EROMANGA
HALL OF FAME

Stories about second chances usually concern themselves with what gets done differently in the past. What "Seishun o Yarinaosu nara Kondo koso Suki datta Doukyuusei to Tsukiatte Zettai Yarimakuritai." attends to is what gets promised there.

On page one the protagonist is hit by a lorry. He opens his eyes in a classroom from his school years, with the classmate he drifted away from, never having said how he felt, right in front of him. It is an adult work that lays a pure-love story between classmates over the device of going back in time to do it over. This time he does not hesitate; he tells her that same day.

All fifty-two pages rest on the assumption that next year, and the year after, they will still be together. For a story about going back, what these two talk about is the future. Some readers brace for a detour partway through; the book never takes one. The last page returns to the street corner where the lorry was. No accident happens, she stands beside him, and there is a glint at her ring finger. Akadashi, the artist behind the circle red miso soup, conveys happiness through faces rather than weighty lines.

Reviews of this book tend to begin with the writer's own regret, the thing left unsaid, before they reach the book. Readers bring their school years to it and let it ease the bitterness.

The artist had mostly drawn partners separated in age; putting two classmates squarely at the centre begins here, and the figures came to nearly twice the previous best. The book is not sold on FANZA, and on one store's figures alone it stands 46th in the hall, 10th in Loli/Petite and 11th in Pure Love. Official translations exist in seven languages.