Rai: Despite its premise, Strawberry Fields Once Again isn’t some crazy sci-fi manga. It’s also not a gaming manga that focuses on a virtual world or playing tactics. Instead, the manga tells the story of two girls getting to know each other and possibly falling in love. Yet, it still managed to be very refreshing. So, what is the premise exactly?
To sum it up, Akira is a loner who’d rather play otome games and dating sims than interact with people in real life. She has no friends, and swears she’ll never have a romantic relationship. That is, until one day when a beautiful girl named Pure shows up. This strange girl isn’t just friendly toward Akira – she claims she is from the future, where Akira and her are an engaged couple! Pure tries to befriend Akira, who is understandably hesitant and weirded out. Slowly yet surely, the two become closer.
The time travel theme reminded me of another series I read recently: I’m in Love with the Villainess. In that series, the main character gets transported into her favorite video game and pursues her love interest, the game’s antagonist. The main character knows everything about the villainess’ life, and more or less stalks her.
Pure knows everything about Akira since they’re supposedly engaged in the future, and she too pursues Akira. However, unlike in Villainess, Pure’s feelings seem sincere, not obsessive. She shows emotional maturity and actually cares about Akira without being overbearing or making Akira uncomfortable. Admittedly, her behavior in the beginning is a little questionable, but she makes up for it by being a genuinely caring person. In other words, although the two series have kind of similar premises, I feel that Strawberry Fields handled things much better.
Out of the two girls, Pure is much more outgoing and is not afraid to show her emotions. Akira is the opposite: introverted and standoffish. I personally related a lot to Akira. She’s reserved, has trouble communicating with others, and uses video games as a form of escape. I’ve never sworn off “3D romance” the way she did, but I have played my 3DS or Switch in public places to avoid talking to people. I always relate to outcast characters as well because I wasn’t exactly popular in school.
Although the archetype has been used before in other series, I thought Akira’s and Pure’s dynamic was fun. Pure is a clumsy crybaby (without being too exaggerated), and she has redeeming qualities like I mentioned earlier. She’s able to find cracks in Akira’s barrier with her kindness, but Akira can bring Pure right back down to Earth with her blunt attitude. A lot of these shenanigans happens throughout the manga, creating cute comedy moments. However, the story isn’t just their banter with each other. There’s substantial character development that is well- thought out and well-paced.
The audience learns why Akira likes dating games so much and why she claims she’ll never have a relationship. Pure is more of a mystery since less is revealed about her, but we’re still able to see how much she cares about Akira. Speaking of mysteries, by the end of Volume 1, we still don’t know how Pure traveled back in time or how long she plans to stay. And the most important question is not answered: is she really from the future? Is she telling the truth? If so, I’m very curious to know about their future together. To make the anticipation greater, first volume ended on a cliffhanger, and I need to see what happens. The mangaka did a great job of hooking me in.
Strawberry Fields Once Again is a simple, different, and enjoyable yuri manga. Out of the massive amount of yuri I’ve read, I don’t think I’ve ever read one with time travel elements (if I’m not mistaken), so that was a nice twist. But mostly, I enjoyed the characters’ personality and relationship along with the overall plot and development. I was smiling the whole time I read it. Other yuri fans probably will too!
Rai’s rating: 4 out of 5
Justin: Akira Kouno is heavily into otome games, to the point where she’s not only swearing off 3D romance, but in socializing much with anyone in her class. But one day out of the blue, a beautiful girl in her same high school uniform named Pure Sakurasaka claims she’s Akira’s future amore, a.k.a. lover. Akira can only recoil as Pure wades into her life, explains that she’s come from seven years in the future, and that she wants to make Akira’s wish come true — whatever that wish is!
But after the seemingly baffling situation, she does manage to shake that off a touch and be someone Akira can rely on, but will that be enough to change Akira’s mindset on falling into a 3D romance?
For this first volume, Strawberry Fields Once Again mostly relies on humor — from Pure’s face whenever she does something embarrassing or gets upset to Akira chiding Pure whenever she does anything remotely possessive — than exploring the relationship between these two girls. It’s not a big problem; it’s more like it gets brought up as a concern, but overall it shouldn’t matter as long as they love each other. That obviously is the main focus, as Akira, with what happened to her family, chose to shut out falling in love for good, but this is expected to change since Pure says she’s come from the future and is already married to Akira.
This obviously brings up the questions as to why we even have this time-travel situation in the first place, which this volume goes out of its way to never answer. We can only speculate as to the reasons why, and also assume this will be answered before the manga ends (it’s a three-volume series). Now normally this type of information-holding isn’t a problem as long as the journey getting there is fine and the story gives us enough to start making guesses ourselves.
But in this manga, it’s not in any way fun or interesting. Now I go back to the humor, which most of this volume is comprised of, and it’s just simply poor. The expressions are there, but these jokes are pretty dry. It tries to make some otome game jokes, continues to exhibit how opposites Pure and Akira are (Pure really loves eating meat, and they give her a whole bunch of steak that she must eat in 10 minutes!), and for about 80% of this read, none really made me laugh. A few might’ve been amusing, but overall it’s largely unmemorable. Even the random spin-off (the translator’s notes mention what it’s being based off) comic was pretty forgettable.
It’s unfortunate, since this was very much a manga I was looking forward to reading. Kazura Kinosaki’s work on the manga version of Can Someone Please Explain What’s Going On?! was super fun, and generally speaking, Pure’s past has to be something unfortunate for her to just decide to go to the past simply because of her future’s wife’s wish. Akira’s family situation is one that was the most intriguing part of the manga, and how this volume ended means something should happen real soon. But overall, there’s a good amount of yuri manga on the market, and there’s no need to rush to check this one out.
Justin’s rating: 2.5 out of 5