“Your feelings for me are not romantic.”
Nodoka no niwa vol.1-5
by Akiyama Kaori
…aka “May-December Romance: The Manga”. I’ve been reading this in the past weeks. I was drawn to it by the art style (such cute covers!) and it turned out to be one of those manga which are perfectly lovely and I enjoy them a lot, but they still leave me a bit frustrated because I’m not sure if I like where they appear to be going or not… if they’re even going that way.
Our heroine is Motoko aka Schwarz-san - nicknamed so because she always wears dark, drab clothes and appears aloof and gloomy - is a 23 year old student of German literature at a certain K University. She falls in love with her professor, the 64 year old Sakaki Ikuo. However, when she accidentally confesses her feelings to him his reply is that what she feels for him is not romantic.* To complicate matters, the first real friend she makes, Juri, turns out to be in love with Sakaki’s assistant Tanaka, who turns out to be in love with Motoko. And if that wasn’t already enough, Sakaki’s ex-wife also shows up…
Despite her “black witch” image Motoko is actually a very “pure”, innocent girl who, although appearing aloof, is actually just very awkward and inexperienced with life in general. Having spent much of her time growing up trying to be mature, serious and reliable, she doesn’t have much experience with socializing and expressing herself. For her, this manga’s story is not simply a romance but a journey to self-realization through love: developing social skills, having experiences she’s never had before, having to handle entirely new feelings and situations, finding the will and courage in herself to open up - basically a repressed and awkward person slowly blossoming into her “real” self. This part of the story is really lovely, and very relatable (to me at least), and it’s one of the things I really like about this manga. It’s not preachy and it doesn’t use other people as examples to follow. It says, find the strength and courage in yourself, for your own sake, to be able to be the person you want to be instead of staying in the comfort of non-change and watching as life goes by with a whoosh.
As for the romance, though… I still don’t quite know how I feel about it!
Obviously the main thing here is the feelings between Motoko and the professor. At this point they appear to be mutual, and I don’t know, I’m not entirely sold on the relationship. It’s not the fact that he could be her grandfather (if I cared about age gaps I wouldn’t be reading this) or the teacher/student situation, more like… On Sakaki’s part the story seems to be framing his reluctance as him feeling his age too keenly, feeling it unbecoming of a man of his age to have a romance with a woman as young as Motoko. For him this seems to be the story of a man resigned to growing older and eventually wasting away getting to feel alive again, being rejuvenated by a gentle romance. (As opposed to moving to Germany with his ex-wife and live out their old age together as an old couple.)
And…yeah, that’s fine and all, but I can’t help feeling that, at least so far, the story doesn’t seem to be addressing the fact that a person is just not at the same stage of their life at 64 than a person of 23. Someone of Sakaki’s age is inevitably going to have different priorities and different needs than someone of Motoko’s age. And sure, their personalities complement each other in ways that facilitate a romantic relationship, but there’s this one snaggle that makes it not sit well with me. Like, she’s at the start of her life, while he, rejuvenated by romance or not, is inching towards the end. It’s something to be thought about and dealt with. Who knows, though, maybe the manga will touch on this.
As for the other players of the love quadrangle(?) I actually really like Tanaka (and to be honest I’m rooting for him, as unlikely as it is that Motoko will develop feelings for him). I like his relationship with Sakaki and the mutual affection they have for each other, and I like how terribly human he is, using Juri to get over Motoko. Juri herself is less of a presence, but I like her very human actions and impulses - like Tanaka she’s not a great person, but she’s not a monster either. The ex-wife, Midori, I don’t like much but she’s intriguing. She’s presented as Motoko’s true rival, an accomplished, talented person, a force that could sway Sakaki in another direction. Clearly she’s meant to be Motoko’s foil, and she does a good job acting like it.
Anyway, I’ve been rambling about this for too long… In the end, this is a very nice manga with some lovely themes, and really good art. But I don’t know what I hope for the romance (other than the impossible, Motoko somehow getting together with Tanaka :D). Actually, I still can’t quite read where that plotline is going. I guess I’ll just have to read to find out, and hope that wherever it goes it will be worth it in the end. I do recommend reading it!
*The story goes through great lengths to examine various aspects of love/affection - romantic love, familial love, friendship, affection between teacher and student, etc., only for Motoko to realize each time that no, her feelings for the prof are not like that, coming to the eventual conclusion that her feelings for him are, indeed, romantic.
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