This was a good year for josei, even if most people didn't realize it because nobody was marketing their josei releases as part of that demographic (which is a rant for another day).
If nothing else, it was a year that brought us a new Fumi Yoshinaga book and there was no way I was NOT going to talk about it.
TAMAKI & AMANE (Tamaki to Amane), by Fumi Yoshinaga. First published in 2022 and first published in North America in 2025.
PLOT:
Throughout the ages, there has always been a Tamaki and an Amane. Sometimes they are a tragic couple in the Edo era, torn apart by pride and death. Sometimes they are a pair of Taisho-era school-girls supporting each other through the trials of marriage and motherhood. Sometimes they are two former squadmates who bond while running a black market cafe during the Occupation. Sometimes they are a terminally-ill nurse and a lonely little boy in desperate need of comfort and attention.
Despite the circumstances, a Tamaki and Amane will meet and their lives will always be changed by that meeting.
STORY:
If you've been following this blog for a while, you'll know that Fumi Yoshinaga is one of my favorite mangaka, and I've heaped a lot of praise on her work over the years. Sometimes that praise even gets quoted on one of those books! Tamaki & Amane is not the first short-story collection of hers I've reviewed, but it might just be the best of them.
Yoshinaga doesn't reveal the overarching conceit of this book right away. At first it just feels like just another anthology, as a modern couple reckons with learning their teenage daughter might be gay. As each new story advances further back in time, it becomes clearer that this is not just about romantic love. It's about all sorts of connections, be they couples, colleagues, or found families. These connections may be short-lived and almost all of them end tragically, but these connections brought all those involved the sort of comfort and understanding they needed, often at the darkest moments in their lives.
All of these stories are excellent onto themselves, but by the time she gets to the original Tamaki and Amane in the final story it all comes together. This whole book is a karmic cycle, a century's worth of missed connections by two souls whose lives were themselves defined by missed connections. By the end it had hit me like a wave upon the shore, leaving me once again in quiet awe at Fumi Yoshinaga's talent.
ART:
All the usual qualities I like about Yoshinaga's art is here: her crisp linework, the sharp jawlines, the sensitive faces, the use of negative space to further heighten moments of despair and loneliness. She's definitely drawing more backgrounds in her panels here than she usually does. Since most of these stories are set in very specific points in the past, she definitely goes out of her way to capture a lot of those historical details, something she hasn't really done since her early days in BL. Otherwise this is (artistically speaking) business as usual for Fumi Yoshinaga, and that business is good.
RATING:
This book is published by Yen Press. It is currently in print.
There's still plenty of time to enter our Holiday Review Giveaway! To find out more and potentially win a $25 Bookshop.org gift certificate, click the link above.
No comments:
Post a Comment