Calling Hana
and Hina After School ‘sweet’ seems like damning with faint praise. It’s like
I’m saying, ‘This piece of fluff has nothing to say.’ And indeed, this series does
have little to say (at least in this volume). But while this series has no
grand moral messages, nor very deep characters, nor even grand conflict, the series
is a sweet story of budding love.
Quite against school rules, Hana has a
part-time job. She works in a toy store, but she keeps a low profile. If her
school finds out, they’ll expel her. One day, one of her regular customers, the
dashing Hina, asks if the store still has a vacancy open. It turns out, despite
her cool demeanour, Hina goes gaga over everything cute: plush-toys, dolls,
Hana – Not that she’d ever reveal that last one. But until both Hana and Hina
figure out their feelings, their biggest worry is that their school will
discover their jobs, and expel them.
Much of Morinaga’s work feels like a
director getting back together with her regular actors. Outside of the
relatively weighty Girl Friends and Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink,
Morinaga’s work settles on a comfortable repetition. Long-time readers will
recognise the main characters of Hana and
Hina, or their character models at least They are Morinaga’s standard
short-haired, reserved tiny girl, and her long-haired, cool tall girl.
Long-time readers will also remember the tone of her work. Hana and Hina is – and I mean this with no negativity – fluffy.
Sweetness pervades the book. Our heroines
work at a store which sells cute things, and Hina adores all things cute. The
series’ tone fits the setting – you won’t find a workplace or school drama
here. You won’t find much conflict at all. The threat of expulsion I mentioned
up the top is ever-present, but never feels urgent. Hana will say they need to keep a low profile, but
the reader never senses discovery looms around the corner. Episodic conflicts
in the series (e.g. Hina wanting a photograph of Hana, or Hana wondering why
Hina seems surly) do not so much resolve, as vanish. As the chapter reaches its
end, it will turn out the conflict owed to a misunderstanding, or that the
stakes were not as big as we thought. Now, this lack of conflict may seem
boring, and, coupled with sweetness, the story may seem cloying. But Hana and Hina is neither boring nor
cloying. The low-conflict sweetness suits this escapist love-story, one where all
is right with the world.
The series foreshadows real conflict, but
in a cliff-hanger for the next volume. In an impacting sequence, Hina realises
her feelings may be more than friendly. She asks her friends whether its normal
to take pictures with your cute friends. They say that’s normal. She asks if wanting
to kiss your friend is normal. Well, kissing a girl’s cheek is normal, they
suppose. What if ‘you can’t get them out of your head’ and ‘want to be together
forever’? The girls think Hina’s talking about another girl saying this to her.
They respond: ‘If she really meant it, that’d be freaky, right?’ Within the last pages, Hina’s conflict materialises.
Hina wants to be with Hana, but she fears revealing her love lest she pushes
Hana away. A rather conventional conflict. Worse, it is based on a lack of
communication, rather than any actual mismatch between our two lovers. This
might have become conflict for conflict’s sake. But Morinaga frames this not
merely as misunderstanding, but self-doubt, self-disgust, shame, rooted in
casual homophobia. The conflict for conflict’s sake breeds a legitimate
character conflict within Hina.
While I consider myself a fan of Morinaga, I’ve
never felt crazy about her art. Her illustrations are not bad, but they do not
exceed mere competency. It is fine that she repeats character models across
series. I am not so thrilled by her repeating facial expressions within a
series. One imagines an illustrative reference book, with such entries as ‘happy’,
‘embarrassed happy’, ‘surprised’. Add to that many of the characters having
roughly the same face shape, and all their expressions become cookie-cutter.
Her page layouts also underwhelm. Their
stylistic excesses are just prosaic. Most of the panels bleed off the page.
Many panels abandon rectangularity for diagonal borders. Rarely is there any dramatic
or thematic motivation for this. These excesses add a superficial dynamism to
the page, a dynamism not based on the content of the page. Worse, when bleeding
and/or slanting panels could enhance a plot point, they cannot. These techniques
are used so often they become a dull baseline.
But as I said, Morinaga’s artwork is
competent. It does not detract from Hana
and Hina, it just does not enhance the series. Her style gets across the
sweetness of the story. If you’re looking for a light love story, with few
bumps in its progress, give Hana and Hina
a try.
[Translation taken from Seven Seas' edition: https://www.amazon.com/Hana-Hina-After-School-Vol/dp/1626924627]
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