More by accident I came upon a manga series by award winning manga-ka Obata Yuuki, called “Bokura ga ita” (could be translated as "This was us"). It kind of stood out amongst the other mangas by its unusual pastel coloured dreamy looking front covers. So I got the first three volumes on a hunch and now I’m hooked at something I never would have chosen willingly and there’s no way back and no light at the end of the tunnel.
"Bokura ga ita" stands out in more ways than just the style of drawing. This is way different from the easy going mangas I normally read and prefer. This unusual teenage romance with a high school setting has no comedy at all – it’s dead serious, dark, bitter-sweet, compelling and disturbing.
"Bokura ga ita" tells the story of Takahashi Nanami who in her first year in High School finds herself in the same class as the very popular Yano Motoharu, who is famous for having most of the girls falling in love with him. Seeing Yuno as a spoilt, egocentrical, selfish and opportunistic womanizer, Nanami believes herself immune to his charms and claims herself to belong to the minority of girls who see nothing in him.
But as Nanami and the readers slowly unravel shadowy secrets of the seemingly easy-going Yano and discover a dark side to him, they find Nanami falling head over heels for the exact guy she wanted to avoid.
I have read other mangas trying the twist turning towards the melodramatic, they failed and showed the believability (and class) of cheap soap operas. But in Bokura ga ita the whole things works just fine. For all its dark sides – or maybe because of them – it seems frighteningly real. Because this is what love felt like when I was young. It was not the pink died romantic happy feeling that warms your heart, but a frightening feeling of hopelessness, of knowing you would never be happy.
While Obata has a very distinctive dreamy and easy looking way of drawing - it is strangely at odds with this disturbing tale of madness, lies and broken hearts. The characters are excellently woven, none of them are easy to predict and especially the half heroic/more than half villainy Yano is astoundingly intriguing for a teenage-love story. You get to love him, and then he takes your heart and wrings it dry – still smiling all the way. The whole story is sooo not what I expected. Not the easy going tale of first stolen kisses on a high school. To say it was an emotional rollercoaster seems too tame a comparison. More like inviting a heavy duty steam-roller to run over your heart repeatedly.
I was still half clue-less after the first volume which left me intrigued and a bit puzzled. Because Obata takes her time developing characters and plot. That is probably the reason why at the end of the third volume my blood ran cold seeing the characters happily racing towards doomsday, cheerily inviting the apocalypse. And every time you recover from the punch the plot gave you full force into the guts, you can already feel the artists fist connecting with your jaw …again.
I found reading this series extremely painful. My heart beats away furiously, my mind can’t grasp that the characters don’t see the abyss right in front of their noses. It is a gut-wrenching, mind-blowing, blood poisoning story of heartbeat and the misery of being 16. It hurts to read this, which makes the experience everything but joyful – yet of course if a story is able to pull you into such emotional depth you can be sure it is a masterpiece.
I don’t usually do sad and painful stories. I have managed to stay clear of the books by Cecilia Ahern for this exact reason, even though I am sure I would agree with my friends, that they are wonderful. I just can’t take it. Neither can I take "bokura ga ita". I can't fully understand why anyone would willingly read something so sad - the story seems designed to pull you down and frankly I get down without help from outside, thanks very much. But due to my addictive personality I got hooked and have to know how it ends. To make the pain pass by quicker I have swopped from mangas to the anime – series. I'm still hoping that this will have a happy ending, but even if so the road to that end is sure not an easy one. The anime is a comparatively cheap adaption of the manga; Using the more or less the exact pictures (only coloured in) of the artist with only minimal animated effects added. If you are interested you find the anime-series at Youtube. If you want to give the manga a shot, you find free scanlations for the first volumes online at mangafox. It is excellent, but beware that "Bokura ga ita" should come together with warnings of danger to your mental health.
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