Holiday Review: OUR DREAMS AT DUSK

Also continuing this year was the increase in queer manga - not just romantic fare like BL or yuri, but ones dealing with real-world experiences.  The stand-out was easily this one, a fictional tale from an openly nonbinary creator.

OUR DREAMS AT DUSK: SHIMANAMI TASOGARE, by Yuhki Kamatani.  First published in 2015 and first published in North America in 2019.

PLOT:

Tasaku was nervous enough being the new kid in town, but then his classmates discovered gay porn on his phone.  He tries to deflect the teasing, but the fear and anxiety drives him to the point of suicide.  At the last minute, he meets the mysterious Someone-san, who leads him to Cat Clutter.  There, a group of queer folks meet to socialize and help renovate local houses for a non-profit.  Through them, Tasaku starts to come to terms with his feelings and his sexuality.

STORY:

While rereading this volume for this review, I was struck by how emotionally intense this series is.  I don't mean that it's melodramatic.  What I mean is that Kamatani vividly captures Tasaku's internal struggles.  They put the reader into his shoes, to feel his fears, the pain of his denial, and the sweep of his emotional breakthroughs.  I don't know how much of this Kamatani experienced themselves, but it's clear that they are drawing from first-person experiences.  Even if you are the most cisgender straight person in history, I find it impossible to believe that someone could read this and not feel for Tasaku in the slightest.

Running parallel to Tasaku's own coming out story is that of Haruko and Saki, a lesbian couple.  Haruko is more openly gay, even though that's come at the cost of damage to both her career and her relationship with her parents.  Meanwhile, Saki is a local who is still mostly closeted, to the point that Haruko casually coming out to Tasaku becomes a minor point of contention between them.  They not only provide insights into different perspectives on the coming-out experience, but they help provide Tasaku with the sort of mentorship and emotional comfort he needs.  Through them and the other folks in Cat Clutter, Tasaku starts to understand himself and I can see this being just as much of a comfort and an insight for real-world queer readers.

ART:

Kamatani absolutely outdoes themselves with this series.  It's not just that their character designs are attractive and immensely dramatic.  It's not just that they have an incredible knack for body language, using Tasaku's viewpoint to zoom in on the tiniest gestures.  It's not just the loving detail they put into the countryside.  It's their use of visual metaphor that takes the art over the top for me.  These moments always coincide with Tasaku's biggest emotional moments.  His classroom warps with paranoia, Tschaikovsky's Winter Movement sweeps over Tasaku like an icy breeze, and the realization of his crush on a classmate bursts his chest like a mirror, each shard reflecting both stolen moments from the past and dreams of the future.  It's the perfect companion to the story Kamatani is trying to tell, amplifying the emotion that's already there.

RATING:

I cannot recommend Our Dreams at Dusk hard enough.  It's a veritable emotional rollercoaster that draws on both real truths and incredible art to deliver its message and it's an instant classic.

This series is published by Seven Seas.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes.  3 volumes have been released and are currently in print.

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