My Oh My, Atami-kun Volume 3 Review

High school life continues for Atami-kun and his friends and Valentine’s Day comes around. Who has left a box of biscuits for Atami in his locker? The name of the sweets shop on the box offers a clue and he and his friends set out to play detectives and track down Atami’s anonymous admirer.

As the school year comes to an end, the third years prepare to leave and when graduation day dawns, Atami-kun encounters his senpai Urabe for the last time and says, “Wish you all the best” which then provokes an unexpected reaction.

But the end of one school year means that when the new one starts (in cherry blossom time) the students are mixed up to create new classes and friendships are often split up. Atami-kun and Tsuji-kun end up in a swan pedalo on the local lake and Tsuji-kun’s very real anxieties about being put in a different class come out as they try to pedal their craft for twenty minutes (he’s been having very odd dreams).

And then Atami-kun finds himself with peppy Yoshimi-san who admits that she’d like to date him, but then, as she puts it, “I just say things without them going through my head.” What will his answer be?

‘Tumultuous love life aside, all is well for Atami-kun’ concludes the blurb for Volume 3 but ‘tumultuous’ is probably the last adjective I’d resort to to describe the events in this book, including Atami’s state of mind – unless, of course, it’s meant in an ironic sense. Asa Tanuma is the most laid-back of laid-back mangaka and everything that occurs here is told (and drawn) in a very restrained, detached style. It’s interesting timing in that the anime series of Captivated, By You by Waya Yayama has just finished airing because, on the surface, these two mangaka have much in common in the way they look at Japanese high school life from a very different perspective to current ongoing series (such as Skip and Loafer or The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity).

However, the manga of Captivated, By You is – for this reader, at any rate – a much more engaging and entertaining read whereas, although I really liked the first volume of My Oh My, Atami-kun, I felt less involved by Volume 2 and Volume 3 hasn’t done anything to change my reactions. Although other readers may well feel differently! Slice-of-life is a genre, a tone of voice and pace that’s hard to bring off effectively and this is very detached, even when dealing with big emotional moments. The usual beats of the Japanese high school year are all here: the anxieties about being put in a class without your friends when everyone goes up a year or having to get into groups for a field trip. Two girls feature this time (and are drawn on the back cover art): band member Oomori-san and lively Yoshimi-san, and the chapter in which Atami-kun gently but firmly rejects Oomori-san’s interest in him is maybe the best so far. She has the starring role in the bonus manga and I’d love to see more of her and her bass guitar.

When I reviewed Volume 2, I mentioned the fact that it’s difficult to tell some of the characters apart and that’s still the case here. A character cast list (with pictures) would have been really useful as when all the boys are in gakuran (traditional uniform) they look remarkably similar and it’s not easy to remember side characters from previous volumes, especially when they don’t use each other’s names in conversation. However, there’s an afterword page from the mangaka, explaining about the significance of the students’ slipper colours (what we used to call ‘indoor shoes’) because ‘that’s how it was at my alma mater’.

Translation for Yen Press is again by Amanda Haley with lettering by Elena Pizarro and both work well to convey the everyday interactions of the high school students in a very naturalistic, convincing way. There are some helpful translation notes at the end too. Volume 4 has only recently come out in Japan, so it’s not yet slated for publication in the US by Yen Press.

Our review copy was provided by Yen Press.