*Thank you to the publisher, Kodansha, and to NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC of this in exchange for an honest review!*
This was my first foray into manga after years of not reading it, and the more I read of this volume, the more I loved it. This story is a slice-of-life shoujo manga that follows our main character, Midori, as she unwittingly gets involved in the life of three boys at her high school, eventually becoming friends and maybe falling for one of them.
Midori's character was a really interesting shoujo heroine: she is the eldest daughter of a woman who became a single mum after the family father abandoned her, her daughter and her little son. Between the three of them they make do: the youngest son is in charge of cooking, and between the mother's full-time night shifts and Midori's part-time salary, they manage. Midori had gone through her own share of hardships, and this had made her a kinder person. I loved the way she was not naive or dumb just for the sake of being cute or sweet. She was perceptive, yet gentle, and she had the emotional struggles of a teen. When we see her develop feelings for one of the love interests, she can't identify them as romantic feelings immediately. I really liked this, as it felt very natural, and not at all like insta-love, which shoujo manga tends to fall into. Midori's relationships with the boys she meets start as friendship first of all, in a very platonic, everyday, school-classmate way. It's so nice to read how that evolves, over the course of the volume, into something that she finally starts recognising as romantic attraction. But this takes its time, and it's only at the end of the volume that it happens! It's nice to see a comic that takes its time building the connections between characters.
The boys were all very charming and nice people, all in their different ways. Their characterisation sometimes veered towards archetypal (especially Chihiro's), but it didn't fully fall into manga-love-interest stereotypes, and I ended up really loving them all for different things. The addition of a dog into the group was truly adorable as well.
Additionally, the adults (Midori's mum, the chairman of her high school, her work boss...) tend to be kind people, a refreshing take. I was ready for all the kids to not like their elders, because that's what edgy teens do... but not really. Even the three boys, who are textbook-edgy, have a very good relationship with Miyuki, the boss at the restaurant that Midori works at. We don't see a lot of complexity from them yet, partly because they have a pretty secondary role and partly because most of the story is told from our heroine's point of view. However, we are shown that there's more to them than we know just yet, so I'm looking forward to seeing them in future volumes.
And the art... my goodness, the art was beautiful. The use of screentones (halftone dots, shading) was masterful and it created a really tangible sense of atmosphere and setting. The technique really was at the service of the story, and it made intimate moments feel magical, delicate, and almost otherworldly. The lineart was also really soft and delicate: lovely hair is almost a guarantee with any shoujo manga, but on top of that, the facial and bodily expressions were so well-realised that they really conveyed the personality of each character.
I enjoyed the second half of the volume a lot more than the first one, where we dwell on the introductory details a little too long. At the same time, I recognise that it was a requirement to spend time developing the friendship between Midori and the three boys, and all the buildup started paying off in the second half. We were also left with some open ends and an understated but very interesting cliffhanger at the very end of the volume, which cemented my need to read the second instalment of this! I truly thought this would be a basic 3-star shoujo manga with more style than substance, but the characters and the handling of the plot were so well-done that they bumped my rating to 4-stars. Bravo, Yoko Nogiri! Really excited to read the next one and get back into manga.