A Curtain Call for You Volume 1 Review

The latest title to come from Kodansha’s Vertical imprint is A Curtain Call for You, which promises a compelling tale about a high school drama club. But will this debut work from duo Shiho Satou and Kiki Emoda prove memorable? Let’s take a closer look!

The story follows high school student Sakura Akutsu, who struggles to speak up in public and has been ignored by her fellow students. Even if they ask her a question, she can’t articulate herself in time to respond, and they’ve moved on to talking to someone else. But despite her inability to clearly express herself out loud, Sakura instead turns to writing stories in her notebooks.

However, one day her life changes significantly when she accidentally swaps notebooks with the energetic transfer student, Tsubame Hiragi. Tsubame ends up reading Sakura’s story and quickly falls in love with her writing, which makes her very happy. Sakura then goes on to share more stories with Tsubame, who feels it’s a shame that she’s the only one who gets to experience them.

Having let this go on for long enough, Tsubame requests that the two start a drama club at the school. With Sakura as the writer and Tsubame as the actress, she feels the two could do incredible things. But will Sakura be able to get over her insecurities and agree to Tsubame’s proposal?

A Curtain Call for You is a story about writing and acting, but more than that, it’s about the insecurities two teenage girls hold. The challenges Sakura faces are clear from the start but it’s not until further into the story that we realise Tsubame’s eccentric transfer student persona is exactly that – a mask. Sakura realises that she has no idea why Tsubame wants to start the drama club, nor what’s led her to fall so in love with her writing. We readers, are given glimpses of Tsubame being touted as ‘the real deal’ by the adults around her, perhaps due to her obvious talent for acting.

However, we certainly don’t get to the bottom of it within this first volume. Tsubame’s secrets are ones we’ll seemingly be waiting longer to uncover, but that’s okay. Hopefully, over time, she’ll begin to open up to Sakura about the demons that eat away at her, and in turn, we’ll discover what makes her tick. Whatever the case, the relationship between Sakura and Tsubame is an interesting one in that outwardly, they’re very much opposites, but underneath that, there are a lot of similarities between them.

As mentioned earlier, this is the debut work for both writer Shiho Satou and artist Kiki Emoda. As you can probably summarise from what I’ve said about the story so far, I certainly think Satou has done an excellent job with both the cast and overarching narrative. But we can’t let that outshine Emoda, who has also done wonders with the art!

This is a very psychologically driven story, which is something Emoda conveys well through the art. Scenes where Sakura is struggling with her anxiety are notably darker and murkier, while Tsubame’s scenes are often bright and almost shining (as much as you can with black and white images!). The characters are very expressive, and the acting scenes are very compelling too so, on the whole, even without considering the strengths of the storytelling, just based on the art, this is very strong.

This series is ongoing in Japan with a second volume currently available. However, the series appears to currently be on a lengthy hiatus. Artist Emoda has stated that the series is currently slated to end with its third volume, unless sales suddenly improve to the point of changing that. So, this sounds like one that could be cut short, which would be a huge shame given the potential we’ve seen in this first instalment. I can only hope that even if it does end with a third volume that the ending is satisfying.

A Curtain Call for You Volume 1 comes to the West thanks to Kodansha under the Vertical imprint and has been translated by Mei Amaki with lettering by Madeleine Jose. The release reads well, and there’s a lot of variety when it comes to the nuances of how each character talks and how this is conveyed through the lettering. There are no translation notes included, but there are bonuses in the form of several colour pages at the beginning of the work and one at the end. There’s a page of character designs included, too.

Volume 2 of the series is currently scheduled for an English release in February, so we’re not having to wait terribly long for more. After that, we’ll be caught up with Japan and waiting for the series to return from its hiatus…

Overall, A Curtain Call for You’s first volume is an excellent read that not only captures readers with a compelling narrative but also with the striking artwork. There’s a lot set up and waiting to be explored as the series goes on, and I just sincerely hope it is granted the opportunity to deliver on it all.

A free preview can be read on the publisher’s website. 

Our review copy from Kodansha (Vertical) was supplied by Turnaround Comics (Turnaround Publisher Services).  

©Kodansha / Shiho Satou / Kiki Emoda