Duetto

Shinobu Miura and Eiichi Tashiro live next-door to each other, and from their behaviour at school no-one would ever think they were more than just casual acquaintances, let alone sex-buddies shagging like bunnies (which of course they are).

You might think that you can guess where a title like this is headed, and you’d be both right and wrong. Duetto explores nothing new or innovative in its plot (a secret relationship and the problems therein) but it is surprisingly subtle in its story. Rather than following the course of an angsty romance, we see a series of vignettes at significant points in the relationship. When the first chapter begins, our couple are already together; the main interest of the story is not them meeting, or their first kiss, but the simple act of Shinobu realising that he feels much more for Eiichi than he was letting himself believe. In a later chapter Eiichi accepts a job overseas, and again we’re not shown angsty scenes of breaking the news, or tearful goodbyes at an airport; instead we get a short story about Shinobu going to visit his boyfriend, and Eiichi’s work-mates all trying to work out what his mysterious “girlfriend” is like.

The overall effect is that we jump through a developing relationship and watch the subtly important moments, rather than following the course of it through from beginning to end. In many ways what we have at the end is far more interesting and subtle than most romances because it skips out the obvious and goes straight for the interesting, with the added fun of working out how much has happened between chapters.

Aoi Kujyou’s writing is by-and-large excellent. Most importantly she doesn’t spoon-feed her reader, and generally allows you to connect up the dots yourself without spelling things out. It’s a technique which is exceedingly refreshing, and much more interesting to read than the usual fare. Unfortunately the manga-ka occasionally seems a little too clever for her own good, not quite saying enough and thus making sections of the plot confusing and hard to follow. That said, it doesn’t occur too often, so it’s not that off-putting.

More unfortunate is that this rather excellent story makes up little over half of the volume, and what follows are two short stories of varying worth. One follows a teenager with the hots for his incredibly youthful and immature-looking father (whom he suspects not to be his real dad). Nothing is ever really explained, a scene where he pretty much molests his dad made me cringe, and, to be honest, it’s all a bit weird. The next is a brief little high school romance that’s not really long enough to establish an interesting plot, and not a good enough concept to hold the attention for a short story.

The artwork is probably one of the best things about this volume, in particular its composition. The character are beautiful, and the attention to detail is at times superb, but what is most interesting is Aoi Kujyou’s seeming aversion to ever just splitting a page into a few boxes. Almost every page is dynamic and interestingly composed; when someone is suddenly hit the frames tumble out of each other, when someone is day-dreaming the art boxes seem to almost trail off in thought. It really is something to appreciate, and it definitely raises the game compared to most.

Duetto is a standard June release, lovely dust-jacket, slightly sub-standard paper, decent translation. It’s undoubtedly worth a read for the myriad of reasons above, but it’s definitely let down by its supporting material. However, whatever reservations I might have, it definitely earns the award for quote of the week:
“Taka, your special sauce is DELICIOUS.”