Hitting Rewind with You Volumes 1 and 2 Review

It’s been a while since I read a shojo manga, and Hitting Rewind with You was the perfect title to let me put aside action manhwa and dive back into the shojo genre!

Wakaba Kayano (Waka-chan to her friends) is a 20-year-old college student who regrets not enjoying high school more, especially going on dates while wearing the school uniform! So when Halloween approaches, she decides to make her dream come true and cosplays as a teenage girl, only to meet a teenage boy, Fumito Tachibana, who ends up spending the day with her. Wakaba is feeling guilty because she’s enjoying the impromptu date too much and she’s lying to Fumito about who she really is, but the gig doesn’t last long. When the truth comes to light though, something more surprising happens. Fumito is also a college student! This seems like a fated encounter between the two, and Wakaba refuses to miss out on the opportunity to experience life as a high schooler once again, and again, and again…

In fact, Wakaba has the (maybe) brilliant idea to extend their sort of date so that they can meet multiple times and pretend to still be in high school. Thus both of them experience what they missed out on growing up. However, the more time they spend together, the more feelings start to develop, and when both of Wakaba’s and Fumito’s friends get involved, they can’t help but push them together even more. Especially as both protagonists attend the same university so they are bound to meet on campus!

In Hitting Rewind with You the heroine, Wakaba, is a bundle of chaos—cute but so chaotic! She’s really expressive and doesn’t have any filter between her brain and mouth. What she thinks is what she’s going to say, no matter how cringe it is. As a high schooler she was quiet, and too busy with school and taking photos to get to experience life as a ‘normal’ high school student, so she decided to re-invent herself for university. She succeeded but her deep-seated dreams are not going away. She really wants to have her uniform dates, and Fumito is willing to help her out.

Fumito too didn’t get the chance to enjoy high school as he was busy with schoolwork and basketball, so when he saves Wakaba then accepts to go on more ‘dates’ with her, he doesn’t find it as a bad deal. Wakaba is so honest and exaggerated that Fumito always has fun when he spends time with her. Although the two are going on dates, they are not dating nor together… yet. They are both discovering their own feelings and while Wakaba is faster on the uptake, Fumito takes longer as he’s shyer and more reserved. Their relationship is progressing at a good pace as they don’t fall for each other straight away, nor do they take an indefinite amount of time to admit their feelings. Wakaba’s clumsiness and Fumito’s willingness to make her happy turn them into a couple that it is impossible not to ‘ship’ for the readers.

When I first started the series, I was a little bit worried about the character of Fumito. A lot of times, male characters in the shojo genre present characteristics that would be considered a red flag in real life, but so far Fumito is not represented as such. He accepts Wakaba in all she is so that she doesn’t need to hide parts of herself to be liked; he does things even if he’s embarrassed to make her happy and always encourages her to be herself. This for me, and I assume for other readers as well, makes me cheer for their relationship.

The art is what you would expect from a shojo manga, with beautiful characters illustrated with thin lines and evocative facial expressions, turning them into the focus of most scenes. The characters are so expressive that even without the dialogue, the readers would be able to understand the story. Moreover, Wakaba’s character, with both her honesty and clumsiness, adds a comedy element to the story.

Hitting Rewind with You is written by Hanamaru Kira and published by Kodansha in English, with translation by Lindsey Clifford. Volume 3 came out in June.

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

Our review copies from Kodansha are supplied by Diamond Book Distributors UK.