My New Favourite Yuri

I discovered this little gem of a webcomic a while back and I have been waiting to tell you guys about it. Because it is a webtoon, each “chapter” tends to be quite short and very easy to read so I wanted to get a few under my belt and really get a good idea of the story before I try to share it with you guys. But I think that time has come!

This wonderful little Yuri comes out every Sunday on the creator’s Twitter of all places! https://twitter.com/agu_knzm. If you go check, you’ll pretty quickly see that it’s in Japanese but the text is very clear, the speech is modern and matter of fact, so that makes it rather easy to translate if you have the patience or a good translator app.

And let me tell you, I have been reading this webcomic for months now and every Sunday I get excited for the new pages coming out. In all this time I haven’t lost interest. And I lose interest in webcomics in about a week or two usually. I pretty much have to wait until they’re over or have an absolutely massive backlog library if I want to have a chance at not dropping them. Not so with The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All (that’s the English title for now), I wait for it like a present at the end of the week.

So what makes this particular webcomic so special.

In a way, nothing really.

The plot and setup are sort of classic romantic comedy tropes. Mistaken identity and all that. And the events are what you would expect from the premise. Oh, wait, the premise. Ok here’s a very quick summary of the premise.

Mitsuki is a high school girl who works part-time as a clerk in her uncle’s music store. She kind of a loner at school but she loves rock and is happy at the record store. One day one of her classmates comes in and mistakes her for a guy since she’s wearing a mask, has a boyish outfit on and her hair in a baseball cap. The classmate, Aya, immediately gets a huge crush on the boy from the record store and things go from there.

Ok so that’s the basic premise. And you know, shenanigans, cute girl stuff, some blushing and all that. Nothing ground-breaking or anything. But!

The pacing is great. Pacing is one of the hardest things to nail down in a webcomic that comes out weekly and gives you only small snippets of the story at the time. It makes it so much more difficult to establish a narrative flow. But The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All has that nailed down. Whether you read it in weekly increments or as one continuous block, everything progresses smoothly and logically with no dead ends or bumps in the road. It’s the sort of thing that you hardly notice when it’s done right but it’s actually quite difficult to accomplish. I’m very impressed.

The characters are also great. Of course, there’s a measure of personal preference here but I just love the entire cast really. And for once, the main characters aren’t the most boring of the bunch. Everyone in The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All is multifaceted and rather sweet in their own ways. I never feel disappointed if a chapter chooses to follow one particular character instead of another. It should be said that although there are about 21 chapters out as I write this, because each chapter is so small, we haven’t had the chance to get to know most of the supporting cast in depth. However, the way they are presented gives you the impression of fully formed characters that you just need to learn more about.

No one in this story is dramatic, no one flies into fits of rage or depression, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone cry yet. This is a very good way to make me like characters in a romance. Look they can cry, I’m not saying they’re not allowed. But the fact that emotions aren’t constantly about to explode is a nice change and it makes the entire story feel relaxed and cheery.

Finally, another element which is up to the beholder, I love the art in this webcomic. The art style itself and the character designs simply appeal to me. And the choice to publish everything in black and white and lime green really sets the comic visually apart from others.

I am really loving the ride right now. I have no clue what the future holds and webcomics can be a bit unstable but as long as The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All keeps publishing, I know what I will be doing on Sundays. For a few minutes at least!