Hanakimi 20

One of the things I have to give this series a lot of credit for is breaking the hearts of regular people.  Normally in this type of series, the reader is forced to take the side of the most pleasant character, and everything will work out in that character’s favor.  Any sort of rival character will inevitably be portrayed somewhat negatively, so you don’t have to feel bad when everything works out in the end.  Hanakimi works a little differently.  Nakatsu is the best example, because as Mizuki’s best friend, and someone who is in love with her that is not Sano, he will inevitably have his heart broken in the end, even though the reader would love more than anything else to see Nakatsu happy.  He has pretty much resigned himself to the fact that Mizuki doesn’t return his feelings, but he’s such a happy guy and you can’t help but feel bad for him.

In this volume, the story deals with the graduating seniors, and the immediate impact on the characters is that Nanba, the RA, is leaving.  For the entire duration of the series, Nakao has had a crush on Nanba that everyone, including Nanba, has been aware of.  Since Nanba is straight, Nakao is perfectly aware that his love will never be returned, but the looming graduation deadline makes Nakao think that he ought to tell Nanba how he feels, in all seriousness, before he leaves for good.  You know what the outcome of the story is going to be, so it’s absolutely heartbreaking to watch Nakao go through the motions.  But you know why he has to do it, too.

Izumi’s growing jealousy about Mizuki and Shuichi spending time together gets worse and worse in this volume.  He finally gets Mizuki to admit that Shuichi told her that he has feelings for her, which makes Sano feel bad since he basically had to scare the information out of her.  It confuses Mizuki too, since she’s not sure why Sano would care.  Sano says a few things that make Mizuki feel good to make up for it.

When relating all this to Dr. Umeda, the panel where he reacts in shock to Mizuki’s total ignorance of Sano’s feelings was worth all the buildup we’ve gotten for the entire series.  I don’t really care what else happens now, because it will not be as awesome as that.  I wish the series could have ended with that perfect page.

Also, there was a resolution to the Shuichi’s mom storyline.  When she offhandedly asked him if he was going to go back to Osaka, I knew that there was a family business that Nakatsu did not want to run involved, and I was right.  The story plays out as you would expect, with Nakatsu’s mom being stubborn, Shuichi being stubborn in return, and everything working out in the end.  The only thing that really appealed to me in that storyline was the fact that Shuichi’s mom shared a bunch of memories of him as a kid to Mizuki, and seeing him without his hair dyed, sometimes half covered in mud after falling into a rice paddy, was really cute.