a shot instead.
Helen’s rating: 2 out of 5