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*POTENTIAL SPOILERS*


This is going to be a most curious review because if I could have not put a grade on this piece of work, I would have done so.

Before Umibe no Onnanoko, I have read Asano's "Oyasumi Punpun" (10/10), "Solanin" (8/10), "Subarashii Sekai" (with the author's commentaries) (8/10) and "Reiraku" (10/10).

Is Umibe no Onnanoko a great piece of work ? Certainly. Because it made me think so much. Each time I finish one of Asano's work, I am blown away by how much his work makes me think on how I feel about it. However, this is the first time where I "disagree" ... with his approach.

Umibe no Onnanoko's story follows two teenagers of 15 years old in our current era in Japan's countryside. Adolescence was a weird period of growth and questioning for each of us, a period where we certainly were able to have a stupid, cringy and questionnable behavior. And this is where my personal story comes in. I have been lucky enough to have always been protected from bad situations because of good people, friends and adults surrounding me. So, I have never been in contact with anyone of this age who could have potentially gone through this and have no idea of in what extent this story is realistic. Of course Asano's approach to life, relationships and sexuality is refreshing in its sad realism (or at least not blind), but I feel that it did not happen this time. This is precisely because of the age of the protagonists.

First of all, and as usual, the art is gorgeous, but not as gorgeous is it will be in his latest works *amazement intensifies* "How can he get better ?!" And I agree.

The story does not bother me in the sense where, despite the profound unease I feel while reading it, I do not feel that "Jesus, what is this fantasized twisted relationship that is surely impossible to occur in real life". It is the uneasiness I feel in front of something where the potential realism ("potential" in the sense in which I have never witnessed nor read about it IRL) is scary.

The characters, their personality, family and backstory are great.
The interaction with their surroundings and other characters also.

Then what do I whine about if everything seems perfect ? Well, that's the problem. It seems too perfect. Hear me out. Paradoxically, the clumsiness, perverseness, evil, twisted sides of humanity expressed in other works of Asano seem believable in a sense of "this is a side that is way more common than we think it is." In Umibe no Onnanoko, it seems too extreme to the point where it becomes unbelievable. And I think I have understood why:

The relationship between Isobe and Koume are the ones of young adults to the ones of full grown men and women.

And no, I am not talking about the fact they have sex, I am talking about their dialogue and approach to it. Sex is too "natural" in this story, they act like people who have already experienced their fair share of it and use it as a tool of filling a void. It is entirely possible, and Asano has done it before, but not here. Those 15 years-old characters don't have the natural reaction we would expect from them to young teenagers discovering their bodies and sex for the first time. I am not saying that it should be like blushing teenagers not daring touching each others with little noises of confusions and pleasure goddamit. It can be dirty, unfair, wrong, twisted, one-sided. But the characters have not been set up to live this way. Of course, there is a sense of depravity and downfall towards potential suicide, but that is not enough to make it believable.

And, again, I think I know the reason of why Asano has come to this :

The length of the story.

Two volumes is short, very short, to detail and explain all the different sides of the story. One could say that everything is explained. It is true to one extent. But it is not because you have explanations to something that it makes it believable. I think that what each character lives through individually is believable and those are sad and passionate stories. The problem is that we have not been through the evolution of these characters to see how it has come to this.





!!!!!!!!!!SPOILERS FOR OYASUMI PUNPUN. GET THE F** OUT OF HERE, GO READ THIS AMAZING MANGA BEFORE.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







So, in Oyasumi Punpun, the relationship between "adult" Punpun and Aiko could have had the same kind of sexuality than in Umibe no Onnanoko. However, we have seen before what these two characters have lived through and WE KNOW through all these years how much they have suffered and got twisted, clumsy and cruel. In Umibe no Onnanoko, we know very little and they are too young to be able to manage such a complex thing such as sex the way they manage it. Especially if they are feelings involved in all this. In this age where there is supposed to be confusion in everything, every feeling (which is the case to a certain extent) they handle their sex lives with a weird maturity.


And this is why I would have preferred not to rate this manga (but have done, because that's part of the game). Is this story a common thing in Japan's countryside, in all of Japan, in South-Est Asia, in Asia, in the whole world ? Have I been living under a rock ? This manga has challenged my perception of adolescence and the teenagers that encounter sex at such an early age.