We Were There Volumes 6 and 7 by Yuki Obata
This is my go-to series whenever I want to indulge in intense teenage misery. Everybody is so unhappy! Love doesn’t make anything better, and can in fact make things so much worse. Part of the reason why I enjoy this series is that even though the characters may find themselves in the middle of a love triangle, Obata does such a great job mapping out the motivations and inner lives of the characters that the plots don’t seem facile or unearned.
In the sixth volume, Nanami tries to avoid Motoharu at a festival. She isn’t ready to cope with talking to him. Motoharu’s best friend Masafumi has a terminal case of nice guyitis. He has a crush on Nanami too, but isn’t going to do anything about it because he doesn’t want to betray his friend. Nanami agrees to get back together with Moto if he tells her all about his dead girlfriend Nana, who she thinks has been casting a shadow over their relationship. Moto agrees, but his inability to open up combined with Nanami’s lingering suspicions seems to indicate that their rekindled relationship isn’t going to work out again. Masa helps them get back together and puts his own feelings aside. He ends up acting like a relationship counselor, saying to Nanami “The person whose actually hung up on Nana-san isn’t Moto, it’s you Takahashi. If you don’t have trust…nothing can succeed.” Nanami decides to will herself to trust Moto. Thinking to herself “We’ll…be fine…” shows that she’s still trying to convince herself that the relationship can work even with all of their issues.
The seventh volume shows additional complications getting in the way of Nanami and Moto being able to move on with each other. Masa forces himself to go out on dates to meet a girl that isn’t tied to his best friend. Moto faces additional revelations about his past, and Nana’s younger sister derails Nanami and Moto’s big date when she calls Moto with a personal crisis. Seeing Nanami so unhappy prompts Masa to break his silence about his feelings when he shows up to take Nanami home.
One of the things I like about this series is the contrast of the characters’ facial expressions and inner thoughts with more expansive background settings. Nanami and Moto start to get back together during a festival at night, surrounded by glowing lights. They walk together on a deserted beach. Nanami’s left alone and shivering under a barren tree until Masa comes to rescue her. Obata zeros in on faces during times of heightened emotional tension, sometimes just focusing on a partial profile or a close-up of Nanami’s eye welling with tears. Part of the reason why I like this series so much is that there’s this overwhelming feeling of tension and doom as Nanami and Moto face the future. I don’t see how they can end up with a typical shoujo happily ever after ending without enduring several years of emotional turmoil. I have a general feeling while reading We Were There that something horrible is going to happen, but I’m fascinated at the same time to see how everyone deals with the impending tragedy. The fact that the characters are bringing on their own crisis themselves simply due to the way they deal with their own feelings makes for a gripping series.