Manga Review: Hana Kimi: For You in Full Blossom

[Jason]

Title: Hana Kimi: For You in Full Blossom
Volumes: 1-23 (Complete series)
Manga-ka: Hisaya Nakajo
Originally Serialized In:Hana to Yume (Hakusensha)
Genre: Shoujo
Licensed by: Viz
Price: $11.99(US) each

Coming to its conclusion on English shores, Hana Kimi has run 23 volumes in total, spanning from September 2004 to April 2008. A charming shoujo story that’s spawned two live action television dramas and numerous drama CDs, fans around the world continue to show their love and support for the cross-dressing heroine and her friends.

The premise for Hana Kimi is a simple one: Mizuki Ashiya is a young Japanese girl, living in America, who finds herself attracted to a high jumper, in Japan, named Izumi Sano. Ashiya having admired his passion and free spirit for high jumping, packs up her bags and moves to Japan, disguising herself as a boy to enroll in Sano’s all boy school. Mizuki wished to see Sano high jump in person but was shocked to learn he had quit due to the pressure. Now determined to get him jumping again, Mizuki’s adventures ensue! While there she befriends fellow students, goes through lots of wacky hijinks and gets the lucky break of being Sano’s roommate, all the while trying to keep her secret under wraps (or in her case, a thick denim vest).

Unlike some stories, which take a strong basic plot and coast off it, Hana Kimi does quite the opposite. It takes a plot that sounds shallow at best, and doesn’t reflect too highly on Mizuki as anything but a stubborn stalker fan girl, and builds up a really strong series based on emotions, humour and drama. It’s first and foremost a character drama, introducing readers to a sizable cast of diverse, and fairly believable, individuals. When a Japanese television drama was created based on Hana Kimi, a subplot for Mizuki’s reason for seeking out Sano was added to bulk up probable cause for her determination. Lacking that in the original manga leaves it all a little flat, but with aforementioned attributes, it manages to be a strong read from start to finish.

Throughout the story, Mizuki faces numerous obstacles as she struggles to keep up appearances, trying to maintain the appearance and attitude of a boy. Other little pretty boys in the school help to mask her obvious smaller size and feminine appearance. Sano faces problems when he learns Mizuki’s secret but must pretend that he doesn’t know, especially hard as her roommate and as a teenage boy with certain physical urges. Meanwhile their mutual friend Nakatsu struggles with his sexuality as he finds himself attracted to Mizuki, believing she’s in fact a boy. There’s a bunch of other characters including the laid back doctor and Nakatsu’s Aura-sensing roommate (who brings a small bit of supernatural humour to the series).

The end of the series happens fairly quickly, working up to the final moments over a few volumes but with the actual defining events occurring quite abruptly. It’s not a picture perfect ending, which saves the story from trying too hard to please, but it may leave fans feeling unsatisfied with so little conclusion given to any of the characters past Mizuki and Sano. Hard to spoil twenty-three volumes of build up however and what’s presented by the manga-ka is able to ease the story to its fairly inevitable conclusion.

What manages to be the most interesting and admirable attribute of Hana Kimi is the level of consistency that the artwork maintained. Drawn by the manga-ka over the span of several years, a reader could easily sit down to read the entire twenty-three volumes without really finding much of a discrepancy in style from volume one to volume twenty-three when looking at the interior art. It helps to bring the series together as a whole, really giving the sense that you’re reading the same series you started, even volumes down the road. A lot of other series will change styles over time in reflection of an artist’s progression during longer stories, but with Hisaya Nakajo having such a solid and attractive shoujo style from the get-go, there was no real feeling of necessary improvement to enjoy the story.

Viz did a generic but nice quality job with the release of this series. The translations were easy to understand and kept the tone of the original intact as well as character names left unchanged and original-language/culture relevant jokes were addressed accordingly. The original covers from the original Japanese tankubon were used for each of the English-language covers and Viz released a hardcover art book for the series in November 2006.

Overall, while Hana Kimi doesn’t really tread any new ground, it’s still a charming read that manages to maintain being entertaining over so many volumes. Once readers can get over the weak premise and find themselves attached to the characters themselves, Hana Kimi is a sweet, fun shoujo manga series that’s full of memories.

Reviewer: Lissa Pattillo
Proofer/Editor: Jason Punda