I See Your Face, Turned Away Volume 1 Review

From My Sweet Girl mangaka Rumi Ichinohe comes a new shojo series: I See Your Face, Turned Away. Described by Kodansha as a “bitter and sweet tale perfect for fans of A Sign of Affection and In the Clear Moonlit Dusk”, this sounds excellent, speaking as someone who loves both the series it’s being compared to. Let’s find up if it lives up to those high expectations!

The story follows high-school student Hikari and her best friend Mari who have been together since elementary school. Mari is beautiful and known throughout the school for her pretty appearance, but unfortunately, she’s incredibly shy and hides behind Hikari at every opportunity. Because of this, she doesn’t have any other friends and struggles to even say good morning to her classmates.

However, things begin to change one day when Hikari finds herself daydreaming about what it would be like if Mari started dating the cute boy in their class: Ohtani (his friend Asagiri is also a candidate, but Hikari decides he’s too much of a womanizer!). What starts as an innocent idea soon begins to take shape in reality when Ohtani tries to talk to the girls, before eventually barging in on their lunch with Asagiri in tow. Feeling out of her depth, Mari quickly flees the scene leaving Hikari to deal with the boys who reveal that Ohtani has been hoping to get to know Mari and that crashing their lunch seemed like the best time.

Now the romance Hikari dreamed of is happening before her eyes. When Ohtani tells her that he fell for Mari after seeing her smile when she’s with Hikari, our heroine decides to help the two get together as she believes it would be good for Mari and that Ohtani will treasure her. Unfortunately, while Hikari has pictured herself as the supportive best friend in this scenario, that quickly becomes difficult as she soon realises she has feelings for Ohtani.

Due to how shy she is, we don’t get to see a lot of Mari’s perspective in Volume 1 and she doesn’t have a lot of dialogue. While it’s clear Ohtani is crushing on her, there’s no real indication that the feelings are mutual. Mari doesn’t seem to mind spending time with Ohtani and tag-along Asagiri, but that’s largely because Hikari is there too. As the volume goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Hikari is doing herself a disservice by pushing this narrative onto Mari when she could be pursuing Ohtani herself.

In fairness to mangaka Rumi Ichinohe, Hikari’s actions are well justified. She has low self-esteem largely due to having monolid rather than double eyelids which are considered unattractive in Asian cultures. Due to how attractive Mari is, our lead has always viewed herself as a ‘side character’ and hasn’t striven for anything of her own. Even in the music club, she’s upset when the teacher promotes her position above one of the third-year students as she doesn’t feel she deserves it. There’s a sense that as things progress between Mari and Ohtani, Hikari’s feelings will come to a head and she’ll be forced to change something.

I See Your Face, Turned Away is a slow-burn in all areas. There’s a lot of depth to Hikari’s character but so much time is spent on her that it’s no understatement to say that Mari looks paper-thin in comparison. Ohtani and his friend Asagiri come off better, but they also fit into predetermined tropes without much uniqueness. I’m not sure that’s a huge issue for Volume 1, but I do hope that the next instalment spends some more time on the rest of the cast. The final chapter of this release changes perspectives to Ohtani, which did help me better understand his feelings so I’m hopeful that carries on going forward.

In the artwork department, I found it a bit underwhelming too. Ichinohe’s art is clean and quite detailed with an emphasis on using large panels, but I often found it difficult to tell the difference between Ohtani and Asagiri since they have very similar designs (including their hairstyles!) and having to double-check who was who often broke me out of the flow of the story. Hikari describes Ohtani’s character as very expressive, which I’m not sure is shown very well in the art either. Mari probably has the most range of emotions, which helps make up for her lack of dialogue, but it still feels a little bit disjointed compared to how she’s described.

I wouldn’t say it’s as strong a start as In the Clear Moonlit Dusk or A Sign of Affection had, largely because it’s not as earnestly pursuing the romance and has more issues pulling it down. Still, this is a series that has something interesting to say with Hikari and if it can polish off some of the rough edges, there’s plenty it could accomplish here. It’s flawed, but I think it could be rewarding depending on how Volume 2 goes.

I See Your Face, Turned Away Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Kodansha and has been translated by Irene Nakano with lettering by Dietrich Premier. The translation reads well with plenty of translation notes at the end of the release, which do prove useful for some references. This release also includes some colour pages, which are a good way to open this new series.

In Japan, the series is still ongoing with three volumes currently available. Here in the West, Kodansha has #2 scheduled for July with #3 following in November so we’ll have this one coming out fairly frequently until we’re caught up.

Overall I See Your Face, Turned Away Volume 1 gets off to a rocky start but there’s certainly potential here for it to improve quite quickly as it goes on. If you’re a fan of the shojo genre and looking for a slow-burn romance/drama, then this is certainly one to keep an eye on.

Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK. 

A free preview of Volume 1 can be read on the publisher’s website here.