Reviews in Brief: Hinako Takanaga's Little Butterfly

In spite of the frothy quality of the title, Hinako Takanaga's Little Butterfly wound up having much more to it than I expected. After passing over it for months, I finally picked up a copy based on the strength of her You Will Fall in Love, and I wasn't disappointed.

Kojima is an outgoing, upbeat high-school senior who decides to make friends with the quiet, withdrawn Nakahara. Nakahara's reserve is not just shyness: he is, when we get to know him, desperately unhappy due to a terrible home life. Kojima's breakthrough comes on a school trip to the seacoast, when he becomes entangled in Nakahara's attempt to run away to Korea, just a short ship ride away. The runaway attempt proves abortive, but Kojima proclaims that the two are now friends -- an idea that actually shocks Nakahara. Soon after, Nakahara confesses his love, which throws Kojima into total confusion: he likes Nakahara, and realizes he has been drawn to him for quite a while, but he's not sure if those feelings translate into "love."

Takanaga, based on this volume and You Will Fall in Love, has a knack for portraying the intensity, awkwardness, and insecurity of youth. It's deceptive work -- as I realized with You Will Fall, it grows on you as you begin to tie graphics, dialogue, and narration together and realize how much rests on those connections between the elements.

In Little Butterfly, Takanaga's portrayals are particularly apt: these are kids, fifteen years old, and while Nakahara is "experienced" (he's "done it" before, but confesses it wasn't a particularly happy experience), he's really no more self-confident than Kojima when it comes to the emotional side of their relationship. He is, however, steadfast in his affections.

What pulls this one out of the realm of the sentimental and "light" is the story Nakahara tells of the butterfly blown over the ocean to a strange land, where it flourishes: at the beginning of the story, that's his dream and his goal, but it changes as his relationship with Kojima deepens.

This is another one in which the cover art doesn't do the interior graphics justice: interior art is much more sensitive and expressive than one would believe from the cover.

It's hard in this case to know what the next volume is going to be about -- this one can easily stand alone. But I'm looking forward to finding out.

This is another from Juné.