What If I Said “I Love You”? Volume 1 Review

“I want you to feel the same way as me… in everything that we do together.” Kazuho confesses to Tokio.

Childhood friends Kazuho and Tokio are now in high school – but the innocent closeness of their childhood years has evaporated and Kazuho is trying to keep cheerful, outward-going Tokio at arm’s length, afraid to reveal the way his feelings for him have changed and deepened. So, no more piggyback rides or joshing around – and when some of the girls in the class suggest doing fireworks together when final exams are out of the way, the two feel bound to agree. But do the girls see this as a romantic opportunity, and is a love confession imminent?

It’s rainy season and the girls worry that the fireworks will get rained off. When it’s time to go home, it’s pouring. Kazuho discovers someone has taken his umbrella – but then Tokio comes to the rescue. Unfortunately, his umbrella has seen better days and the two soon get soaked to the skin. When they’re sheltering, Kazuho finds himself confessing to Tokio and Tokio bluntly asks him, “Kazuho… are you in love with me?” Kazuho flees into the rain – and next day, doesn’t turn up at school.

What If I Said “I Love You”? is Kumosoku’s debut manga – and, unusually for a debut, a four-volume BL series that’s currently ongoing! What stands out from the start is the high number of panels devoted to storytelling without dialogue. This story moves quite slowly, revealing the characters’ feelings and interactions image by image – and because Kumosoku draws her characters with great skill, it’s very attractive to look at. This level of hyperfocus on what happens from moment to moment means that dialogue is quite sparse as the mangaka often relies on the pictures alone to convey what’s happening.

One small point that would have helped throughout the volume is giving the main characters’ full names at the start as it’s quite puzzling in places to work out which surname goes with which first name and the dialogue balloons don’t always make it clear who’s speaking. These are rookie issues but an editor could have sorted this out. I was genuinely confused by this (and that was coming from reading other new manga titles where I was absolutely clear who was speaking and to whom from the get-go).

Translation for Kodansha is by Diana Taylor with lettering by Jamil Stewart and both work well together to convey the story. The trade paperback size really does justice to the art. Volume 2 will be out in September with #3 following in December.

I wonder whether the note from the mangaka that is placed after Chapter 1 should maybe have gone at the end of the volume? It sounds like an afterword, especially when she thanks readers for picking up the volume and says she hopes they will ‘stick around to see what happens next’. At the end, the mangaka confesses that ‘I vastly underestimated the challenge of drawing glasses without understanding the geometry behind how they’re designed’ but she seems to have risen to the challenge extremely well!

Kodansha state in their blurb that this is ‘a warmhearted friends-to-lovers BL Romance’ that ‘will appeal to fans of Love on the Horizon, My Summer of You, and Sasaki and Miyano’ although it lacks the delightful mischievous sparkle of Shou Harusono or the subtle pacing and character dynamics of Nagisa Furuya’s manga. Nevertheless, it’s very beautiful to look at and if you don’t mind the slow pacing, it will be interesting to see how Kumosoku develops the nascent relationship between Tokio and Kazuho.

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

• What if I Said, “I Love You”? © Kumosoku/KODANSHA LTD.