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I dunno, some of the ideas here /did/ speak to me as metaphors: a group of women struggling in isolation in a lonely and desolate place, trying (possibly in vain) to find their way toward others, toward lives, toward familiarity; and most burning out and settling for strained comfort and predictability—even given the emptiness of this existence for them—pretty Real, yea?

But then… i dunno, it's also weirdly reactionary, too. Women finding love with one-another is always a half-measure substitute for men, none of them are canonically gay; women can't be beautiful for themselves, and beauty is thought useless without men; etc. It feels as though these women's lives are nothing without men, which… i dunno, for straight women, there must be a genuine truth there! It /must/ be lonesome to wander, looking in vain for compassionate men who can meet you at your level, knowing you may never find them. I /do/ see a place for this. But it didn't always feel great as a queer person reading this. I also found the narrator's motivations kind of mysterious at times; i thought her decisions could feel inconsistent… i dunno. There's also this bit about how she may have uterine cancer, but maybe she wouldn't have had it if she had been able to get pregnant in her lifetime? What? I think i can read a metaphor there (that for a woman who wants a family with a genuine partner, not having one hurts her deep down, creates a rot in her), but it's also one of those… i dunno, kind of frustratingly ableist metaphors, given our social context, in which a life without children (especially for those able to bear children) is thought a half-lived life, a waste, selfish and useless, or whatever; and thus this rot could also be read in this light. Just… lots of little things like this that ate at me, and… i dunno, it's possible that if i thought about it more, i'd unearth more, but… i don't think it drew me in enough to /want/ to spend more time thinking on it, especially with these bits that rubbed me the wrong way.

For me: it was Fine, but that's about all.

So… i guess i'm just going to go for it.

I think often of writing reviews here, but i stop short because i want to plan them out, take my time, and write them up carefully… and as a result of wanting to write them perfectly, i never end up writing them at all. So… i'll give this a try.

I think that, for the most part, this is a really maturely and delicately handled work. In case you've not read the book description, "If I Could Reach You" is about a high school girl, Uta, who is in love with her older brother Reiichi's wife, Kaoru. Oh, and she also lives with the both of them. So.

I've read a smattering of manga over the years, and… i've definitely read stories with a premise like this one that basically end up bringing the underage girl together with the adult woman in an… uncomplicated way. I wasn't sure if that was where this was going to go. Fortunately for the work, it did not.

What really captured me about this story /is/ the sensitivity that's largely on display here. I think that feelings between minors and adults are a /very/ difficult subject to tackle well, and must be approached with a deft hand. I think that this /mostly/ clears this bar. At the very least, i think it approaches the challenges earnestly.

Uta's feelings for Kaoru are… challenging, obviously. She's in love with an older woman who sees her as a younger sister, and for a large chunk of the work is in limbo as a result. Does she confess, knowing how weird that would be, and risk ruining the close relationship they share? Or does she hold her feelings in, and continue to hope that they'll pass, so that she can go back to that blissful time before she realised her feelings, when things were simple? In time, she realises that she /needs/ to confess, for the sake of her own heart, even as it makes her feel awful. She does so, and that does, indeed, upend everything. How could it not?

But… i think what really drew me into this story was Kaoru. I relate to Kaoru to an embarrassing degree. Kaoru leans on Uta, and has done since they were both children (i would guess that they're probably about five years apart in age, or so). But she doesn't do so unknowingly. In fact, there are a few people in her life that she leans on, but she tries /desperately/ not to do so (ughhhhh it's me). Leaning on them brings her deep feelings of shame (me again), /especially/ in the case of Uta who, more than probably anyone else, should not be asked to support someone that much older than her. I mean, can you imagine being 22 and leaning on a 17-year-old for support? That would make me feel all kinds of deep shame.

And i think that's really where the heart of this story is, for me: Uta's in love with Kaoru, but… it feels pretty apparent to me that this feeling Uta has is pretty deeply tied to the obligation she feels toward Kaoru. That is, Kaoru is a wounded puppy, and everyone around her (including Kaoru!) can see this. So… where is that line between loving a wounded puppy and romantic love? Is there a line? Can one become the other? /Should/ one become the other? How can Uta sift through those feelings, and, more importantly, how should /Kaoru/ handle them, so as to help Uta to mature healthily?

Unfortunately (just as in life), Kaoru's really not up to the task. Even knowing Uta's feelings, and knowing that she should handle them as an adult, that she should clear the air, be firm with Uta, and cut things off flatly… she doesn't. Because she's needy. So she keeps leaning on Uta. She keeps trying to usher Uta back into being a little sister, keeps needing her emotional support, even knowing that it's not fair of her, not right of her to seek those things.

This is where i really relate to Kaoru, because this is a feeling i know all too well. Not in the "a minor is in love with me" sense, thank goodness, but in the "i lean on others too heavily, hate myself for it, and continue to do it even when it feels so unfair that every fiber of my being is screaming." I hate this part of myself so deeply that it's difficult to express.

So… i found a lot to meditate on here.

I liked a lot of this.

So, my skills with handling my own and others' emotions are… embarrassingly bad. I think a lot of the appeal that anime and manga have for me are in watching people work through their feelings consciously, narratively. It was helpful to me to read this work (melodrama and all) and think on my own feelings, my own maturity (or lack thereof), my own good and bad decisions, my own weaknesses.

That said, there were bits i didn't really care for.

The more minor one was about some side characters who started dating. Not a big fan of their relationship. One cares for the other, and that other… i dunno, seems to kind of take it all for granted, on the one hand; and on the other feels sort of ace? But the text of the story has them come closer together over time, and… i dunno, it's inexplicable, to me.

But the major issue i have is with the ending.

So, what feels like the end of the text is this: Kaoru decides to divorce her husband (which feels like a mature decision for them both!), and starts living on her own, trying to find her feet. Thumbs up there, that's great! Separation and processing one's feelings is… really healthy sometimes! On the other hand, Uta looks back more happily on her time with Kaoru, and is glad that she had those feelings and glad that she confessed them, despite the pain of it all: the pain her feelings caused, and the pain Kaoru inflicted upon her by trying to, essentially, box her in and (generally, i think, unwittingly) take advantage of her. I dunno, growing up is hard, it's weird, and… i dunno, i, too, have mixed feelings about people i loved, people that had power over me and hurt me deeply. It's muddy and hard, but sometimes you come through feeling okay about it on the whole, in the end. Fair enough. Growing up is Hard. She also decides to hold on to her unrequited feelings and love Kaoru from afar, and show it by trying to watch over her. Also kind of fair. There are people i was deeply in love with, that i had painful relationships with (though not in this way, but, still, i could understand someone feeling this way), and i, too, still love them, and would help them if they ever needed it. I, too, tend to hang on to my feelings well after most people would be able to let them go, because… i'm just not built like that, for better or worse.

But… the actual ending: we flash forward a few years, and… Uta and Kaoru are living together, and even start dating.

::sigh::

This is such a disappointing ending. Honestly, it feels maybe it's a concession to the fans? "We want them to be together!" "Okay, fine, here it is, in like ten pages, they're together after Uta's an adult, okay?"

I guess… i guess that, like, the should-have-been ending is driving at both of them growing up. Holding dearly onto a time they once shared, when they were swimming in different feelings, but both were feelings of love of a kind… but now they both need to grow up. Uta begins to realise that the kind of love she had was suffocating her, and maybe she'll begin to find something more free as she begins truly to learn about romantic love; and Kaoru begins to feel that she can grow past that poisonous weakness she feels inside of her. Maybe she can finally grow up, herself, and, if not stand on her own two feet, at least find a way to exist in life that she can feel more proud of. She can learn to be honest with herself about her strengths and weaknesses, and find a stronger way to move through the world (you know, rather than leaning on a child's unrequited love in order to survive).

But then it just undermines all of that so that we can see them kiss.

I dunno, the generous reading is that, you know, we skipped five years or more, so maybe they've both grown, healed, and now maybe it's okay for them to get together? But even then, i dunno. Those wounds are still there, that history doesn't get erased… i just don't love the sudden jolt to this alternate reality. It doesn't flow from what they've started to learn, i think.

So, yeah! There was a lot here that was resonant (watching an indecisive adult badly handle difficult feelings and take /absolutely forever/ to make sense of, like, emotions that most folks would probably consider pretty basic '-_-), and i really do get a lot out of watching people pick through thorny, difficult, sometimes taboo feelings (because, i dunno, that's where life happens: in the Hard parts). I just… wish it stuck to its guns in the end.

But, you know, engagement welcome, too! I suck at art, so… i'd love to hear if others see things differently!