Bloom into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka 1- The Journey of Self-Discovery Regarding Love
Book information:
Japanese Title: やがて君になる佐伯沙弥香について（Yagate kimi ni naru Saeki Sayaka ni tsuite)
Author: 入間人間（Hitoma Iruma)
Original Work (Bloom into You manga)/Illustrator: 仲谷鳰（Nio Nakatani）
Page: 228
Language: Japanese
(English) Translated version: available
(I) bought from: Tsutaya book store
Also available on: Any bookstore in Japan, Books on iOS, Amazon, Book Walker
Genre: LGBTQ+, romance, contemporary
Mood: emotional, adventurous, hopeful, lighthearted, reflective, relaxing
Pace: slow
Character driven> plot driven
Trigger warning: none
Why I read it: I wanted to understand the feeling of loving someone
Mood while I read: 🤔😲☺️😔😡😊
It made me want to read: the second volume
Who I will recommend to: Bloom into You fans and those who like slow-paced coming-of-age story
Rating
Plot: 5/5⭐️
Character: 5/5⭐️
Ease of reading: Difficult (because of the Japanese language)
Overall (not just from the above three): 4.75/5 ⭐️
Synopsis
Saeki Sayaka has always been an old soul--serious and reserved, preferring to focus on her studies rather than make friends. Until, that is, a romantic confession from another girl in middle school turns her carefully ordered world upside down. Though none of her classes have prepared her for this, Saeki must now come to terms with her sexuality in this gentle, coming-of-age novel about grappling with first love, growing up, and relating to other people.
Source: Book Walker
My thought process before reading the book
“Bloom into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka” is a side story of a yuri (girl love) manga “Bloom into You”. The parent story is about the love between Touko and Yuu, two high school student, while Sayaka is their friend and has feeling for Touko.
When I read the manga, I didn’t really care about Sayaka. But it’s not because she wasn’t interesting, but it’s because I was too focus on the two main characters. After finishing the manga, I heard that there was a light novel related to Sayaka’s love story, from childhood to adulthood, I still wasn’t interested because I’ve already known about her backstory in middle school via the manga. Additionally, her love story in high school is the one told in the manga, too. As for her love story in adulthood, just seeing the cover of the book (Bloom into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka volume 3), I can guess that it’s going to have a happy ending. So, I decided not to pick up the book.
However, later on, I discovered that Sayaka’s story talks about having a crush or having a romantic feeling, as well as self discovery/self-acceptance. As a person who has always wanted to know how it feels to love someone romantically, I became interested in the light novel. Finally, I finished the volume 1 with a smile on my face.
Sayaka: one of the most relatable character I’ve ever seen
The story is written from Sayaka’s perspective, so we know her way of thinking and the changing of it from when she was just a kid to when she became an adult. But in the first volume, we only explore her love story during elementary school and middle school.
This book has one of the slowest-pace story I’ve ever read. I thought that “Adachi and Shimamura” is slow, but this one is even slower. The whole story centers around Sayaka’s thought and the conversation between characters. However, Hitoma Iruma, the author of the book, managed to make me love and care about the characters, especially Sayaka herself. Therefore, even though I knew how her love story in the middle school ended, I still want her to get what she deserves and when “that” happened, I could feel her pain.
Regarding Sayaka (no pun intended), she is one of the most relatable character for me (at least in the first volume). In the manga, I may be wrong but I found that she is such a cool character. Everything about her is almost perfect. But when I read the light novel, I found out that she’s just like me! No, not everything. She is gorgeous but I’m not. She has self-confident but I have self-sabotage. However, since she was a young, she had only one goal - studying to climb to the top. As for other things such as human relationship, it was just dust on the road. But she tried her best with everything she did, which is why she became upset and jealous when someone who didn’t work hard surpassed her. Nevertheless, she never had any bad intention. Instead, she worked even harder and I respect that. Moreover, she had this thing called “curiosity”. It pushed her to walk into the unknown world called “love” and “homosexuality”. She was confessed by her senior Yuzuki and even though she thought that love between two girl was weird, she still tried it out. Furthermore, I love the fact that she often asked herself if she was in love or not and that she used her physical reaction to evaluate her feeling. This is what I do when I can’t understand my feeling! This is why she’s so relatable!
The relationship between Sayaka and other characters
First of all, I love the interaction between Sayaka and her grandmother. Her grandmother played a role pushing her out of the comfort zone and making her start the adventure beside studying. There’s not much scenes between Sayaka and her grandmother, but when there is, we can see the bond between them. Also, Sayaka’s grandmother has such sharp eyes with her granddaughter’s situation or emotion. Even though she didn’t know what exactly happened to Sayaka, she could still give a valuable lesson to her.
In addition, the young girl whom Sayaka met during elementary school is also an interesting character. She isn’t only friendly, but also brave enough to confront her feeling or to learn about it more than Sayaka. However, one mistake broke everything she built. I feel bad for her. If I were her, I’d regret for a very, very long time. But when I looked at the situation through the Sayaka’s eyes, it’s understandable that she had that reaction. She only knew the word “study”, but then someone did that to her, and that someone is also a girl? Of course, she would freak out. But still, she didn’t have to go that far. It was too cruel for the girl. Another thing unbelievable about Sayaka is that she didn’t even bother to ask for the girl’s name when they became friends. It shows clearly how young Sayaka was as a person.
Another noticeable character is Yuzuki, Sayaka’s senior. Because we saw everything from Sayaka’s viewpoint, we don’t know what was going on in Yuzuki’s life and Yuzuki’s head. But I can say one thing is that she knew what she wanted that she acted the hell out of it to get it. Just to be clear, she’s not a bad person. She’s just… a person. As for their relationship, I can’t say that it was cute (when comparing to Adachi and Shimamura couple), but it was heartwarming. It was such a slow one and not as dramatic as in romantic comedy or shoujo manga, but it’ s realistic. (I’ve never been in a relationship before. So, don’t take my word for it.) It was just two people spending short, simple, yet meaningful time together and talked about stuff while learning more about each other, especially Sayaka because she didn’t try to learn only about Yuzuki, but also about herself and the love itself.
A heart-wrenching scene
Just now I said there was no dramatic moment. Well, in fact there was, and the build up was painful. It’s painful not because the writing is bad, but because I sympathized with the character. I thought that it should be okay since I’ve already known what happened. But when it happened, I immediately snapped. I was so furious with that character that I shouted while reading “You’re the one who created all of this! It’s good that you clear things up, but don’t be this irresponsible!!”
And that shows how good Hitoma Iruma is with his writing!
Slow but beautiful
Speaking of writing, as I said before, it’s a slow-paced story. But nothing is wasted. Everything in the book shows Sayaka’s personality clearly, especially her character development from homophobia to self-acceptance that she’s a lesbian. If I have to be nitpicking, I’ll say that the description about her cats isn’t that necessary. But I also think that it adds flavor to the environment where Sayaka grew up. So, I don’t get bothered by it that much. Moreover, I love how Hitoma Iruma describes the nature surrounding the characters. He uses it to emphasize characters’ emotion. That makes the description which is usually boring very appealing.
But did I get the answer of my question?
No. I still don’t understand how it feels to love someone. It’s not like one book can tell everything you want to know. But who cares? I got a great experience from reading this book!
Final thought
In conclusion, “Bloom into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka 1” depicts the growth of a girl named Sayaka so well that I, who wasn’t that interested in her when reading the manga, love her very much. Also, it ends with one of the most satisfying sentence. It isn’t mind-blowing, but seeing her journey makes that ending so great! It make me want to say “That’s my girl, Sayaka!”
