Holiday Review: A WHITE ROSE IN BLOOM

I could have done an entire month's worth of reviews just of yuri manga just from 2021 - that's how popular the genre has become.  I've got room for just one more this year, so let's make it a good one.

A WHITE ROSE IN BLOOM (Meijirobana no Saku), by Asumiko Nakamura.  First published in 2017 and first published in North America in 2021.

PLOT:

Ruby is a lively high school at an elite European private school, one who gets caught up in the mess of her parents' failing marriage and ends up stuck at school over Christmas break.  It's during that time that she's forced to interact with Stephanie Nagy, a frosty but beautiful senior girl.  Their relationship becomes the talk of the school, much to the displeasure of them both.  Yet whe Ruby needs to pass a scholarship test to stay at the school, Stephanie is the only person she can turn to.

STORY:

A White Rose in Bloom should feel like a major throwback.  I mean, it's a yuri manga set at a fancy private school where a short, perky brunette and a princely tall blonde fall in love as their classmates scheme and gossip about them.  It's the sort of premise you could find in yuri manga from the 70s like Dear Brother, or even going all the way back to the Class S novels of the 1930s.  Yet Nakamura manages to breathe life into this well-worn premise with some deft character writing.

It helps that Ruby is not a wilting flower who finds herself swept up in the drama.  She's assertive and moody with a bit of a nostalgic streak.  The setting is kind of vague as far as time and place, but Ruby herself feels like a modern, relatable teen and that goes a long way towards drawing the reader into the story.  She's also the person who keeps the story moving, as she's the only one willing to push back whenever Stephanie tries to throw up her usual emotional walls.  She challenges Steph, engages with her, and generally just treats her like a normal teen and this is what begins to break down Steph's self-imposed barriers.  It's this dynamic that kept me compelled through some of the more cliched parts of the drama and it's what makes this old story feel new again.

ART:

I was curious to see how Nakamura's wispy, heavily stylized art would translate to yuri and the answer is "easily and outstandingly."  She plays a lot with silhouettes here, be it the bell-like shape of the girls' uniforms or the visual contrast between Ruby's roundness and Steph's rectangularity, reinforced by the shape of their hair and the contrast in their hair color.  She also brings so much nuance to everyone's body language, which tells as much of the story as the dialogue itself.  The glance of an eye, the twist of a hand, even the step of a foot is use to say so much in some skillfully assembled montages.  It's very elegant work.

RATING:

A White Rose In Bloom takes an old yuri premise and gives it a new spin thanks to her distinctive art and skill at writing compelling characters.  It's one the best yuri releases (and one of the best josei manga!) you'll read all year.

This series is published by Seven Seas.  This series is ongoing in Japan with 2 volumes available.  1 volume has been published and is currently in print.

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