You know how in stories sometimes, a character will think about how to present themself in a given situation? Like, they’ll literally think about how they want to look, what they should say, and what kind of person they want the other person to think they are, and then they do that. I’ve also seen people do that in unscripted shows, too. Isn’t that crazy? I think it’s crazy. I’ve never once thought that, and I’m not sure I could process it. I don’t know how I come off to others in the first place, let alone know some other way I’d like people to see me. I’m a terrible actor, and acting as a different role, even if it’s just a different aspect of my real feelings and personality, would feel like lying. This kind of thinking is why I relate to Hime in Yuri Is My Job!
This week, I’m gonna talk about Even Though We’re Adults by Takako Shimura, a truly great yuri manga that I read through every once in a while, like right now, sometimes twice in a row. I love it so, so much! Quick overview for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. The story follows Okubo Ayano and Hirayama Akari after a brief but incredibly meaningful encounter sets them both down a road to the next stage of their lives. Ayano is a teacher and married, and her night with Akari is the first time she recognized and acted on feelings for another woman; Akari has been struggling to find anyone to settle down with after a series of messy relationships, and can’t get herself untangled from this seemingly doomed one no matter what she tries. It’s a wonderful adult yuri story, with our lovers in their mid-thirties.
Ayano is definitely my chick. She’s so relatable in every aspect. She’s a calming presence and looks very together on the outside, but in reality she’s a mess. Over the course of the series, we see her repeatedly come face to face with a big, powerful emotion, a necessary confrontation in her inner life, and avoid it by any means. It’s never anything dramatic, of course; she’s a low-drama woman. She has a habit of downplaying her emotions and insisting that the issue is actually something else, or that she needs to stay focused on something task-oriented. Whenever she does make decisions and they meet resistance, she resigns herself to her fate and decides there aren’t any real problems because she can make do. And honestly, she only ever makes big decisions or has emotional realizations because she has multiple of those in the fire and has to choose the least taxing one to tackle. Her struggle with her feelings is always to figure out what she can do about them in the first place. To quote a different manga, “Komi can’t communicate, but she can take action.” Ayano is a really quiet storm, but she’s still a whirlwind.
The most meaningful part of her story for me is how she interrogates her past relationships and feelings for women that she’s ignored. She’s initially surprised and left uncertain by her feelings for Akari, for as new as they feel. It’s the first time she’s felt (or acknowledged) her feelings for her husband wavering, and it’s for a woman. Now that these feelings are out in the open, there’s no ignoring them. The bond she forms with two of her students, Nagase and Nitta, further pushes her to work through her past. She’s had such a struggle coming to terms with her identity and emotions because she felt obligated to meet expectations. Even when facing the truth, she only knew how to recognize her feelings based on what society presented her with; if they seemed close enough to the “normal” thing, that’s what she called it, and ignored the other details. Going through life with those blinders, she was able to walk into a marriage that seemed happy enough at a time when she was getting too old to be single and put together a solid life. Seeing her now face the reality that there’s no foundation and struggle to piece together a new life is really great. It’s so relatable to find a character this seemingly intelligent and knowledgeable have such a hard time recognizing her own feelings and just try to make everyone happy, except herself.
Akari is relatable in other ways. She’s much more on top of her inner life, by comparison. Her and Ayano’s relationship being Akari’s most significant entanglement yet with a married or otherwise off the market woman, she’s coming to terms with why she keeps doing this to herself. Whenever something in the story happens to coincidentally bring the two of them closer, it’s always Akari by accident. It’s pretty funny to see her, seemingly a person who knows what she wants, get consistently pulled towards the thing she doesn’t want. It’s in the moments when she realizes “fate” is her own actions that she is able to fully face what her feelings are really telling her. I feel like there’s still a piece or two missing from seeing everything with Akari, by volume five; six comes out in June, and it seems like that could be the last one, though the sneak peek implies it’s not. But yeah, Akari presents as a fun mess, changing her work and/or home with every relationship, but she’s got a lot more figured out in life, and just has this last itch to scratch before she can move on to her next phase.
Probably the most interesting and dynamic aspect of their story is how both Ayano and Akari have a habit of calling their relationship insignificant and unimportant to the other when they’re apart, and then thinking it’s the most significant and powerful force they’ve encountered when they’re together. Ayano keeps trying to make do in her life and accept whatever happiness she has, so she can only talk down and brush aside her feelings for Akari by insisting that nothing much happened between them. Akari is trying her best to make a love she can be proud of, so while she’s wallowing that she can’t be with Ayano, she convinces herself that Ayano staying with her husband means she doesn’t care about her that much. Then, when they do see each other, Ayano is able to express how overwhelming and all-consuming her feelings for Akari are, and Akari can’t pretend Ayano isn’t everything she’s ever wanted in a lover. It’s a great driver in a romance story and feels very real.
The big draw for me is how understated the story is. The most significant moments are often very simple in composition and rely on more muted visual effects. There’s a lot of work being done by expression and dialogue. It also has some bold choices in pacing and space, like having entire pages be blacked out panels with internal monologue; each word on those pages is packed with so much significance. There’s also a lot about our character’s histories that aren’t directly stated or alluded to, which loads things with subtext; you get enough to know what’s happening and relate to the characters in the present, but not the whole picture. So it’s got all this great stuff I’ve been talking about, and then teases you with the outline of things in their lives we may never learn about. Gets your mind working hard.
I just have so much fun reading this book! Every time I do, I find myself reacting more powerfully to each moment. Like, the husband, Wataru, seemed at first like a not that bad dude who’s going about everything wrong, and now I hate his stupid little snake face so much, he’s such a piece of trash. I love having these big emotions to stories. In general, I have a habit of feeling happy and fun with whatever I like, rather than getting carried along with the mood of the story or music, because I love how good it is; so when I find things that I do get carried up with, it’s exhilarating and surprising. Even Though We’re Adults does that for me.
Weekly Thoughts 5/20/23
Life in the Gutters 