Medalist Volume 7 Review
Inori (small in stature for her age but big in potential, determination and ambition) is preparing under the watchful eye of her coach Tsukasa for the All-Japan Novice Championship. And there isn’t much time (a month!) for her to learn the triple lutz and flip which she needs to compete. So Tsukasa invites Kakeru Uobuchi, an expert in jumps, to coach Inori. Uobuchi intrigues the young skaters at the club when he arrives carrying what looks like a harness attached to a large fishing rod! But no sooner has Inori put on the harness than she finds it’s an amazing aid, and as Uobuchi lifts her off the ice into the air, she can practice the necessary moves to perfect her jumps in mid-air.
The young skaters are so impressed by the harness that Tsukasa buys one to use at the club. But when Inori is taking her turn, Tsukasa feels himself losing his balance – and rather than cause any injury to Inori while she’s still in the air, manages to fall heavily on the ice while still holding onto the pole. To everyone’s shock, especially Inori’s, he gets up, winded and bleeding, insisting he’s all right. But after he’s checked out at the hospital, it turns out he’s cracked a rib, a very painful injury which only time will heal. Now he can’t use the harness to help Inori perfect her jumps so he calls up Uobuchi, who’s currently in Nagoya, and arranges to drive Inori the six-hour journey for more coaching.
Once they’re on the ice with Uobuchi, though, the jumps expert gives some Inori a very surprising assessment. “I think I can have you land a triple lutz in another hour or so, Inori… but if you want to put that to the side, I can teach you a quadruple salchow.” With so little time to go before the championship, Inori is faced with a very difficult decision. But if she can pull off a quadruple salchow, she’ll be in a very strong position in competition. Which will she choose…?
The pace and pressure of competitive figure skating for young hopefuls are again brought to vivid life in the seventh volume of Medalist. We’ve seen Inori (coached and encouraged by Tsukasa) make remarkable progress over the last volumes but things are really starting to get very serious now as the All-Japan Novice Championship will bring her into competition with her inspiration, the prodigiously gifted Hikaru. We really feel the pressure on both Tsukasa and the young skater as the decisions that have to be made will directly affect everything Inori’s dreamed of achieving. If she makes the wrong decision, will she regret it when she takes to the ice to compete? A later chapter reminds us of the pressures of competing as it reintroduces us to Ema and her coach Yudai as well as some formidable contestants Inori hasn’t yet competed against. Quiet Ema is touchingly mature about how things go when she’s pitted against Suzu Kamoto in her block and things don’t quite work out on the ice for her as planned. “You don’t need to console me, okay?” she says to Yudai with a brave smile. “I’m used to bouncing back, so be there for me…” And this is a salutary reminder that for every three contestants that ascend the winners’ podium; there are so many more who try their best but don’t quite make it. Will this be the case for Inori too?
There are some nice moments for Tsukasa too in this volume. We see how stoical he is when he drives Inori all the way to Nagoya for more coaching while still healing from the broken rib. But we also see another side when he meets up with old friend and fellow ice dancer Kohei, now head coach at another skating club. The shadow of Jun Todaka still haunts Tsukasa, and Inori is excited and apprehensive about competing against Hikaru at last. Volume 8 is going to undoubtedly bring both coaches and students head-to-head again as we find out if Inori has nailed the quadruple salchow for her routine.
Tsurumaikada’s beautiful drawings of the skaters in action are still one of the pleasures of reading this series – but it’s the personal interactions, rivalries, triumphs and bitter disappointments of the competitors and their coaches that are the biggest draw. It’s a shame that there are no more of the mangaka’s attractive colour illustrations but there’s plenty of extras to compensate, especially six 4-koma panels and a character page for Kakeru Uobuchi (not forgetting the humorous little cartoons between chapters).
Kevin Gifford continues to provide an excellent translation for Kodansha (there are no translation notes) and lettering for the print edition is by Scott O’Brien. Volume 8 is due out in print in May but if you want to read ahead in digital, Volumes 8-11 are currently available.
Medalist © TSURUMAIKADA/Kodansha Ltd.
Our review copy from Kodansha was supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.
