Manga Review: Little Butterfly

[Floating_Sakura]

Title: Little Butterfly
Author: Hinako Takanaga
Published: three volumes, June, 2006, USD12.95 each

Little Butterfly begins with Kojima and Nakahara, high-school classmates who barely know each other, but feel an interest in each other. Nakahara being reserved and reluctant to engage in any kind of interaction, Kojima takes it upon himself, in a bright, enthusiastic, youthful way, to attract Nakahara's attention and develop a friendship. Nakahara resists at first, but Kojima's persistence wins him a confidence of Nakahara's difficult home life and his desire to run away and feel free, like a migrating butterfly, hence the title. The rest of the story develops the relationship of Nakahara and Kojima from friends to lovers, and also Nakahara's quest for freedom.

The visual style repelled me at first because the cover looked much too cute and shoujo-y for my taste. In fact, when you actually open it up and read it, it's still cute and shoujo-y. Well, I suppose that's unremarkable, as it is a shoujo. Its execution, all things considered, is very nice, the shoujo style emphasizing one of the principal concerns of the work, which is teenage awkwardness.

Though the characterization in this series is not terribly profound, it is extensive enough that the multistranded narrative -- exploring at once Nakahara's family problems, his relationship with Kojima, their everyday life, and their dreams for the future -- is coherent. In fact, more than any other aspect of characterization, it is this layered plot structure -- seeing the characters in context of their intimate relationship with each other, their relationships with their families, and the homogenizing environment of school -- that makes the characters engaging.

Little Butterfly was originally written in two pieces: a miniseries (only slightly open-ended) that composes the first book, and an extension that draws the story to the third book. The sequel is nicely done, the only discontinuity being the disappearance of some characters (Kojima's friends) and appearance of others (Nakahara's uncle), and otherwise it is a smooth, continuous transition. The second part explores Nakahara's family problems in greater depth, discussing the origins and consequences of abuse.

For all its seriousness of subject, Little Butterfly is fun to read, in a cutesy yaoi-fix kind of way, though it's not really of much interest otherwise. It's sweet, romantic, dramatic, ever so slightly illogical, and has a good helping of intimate, though not terribly graphic, love and sex scenes.

Reviewed by anitra
Proofed by Ilianna
Edited by Firedog