TITLE: Kisu, Zekko, Kisu (Kiss, Break off, and Kiss) and its sequel, Kisu, Zekko, Kisu – Bokurano Bai (Kiss, Break off, and Kiss: Our Case)
AUTHOR: FUJIWARA Yoshiko
DATA: 2001-2004, Shogakukan
My Evaluation: A (Excellent)
A really pure and touching story of young lovers from their fifth grade till high school. The episodes are retold from both the girl’s and the boy’s points of view, and so you cannot help but empathize with them.
You may say that the girl is too shy and stubborn and the boy is also too naive to be realistic, but it’s not a matter of being realistic or not. The boy and the girl are, in my opinion, the symbol of the heart-throbbing love, the keen love that you must have experienced at least for one moment in your life.
STORY:
Mao and Hatori are the fifth grade classmates, forming contrasts in many ways. Mao is a square and quiet, straight-A pupil, and Hatori is a noisy but very popular boy with poor grades.
Hatori always tries to draw the attention of Mao, always ends in vain. One day, he thinks he has finally succeeded in her attention, when he boasts of his experience in kissing a girl. Hatori gathers his courage and talks to Mao in person, but she refuses him, saying that all his boasts are lies because kissing is between lovers while it is doubtless that no girl loves him. Hatori, shocked and confused, kisses Mao with force.
After the incident, Mao never talks to Hatori, nor even looks toward him, in the rest of the grade school years and the junior high years. She is aware that she cannot help chasing his view in reality, but because it is not her but other girls who have him laugh, and because she cannot deal with her own feelings to him and the girls around him well, she keeps him out of her life stubbornly. There happen a few moments that they vaguely feel their emotional bond, but those exceptional moments vanish instantly.
Then, on the graduation day of the junior high, they notice each other that it will be the last day to see the view of each other. Hatori, who has intended to boycott the commencement to disobey the teachers’ order to dye back his bleached hair, changes his mind and rushes for the ceremony. Mao sees Hatori coming into the auditorium when she has just begun her valedictory speech…
P.S.:
Just in case you should read the half-baked scanlated version, I would like to mention the phrase I was impressed by.
Near the end of the sequel, they finally make love after many detours and conflicts. “Mao’s mine, ” Hatori says to himself, embracing Mao. These are the words that surely match the scene in English. However, the original wording here is “Mao wa boku no hito da,” and the phrase ‘boku no hito (lit.: my person)’ is not commonly used. More common phrase is ‘boku no mono‘, literally ‘my thing’.
I felt Hatori’s affection to Mao more deeply than the case he had said “she is my thing,” when I ran across this uncommon phrase. It sounded to me that ‘boku no mono’ rather emphasizes a man’s primitive satisfaction in possessing a woman, while ‘boku no hito’ seems to more emphasizes a respect to the woman’s personality as his soul partner.
ATTENTION: There may appear a black video screen here, which I don’t know why and what, and cannot remove. Please don’t click for your safety.
