The Spring 2024 Manga Guide

I See Your Face, Turned Away

What's It About? 

One might call Hikari extraordinarily ordinary. One day, she takes up a new hobby--imagining what a romance would be like between her pretty friend Mari and the cute guy in their class, Ohtani. It's all in harmless fun, until the roles start to get tangled in Hikari's mind. Does she really have to be just the best friend in this love story? And just who is on Ohtani's mind when his eyes drift away...?

I See Your Face, Turned Away has a story and art by Rumi Ichinohe. English translation by Irene Nakano. This volume is lettered and retouched by Dietrich Premier. Published by ‎Kodansha Comics (May 7, 2024).

Is It Worth Reading?

I enjoyed this creator's previously licensed title, My Sweet Girl, so it's perhaps no surprise that I also found this book a good read, too. Unlike My Sweet Girl, I See Your Face, Turned Away is more of a serious story than a romantic comedy. Hikari, one of the protagonists, sees herself as nothing special, the perpetual best friend of the kind of girl who stars in shoujo manga. The girl in question is Mari, and Hikari daydreams about seeing her best friend live the shoujo dream life. Mari is painfully shy and very introverted, and Hikari thinks she'd do great with class clown Ohtani, so when she finds out that Ohtani has a crush on Mari, she's delighted. Or at least she is at first, because before too long, she realizes her crush on Ohtani, although she's willing just to stand aside and let her daydream scenario play out.

Except…no one's asking Mari. Despite being the object of everyone's fantasies, Mari has almost no lines or role in the story, existing as a character rather than a person. Hikari would almost certainly bristle at that statement because I believe she thinks she's looking out for her friend, and Mari told her that she wanted to become a bit less shy in high school. But even though she's getting used to Ohtani and possibly his pal Asagiri, she's not showing any signs that she wants to spend more time with him in any way and looks panicked when Hikari orchestrates leaving them alone together. Ohtani, for his part, doesn't know anything about Mari besides that she's pretty, and he likes her smile. That's enough for Hikari to support the idea of them as a couple, but that may be tied up in her mixed self-esteem, which she mostly sees as her being less attractive than Mari because she has monolids while Mari's eyelids have a fold. Again, it's not about Mari; it's about everyone around her pinning their issues on her.

If this is indeed one, it's an interesting setup for a romance manga. Common wisdom would suggest that Asagiri will develop a crush on Hikari or that Ohtani will shift his feelings once he gets to know both girls better, and that does feel possible here; it's clear that he never really talked to Hikari before, possibly because she never saw herself as a main character. And that self-evaluation changes a bit when Hikari is forced to acknowledge that she's the musician best suited to be first (French) horn in the school orchestra despite being a first year. Even without the immaculate art and smooth translation, this would be a first volume to make you want to read more, and even if it does hit those expected plot points, there's enough subtext to make this worth picking up.

Sometimes, you read so many romance stories that you start to see the world like one. You start comparing yourself to the characters in those stories. Because you don't fit a super specific mold, you immediately write off the fact that you could experience the same happiness that the people in those stories do. It's not true, obviously, but sometimes that's how people deal with insecurities, and that message seems to be at the heart of I See Your Face, Turned Away. What happens when you're somebody who wants a classic shojo happy ending but is also the one holding yourself back from finding it?

I like this story a lot because of how subtle it is. It doesn't seem to give into many of the more loud and problematic storytelling tropes that come with classic shoujo romances. If anything, it focuses on the more insecure side of developing bonds with other people who you know don't share the same feelings you do. Sometimes, we're all our worst enemies, whether being too shy to make a first move or having the ability to do so but already deciding that it would be better for everybody if you didn't. I like our main character, Hikari, because while she is proactive, she's also secretly hoping for more to happen, and her chemistry with the rest of the developing cast is very solid. It's not abundantly clear where many of these story directions are going until the very end, but I was enthralled before we got to that point. I See Your Face seems to incorporate a lot of the storytelling tropes that I love in a good slow-burn romance, so if you're in the mood for something like that, then I think this is a solid choice.

The first three chapters of I See Your Face, Turned Away are Hikari's subtle and understated story – she's a girl who appears never to have sought out her own goals and has never viewed herself even as worthwhile. Whether that worth should be counted as whether she gets the guy or not isn't explored here, as even though she confesses to him, the ambient noise is too loud for him to hear her. The fourth (and final) chapter in this volume switches viewpoints to Ohtani's perspective and leaves things on a cliffhanger – could Mari be interested in someone else altogether?

I admit I found this a tough manga to get into. The boys' faces were all too similar, and I had to keep turning back pages to ensure I had everyone's identities correct. I also didn't find the facial expressions easy to parse – especially when the text describes the character's face as being particularly expressive, but to me, he looked blank! Although Hikari's character is well-established, I struggled to identify with the other characters. While later volumes may up the drama, this first volume left me feeling empty and unsatisfied. I'm intrigued as to where the story might go next, though. The art is relatively functional fare, with pretty, if ill-defined, characters. Bonus points for the many Mari googly-eye panels, though.