MyAnimeList.net

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata
The Summer You Were There
Edit

What would you like to edit?

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata

Add to My List

Add to Favorites

Alternative Titles

Japanese: 君と綴るうたかた

Information

Type: Manga

Volumes: 6

Chapters: 32

Status: Finished

Published: May 18, 2020 to Jan 18, 2024

Genre: Girls Love

Theme: School

Serialization: Comic Yuri Hime

Authors: Yuama (Story & Art)

Statistics

Score: 8.61¹ (scored by 7,242 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #95²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #958

Members: 20,354

Favorites: 978

Resources

Write a Review
Reviews

Filtered Results: 16 / 17

Sort

Suggested
Most voted
Newest
Oldest

Filter Preliminary Spoiler

Jan 23, 2024

1mdm

Recommended

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata, or The Summer You Were There, is the sort of manga you approach expecting full well to be sad, and it still manages to leave you utterly devastated by the end. It’s the sort of manga where you earnestly hope for the happiness of all involved, though, deep down, you realise that seldom is reality so simple. It’s a manga where turning to the next page transforms into a daunting task, with each chapter feeling like another step towards an unavoidable conclusion.
If I stay here, on this page, time stands still. If I stay here, on this page, the inevitable will ...

Jan 28, 2024

SteveExplorer

Recommended

The very first thing I feel the need to tell you is that this manga is utterly devastating. It most certainly will leave you feeling empty, sad or overwhelmed so read it at your own discretion.

With that out of the way, let me start explaining why you SHOULD read this. Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata is a manga written and illustrated by Yuama. It tells the story of Hoshikawa Shizuku, a girl who has abandoned her future and how she comes across a girl as bright as the sun to light her path. It presents itself in a particularly enthralling way. Both of the characters are ... shrouded in mystery, yet the end result of their relationship is already revealed at the start. Rather than following a traditional storyline of introducing the obstacles after the characters, it instead raises all of the questions beforehand and leaves the job of answering them to the story along the way. Because of this, the story may feel lethargic at the beginning but don't leave just yet. It only gets better and better as it goes on. By letting us learn about the characters little by little, Yuama slowly lets us form a strong emotional connection with them. Dialogue and the interactions between the characters are written to be as effective as possible at connecting with our souls. Everything that happens in this story are things we experience in our own lives. It’s naturally less difficult for us to feel empathy for things we can relate to. Of course, achieving all this is far easier said than done. Yuama has done a magnificent job creating this manga and it clearly shows that she cares about it as much as we do, if not even more. With the way she develops the story, the conclusion still leaves you completely devastated even if you know fully well what is going to happen.

Given the nature of the manga, it has an extremely sharp sense of time. The title of the manga itself strictly sets summer as the time limit of the story and the unfolding events constantly remind the readers that it is coming to an end. Due to this, there's no room left for dilly-dallying and it gets straight to the point. What meaning Shizuku and Kaori obtain through being by each other's side is wholeheartedly explored with no distractions. Even though their relationship wouldn't last, the present is more important to them than the foreseeable future. Maybe the main takeaway here is that the significance of something doesn't lie in how long it stays for and instead what you found for yourself by embracing it.

I think not enough people bring the art up and I will not stand for it. It may be true that it's eclipsed by the compelling story but Yuama is undoubtedly an amazing artist. I almost feel spoiled by how good her art is. Great art can and will elevate a manga in ways words can’t. It’s hard to accurately describe it since it’s highly subjective but I think my favorite part of her art is how she draws facial expressions. Rage, sadness, distress, confusion, acceptance, joy and loneliness. You can feel it all right through the screen. Her way of structuring the panels does a great service conveying those raw emotions. I also find the character design of Shizuku to be a very memorable one. I'm sure many people other than myself will find themselves relating to her.

In the end, we are all treading along with our own words and feelings. By doing so, we continue to share our ideas and thoughts however worthless they might be. Maybe not every story is worth telling. However, the story of these two girls was one absolutely worth being told. You should definitely read this manga and think about its meaning for yourself. And if you have, please do read the story from start to finish one more time to catch anything you may have missed. I promise it'll be worth it.

Alas, I end this review by quoting Asaka Kaori.
“Every good story has an ending! It would be a shame otherwise!”

Jan 21, 2024

ZNoteTaku

Recommended

Well-written

Preliminary (32/32 chp)

*The Summer You Were There* is a story about a single, prolonged cry into the literary night that came dangerously close to getting lost in the wind. Hoshikawa Shizuku was the author of that cry, but shortly after having completed her first novel, she cannot bear the thought of it staying online anymore once it gets exposed. Perhaps even egged on (albeit unintentionally) by the online commenters that are baffled by the novel’s content and can only respond the way commenters sometimes do on sites of that nature, she deletes a year’s worth of work and seeks to discard the manuscript. Her apprehension is the ... result of a brutal, crippling self-loathing, the sense that she is simply better off completely isolated and forming no connection with anyone. With a heart and disposition as brittle as hers, there’s dramatic logic to this. It’s not just that stories serve as the bridge between understanding feelings, but that for Shizuku, the thought that the story could potentially bridge the gap between someone else’s heart and her own heart is something that cannot be allowed to happen.

She’s in for a rude awakening, clothed in a sunny disposition from her next-door seat neighbor. Dropping the manuscript on the street, Shizuku gets what seems like the worst twist of misfortune as Asaka Kaori quickly scrounges it up and takes it home to read for herself. Expecting the worst, Shizuku prepares to confront Kaori and say that it’s okay if she throws it away. But Kaori has the complete opposite reaction, fawning over the novel and asking what Shizuku’s next one is going to be. But Shizuku’s cry in the night was meant to be final, as she doesn’t plan to make anything else. Kaori, finding the notion unthinkable, thinks that Shizuku’s next novel should be in a happier direction, so she proposes an idea – to pretend to go out so she can understand making a story like that.

Both in its title and as the end of the first chapter so signifies, *The Summer You Were There* is operating on a clock that’s counting down quickly. Because time of the essence, it gives the story an acceleration that avoids a lot of unnecessarily-frilly extras to cloud the plot and pussyfoot around. Yet even in the short time given, it manages to put to the page just how aware of Shizuku Kaori truly is – Shizuku’s story was, in essence, her baring her soul before an unknown audience, but the manga wrestles with the idea of what happens when the unknown audience becomes the known. It is not like Annie Wilkes in Stephen King’s *Misery*, that of an obsessed fan whose fascination and complex about the work or the author begins a spiral of effectively horrifying brutality; Kaori, perhaps in almost too saintly a fashion, does not have any ill will within her.

And it is precisely because of that metaphorical glow that Kaori has the ability to so get under Shizuku’s skin, but without pushing her away. There’s always a question of to what degree of interference, passive or active, is needed in order to get someone to open themselves up when there’s a part of them that they’ve shut away. No matter how begrudgingly it ends up coming to pass, the time they spend together increases, and Shizuku’s confusion about what Kaori is trying to do builds to the point where Shizuku makes her ultimate confession about where her self-loathing comes from. Both in telling her published story to Kaori (as an unknown reader) and her own real-life story to Kaori (as pseudo-girlfriend), it completes the soul-baring that Shizuku thought she had finished when she published her last chapter and deleted her novel.

In reality, the novel Shizuku published online is only a small taste of what actually laid beneath. Through Kaori’s devoted persistence, she offers Shizuku a chance to at long last say or do what she has needed all along: reconciling and being candid about her own regrets. While girls’ love may be the vehicle that gets it all moving (it happened to be the subject of Shizuku’s novel, too), it’s not really about girls’ love specifically. Rather, it uses girls’ love as a character study through confession rather than playing itself as a "straight"forward romance. Every dialogue and conversation between Shizuku and Kaori is centered around Shizuku’s own personal redemption, not necessarily of what she did (though it does take that route), but because of what she did ultimately did to herself.

Though Shizuku is the main character, Kaori’s own heart has its share of woes and worries. It is only fair that the girl that insisted upon Shizuku’s honesty likewise be honest herself, even if it comes at times that she doesn’t want it to be so. *The Summer You Were There* manages to pull some of its most brutal punches not through what specifically happens in the plot event-wise, but rather in some of the character interactions that generate directly because of it. A normally innocuous comment gets reframed as being unintentionally insulting, even if everyone involved knows that no offense was meant. Much of the actual drama itself is telegraphed rather blatantly, but due to its trajectory of Shizuku and Kaori transforming before our eyes piece-by-piece, it smooths out any rougher edges the narrative might offer.

*The Summer You Were There* began as a story about a single, prolonged cry into the literary night that came dangerously close to getting lost in the wind. It was pained, wounded, and rough-edged. But it took one single arm and hand reaching out to caress that cry until it could finally begin the long, arduous, and necessary healing. It’s entirely possible that in the midst of sadness, you’re convinced that no one cares, or that no one hears. I cannot be the judge of that, and you know yourself better than I.

But a voice or person that offers you help is worth believing in, I think.

Feb 28, 2024

Firechick12012

Recommended

Man, it seems like the yuri/shoujo-ai genre is going through some kind of renaissance, what with so many of those titles being ported to the US, and several of them actually managing to range from good to amazing. I don't typically find myself reading a lot of yuri or shoujo-ai manga, more due to lack of time and lack of interest in romance in general, but these past few years I read some really good ones, such as Goodbye My Rose Garden and Yume no Hashibashi, not to mention all the ones that are much more frank about exploring LGBT themes. I do plan on ... reading A Tropical Fish Yearns For Snow at some point because I hear that one's really good, but I don't know when that'll be. On that note, I hadn't initially planned on reading The Summer You Were There because its premise made it seem like it was going to be an archetypal romantic comedy, but I wound up discovering through TVTropes that it's actually a tear-jerking drama on par with something like Your Lie In April and I Want To Eat Your Pancreas. I mention those two titles specifically because of certain plot developments that form the backbone of The Summer You Were There, and while I do genuinely like this manga, much more than I thought I would, there are some things holding it back from true greatness in my eyes.

Silver-haired high school girl Shizuku Hoshikawa is completely dead inside. She is burdened with guilt over an incident she caused years ago, and although she loses herself in writing her own self-made novels, even that no longer brings her any joy. When summer break starts, Shizuku had initially planned on throwing away her novel and ending it all. As she's about to do so, a popular classmate, Kaori Asaka, picks her novel out of the trash, took it home to read, and showers Shizuku with praise the next day, asking if she'll write more stories, as she's a huge fan of her work. When Shizuku tells her she has no plans on writing anymore, Kaori isn't going to take this news lying down. Kaori suggests that the two of them become a fake couple so Shizuku can use the experience as material for her next novel. Only until the end of summer, that is. Shizuku at first isn't too fond of the idea, but Kaori inserts herself into her life whether she likes it or not. It's this fateful decision that serves as the impetus for an unforgettable summer together.

This is my first time reading one of Yuama's works, and for the most part, her art is pretty good. I say for the most part because sometimes the proportions on the characters' bodies can be off at times, like a nose will look crooked and legs or thighs will look too long, but it doesn't happen all that often and goes away in later volumes. The paneling is easy to follow, screen tones are used to good effect whenever possible, there's hardly any clutter in the backgrounds, and even the color pages are striking and beautiful. I will say that Yuama is really good at drawing facial expressions and really using them to convey a character's emotions during the more dramatic beats without them looking cartoonish or silly. Granted, they're not as strong as that of Yuu Watase's Sakura Gari, but they still do their job well.

For a story like this, the two main characters need to carry it, and thankfully, Shizuku and Kaori manage to do this pretty well. They both grow and change over the cource of the story, even if Kaori comes dangerously close to leaning into the dreaded Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. That being said, the story does try to have Kaori be more than just the perky sick girl plot device who's just there to fix Shizuku and advance her development. Going back to Your Lie In April and I Want To Eat Your Pancreas, I feel Kaori in this story is better written than Kaori Miyazono from Your Lie in April and Sakura from Pancreas, mainly in that she is shown to have unique character flaws that she has to deal with, develops alongside Shizuku, and does have a life outside of Shizuku, even if the manga's short length doesn't make it all that obvious. Sakura from Pancreas was literally nothing more than yet another cliche stereotype of a saintly tragic figure solely manufactured to advance the male lead's development and teach moral lessons, and Kaori from Your Lie In April, from what I've heard, is also that, and along with being really bratty, manipulative, and selfish, many felt her methods of helping the male lead overcome his trauma came across as extremely cruel, insensitive, and tone-deaf. Thankfully, Kaori in The Summer You Were There has far more depth to her than Sakura from Pancreas, is genuinely kind but not without a backbone, and never resorts to the mean-spirited tactics that Kaori Miyazono does, so she already has that going for her. On the other hand, I wish more had been done with some of the side characters, namely Kaori's sister Shiori, who literally has nothing to her other than worshipping Kaori and hating Shizuku. The rest of the side cast is perfectly fine.

If there's one thing I can say The Summer You Were There manages to pull off, its depicting bullying and the affects it has on people in a sensitive, nuanced, empathetic matter, and without resorting to condescension or melodrama. Granted, others might not agree, but your mileage may vary. The manga does succeed in making Shizuku sympathetic without trying to sugarcoat or downplay how bad her past actions were, nor does it try to invalidate or dismiss the trauma that Shizuku's bullying had on her classmate Ruri. I also appreciate that the manga doesn't try to make Ruri feel obligated to forgive Shizuku or force her to do so. Seriously, where was this nuance in stuff like A Silent Voice or Is It My Fault I Got Bullied? Yeah, I feel The Summer You Were There handled tackling the subject of bullying better than A Silent Voice. Come at me. As far as the later parts of Shizuku's backstory that get revealed near the finale, normally I would find something like that to be really cheesy and over-the-top, but I actually went through something similar years ago, so I'm letting it slide. Outside its depictions of bullying, the manga is a perfectly fine story, even if a lot of the stuff its done has been done many times before. You wouldn't be wrong to call it predictable based on everything that happens in its second half, and as much as I'm not a fan of the whole "sick girl helps the healthy MC" plotline because of how emotionally manipulative it can be if done wrong, The Summer You Were There did care about its characters and treated them with respect to the point where it did manage to get me genuinely invested in them, cliche plot or no. Granted, I know others might not feel the same way, so your mileage may vary on whether you even care about the second half of the story or not. To me, The Summer You Were There's refined execution and respect it has for its story and characters manage to elevate it beyond just a shoujo-ai rehash of I Want To Eat Your Pancreas.

Overall, while it relies a little too much on a certain cliche and doesn't develop the rest of its side characters, The Summer You Were There is a respectable shoujo-ai manga that manages to not only tackle a sensitive subject delicately, but avoids the common pitfalls that plague other stories of its caliber. Definitely give it a read if you like tragic romances that still manage to treat its characters with respect and empathy.

Jan 27, 2022

Sairentou

Recommended

Preliminary (16/32 chp)

I'm rly big fan of yuri manga and I was looking for something good, that is not so popular and gosh I'm rly happy I found it. This little hidden gem. I could recommend this series to anyone to be honest, because story's core is not yuri, it is only small addition so a bigger picture, it's well attached to the plot but I don't think it would be a problem for people who are not fans of Yuri genre, It's easy to read all chapters in one session, you just want more and more, so suddenly you look there is no more so far... ...

Jul 10, 2024

Baka_Gaijin66

Recommended

As a gentleman who enjoys the classics; Death Note, Black Lagoon (Revy IS best girl, fight me), Monster ect. This type of manga is not my usual jam.

I started reading it by accident thinking that it was something else, and by the time that I realised what it was, too late and I couldn't stop. It has now been over two weeks and this story has stuck with me more than anything else that I have read so far.

Hoshikawa Shizuku, a high school girl just wishing to disappear after finishing her one and only novel, meets and makes a deal with the diminutive Asaka ...

Apr 2, 2024

Icy64

Recommended

10/10,the term masterpiece was made for manga like this

For a manga about expressing emotions through writing over speech,this is a lot to express. I am shocked i have never heard of this and im glad i didnt because you cant spoil this.
Never have i evey had such a strong emotion or even physical reaction to a piece of media, ever. Every characters depiction hits so close to home it hurts, story like this cant be told without characters like these and its cast is perfect.
Everyone here feels like a real person, in a way that know other anime or manga has done before, these characters ...

Dec 1, 2021

Ace_Entertainers

Recommended

Preliminary (19/32 chp)

As a big fan of yuri manga I keep reading a lot of yuri manga but this one is really good and very underrated and not as popular as it should be. So far I have read till chapter 15 and it just gets better and better. The feels in the starting chapters was great but the last few chapters have been amazing with it. I can already see the ending making me almost cry.
The story begins with a character who writes a novel thinking about submitting it but does no do so. But one of her classmates finds the novel by accident and reads ...

Nov 20, 2023

SenchouMugii

Recommended

Preliminary (30/32 chp)

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata, it's great.
I always find myself baffled when Yuri manga tend to take a realistic approach, mainly because of the fact that it's so rare to see that these days. Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata shows the other side of the road in Yuri. What happens when the couple doesn't get their happy ending? What happens when the person you've found slowly begins fading away right before your eyes? These are the types of topics this manga graduates towards. It’s a bittersweet love story taking place over the summer.
Heavy topics aside, the characters in this manga are also extremely likable, and frankly, just ...

Jul 3, 2024

Haunt-Me

Recommended

Since I met you all the gloomy days just seem to shine a little more brightly

Reading this minuscule manga only 32 chapters in length resembles the fleeting summer it encompasses; It's over in a blink of an eye and I miss every second of it. Shizuku Hoshikawa a reclusive existence so riddled by excessive regret she questions every breath she takes. Can I forgive myself? Do I deserve to be alive? If I disappeared right now would anyone notice? In a twist of fate she meets Asaka Kaori, and gets her long awaited answers. Slowly but surely Shizuku's bleak life starts to be bathed in ...

Aug 29, 2024

AlmightyTank

Recommended

I honestly didn't expect much coming into this, but after finishing it, my god. It was simply beautiful. I've read only a few other romance manga, but this had such a powerful story that I adored reading, and had great themes of love, how far you're willing to go for it, and how you spend your limited time with your loved ones. Shizuku and Kaori's relationship is perfectly crafted for this story, and the inevitability of it elevates the story and themes even more. Their flaws both being accepted by one another, bringing them closer together is a sight to behold. An incredibly sad, yet ...

Nov 15, 2024

PandaRoomster

Recommended

Oh my, this series is almost too sweet for its own good. I won’t spoil anything, but by the time I finished, I was absolutely devastated. The sheer sadness of it all really hit me—the story is incredibly captivating and emotionally gripping.

The main characters complement each other beautifully, making their connection feel genuine and heartfelt. The romance isn’t really there, but it’s not needed in this story—it still manages to be incredibly touching without it.
The art is stunning and the cover of volume 1 is one of my favourites.

Big recommend, but consider yourself warned: you might shed a few tears...

Oct 26, 2022

dead_user_123454

Recommended

Preliminary (22/32 chp)

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata is a sweet but painful Yuri story by Yuama, I've also loved her previous work Ikemensugi desu Shiki-senpai!. Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata (The Summer You Were There), Yuama's latest series, travels a far more difficult route than her prior work, The Girl I Want Is So Handsome, with more complex characters and darker topics.
I'm writing this review after finishing the most recent chapter, and to be honest, I never expected the plot to turn out this way.
Shizuku Hoshigawa, a high school student and novelist, is a shy person who tends to keep to herself, She goes to trash her manuscript after ...

Jan 21, 2024

Souling_Reaper

Recommended

Preliminary (32/32 chp)

I am not a critic. I have not read enough manga to have the experience of truly “reviewing” one. However, it is my sole and humble belief that this manga is a must-read. It talks about dark themes that may or may not resonate with you. The characters and their stories are rich and saturated. You will watch as they change right before your very eyes.

The resolution, as cliche as it was, does grip at your heart and leave you with a heavier one at that. But the messages in the manga will force you to move forward anyway.

Please read this manga.

Nov 18, 2024

puppetmason67

Recommended

Nearly cried reading the English title and the first pages alone. Cried for like 30 minutes after reading the whole thing. 10/10.
Really well-written with like, a lot of memorable lines and moments, and just a really deep and like beautiful story all and all. Plus, the art style is just gorgeous. It's kind of like a typical friends-to-lovers "they kiss/confess and it ends," kind of plot, but if you replace the ending you know is going to happen with "yeah we're basically told one of the mains is going to die tragically." Go in expecting them to get together, it'll still be cute. Go ...

Dec 15, 2024

Erdogank

Recommended

I saw the writting on the wall before I even clicked the first chapter: Psycological, Medical & Tragedy tags. I steeled my resolve again when the translator's name was an Oyasumi Punpun reference. This would be a rough one.

This fragile romance between Shizuku and Kaori is slowly build and expanded upon, with supporting characters from the girls sisters to old aquitances helping to move the pieces into place. This is a nicely crafted narrative, well drawn and with great character. It does hold some emotional impact which is always great.

I rated this in the high end of 7/10, as it is simply too short. I ...