Page 45 Review by Jonathan
Will they?
Won't they?
Are they?
I don't know!
Even after finishing I'm not sure! When they talk about a gentle romantic comedy, this is like being oh so teasingly tickled with a feather duster. You don't know whether you actually like it, but it does feel rather pleasant. Or so they tell me...
Actually, I've just read the publisher blurb on the reverse and the line... "More than friends, less than lovers..." is a note-perfect description of the peculiar relationship that develops between Kohei, the withdrawn, misunderstood student with a profound hearing disability and the ridiculously gregarious and irrepressibly happy Taichi, who just so happens to have a voice like a foghorn.
We open with a chance encounter involving Taichi falling through some foliage, shattering Kohei's tranquil lunchtime in his favourite secluded spot on campus for hiding himself away. Following that dramatic entrance an unlikely friendship blossoms. Kohei offers the starving Taichi his bento box and deciding he needs to return the favour somehow, Taichi offers to be Kohei's notetaker. Which is basically as it sounds, taking notes for him in class because Kohei can't always hear the lecturer that well.
I then basically spent the rest of the book, which involves various mild misunderstandings and slightly awkward social situations, trying to work out if either Taichi fancied Kohei, Kohei fancied Taichi, or both. Given by the end I was none the wiser, you can probably correctly surmise this is not full-on Yaoi.
I'm not saying there isn't a kiss, mind you, though infuriatingly, even the circumstances and camera angle surrounding their one ambiguous display of physical affection, only serves to further intrigue the reader as to precise what is, or isn't, going on...
This softly-softly approach to the storytelling and also the very delicate art put me in mind a little of 5 CENTIMETRES A SECOND, which I also rather enjoyed for its off-beat approach. I don't know if non-romance romance is an actual romance sub-genre, but that's precisely what this is. There is apparently also a film adaptation which very recently opened in Japanese cinemas. I may have to check it out, if only to see if it reveals any answers to my questions!
