Before anything else, Hetakoi is a superbly executed romance with frustratingly realistic and relatable characters and truly terrific art. If you read nothing else from this review, hopefully this alone will be enough to sell you on a series that finished six years ago.

As with most of my reviews, I don't intend to write explicit spoilers, but in talking about the thematic and character developments which made me both love and hate this series, there's always the chance I'll clue you in to something you wouldn't have anticipated before or otherwise change your reading of the work, so be warned.

Also, yes folks, there's nudity and even quite a bit of sex. That tends to happen in actual relationships. And it's an essential part of the realism the work is going for. So don't let that make you squeamish. (From the other angle, I wouldn't pick up this book if you're looking mainly for smut, you can get that elsewhere without having to read 1500 pages.)

So. The first thing to know about this manga is that the cover and the first couple chapters are not representative. It looks like it's going to be a harem series, but this is emphatically not the point. We don't even have a love triangle per se--instead it's a very earnest and realistic look at the awkwardnesses of young love, especially as negotiated by people who have way too many hangups for their own good. (Which I say as someone who is recognizing in some of the characters an image of my younger self.)

I suppose the first thing that made me become so attached to this manga was the surpassing excellence of Nakano-sensei's art. Her characters' faces, both in their usual and deformed versions, are continuously expressive and engaging--with clear line work that captures so many emotions in just a few strokes. The art does not skimp on backgrounds, either; both in establishing shots and throughout scenes, her characters are always grounded in a strong sense of place that adds to the emotional realism of the work.

The other thing that caught me is the extent to which I could relate to the characters. A few of them are certainly cartoony--the horndog boorish best friend, the excessively-innocent twins--but for the most part these are characters with real interiority, pasts that largely make sense, plausible emotional interactions with the events happening around them--between the art and the way the characters are written, it doesn't take long at all to feel like you're reading a story about people you can come to know and love. This is a romance story: it works only to the extent that you are emotionally invested in the characters, to the extent that you can imagine being in a situation like this, acting like these people do.

And in fact, this was one of the ways the series suffered for me, too. About midway through the series, there's an event that made me profoundly disappointed in the choice one of the characters makes. It made me want to quit the series entirely. This speaks well of the manga's quality--you have to be really invested in characters to feel so completely let down by them, and it's only artistic mastery that can achieve that investment. But it's also hard to see characters you have come to love and respect act in ways that are beneath them and that seem to ruin everything. Hard to watch, but all too obvious and natural and believable--this is largely not drama for drama's sake, but Greek drama, where human mistakes take the story in a new direction that reveals something profound about life.

So there is no love without tragedy, and like life, the story goes on after the tragedies of love. I chose to keep going with this, and to my total shock, the author actually managed to win me back around. And my reward for sticking it out was many more hours with characters I came to love again, and a whole rainbow of emotions. The twist takes us into mature (or at least maturing) emotional territory that's not often explored in romance manga, but deserves to be. Poking holes in naive romantic fantasies and a whole assemblage of stupid garbage along the way. In that sense the story becomes a coming-of-age story--a term I use with some distaste, as it usually means "nothing actually happens, but everybody's sad at the end"--but which is merited here, because this is not just about first love but about real love; it's about learning how to love like an adult, which is to say to love a person and not just a fantasy or a narrative; and it's about how to be in a relationship, not just how to dream about one.

All that said, I did dock some points because a few arcs felt like needless dragging-things-out. This probably could have been 8 volumes instead of 10. And there were times that I joined the side cast in rolling my eyes at the actions of the main characters, and times that I was frustrated to no end at the problems that could've been easily solved, just not being solved. (We aren't entirely free of drama-for-drama's-sake after all.) Still, I think my heart is richer for the experience of having read this, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to read thoughtful romance.

It's a tragedy that Nakano-sensei passed away shortly after this was completed, at only 45. I would have loved to see what she would have written as she continued to develop as a storyteller. But what an impressive work to have left behind!