I have been disappointed over and over by romance anime and manga. Sometimes it's because my preferred girl doesn't win; other times, it drags on for too long despite whatever made it unique having run its course; and very rarely, it's because a very good concept is butchered for one reason or another. Along with that, my particular taste in romance is somewhat niche. My favorite romance stories aren't solely romance but use romance as just one plot device. Sugaru Miaki's stories are an example of this. The one romance manga that I absolutely love is Ookami Shounen wa Kyou mo Uso wo Kasaneru, and that one is pure romance. Fujimi Lovers could've been another such manga, except it doesn't have an ending. After three volumes and a perspective shift, the continuation was supposed to come in the form of a Part 2, but alas, that never happened. One of my favorite concepts was met with discontinuation. Ten years after the fact, whilst browsing /a/, I came across a thread saying they were making a live-action adaptation and finally bringing the story to its conclusion. Due to it being a Japanese live-action movie, I knew I would need to wait quite a while to watch it. There is also the fact that, although overacting is prevalent in Japanese movies, I was not wholly optimistic about whether or not the main character could be properly adapted, considering how exaggerated some parts of the original story tend to make him act. In the meantime, a special oneshot from the original author dropped, supposedly also bringing a conclusion to the story. This time, I was overjoyed. Nobody else could've done justice to this story other than the original author herself, I believed. In this blog post, I will try to give my concise opinion on the original Fujimi Lovers manga, the 2024 movie, and the oneshot. I am quite sick at the moment, so my opinions may not come off as concise, but I'm very passionate about the matter at hand. Forgive anything that might come off as verbose or disjointed. This will contain spoilers for all three of the aforementioned stories.
The Fujimi Lovers manga has a simple concept I had never seen elsewhere. The main character, Kouno Jun, is in love with a girl named Hasebe Rino. Every time he confesses his love to her, and his feelings are met with mutual love, the girl in question disappears, and everyone else who is supposed to know of her also forgets her existence. She then reappears sometime later with no memory of Jun and a completely different backstory and circumstances to boot. It is a sweet and sour antithesis to the concept of Red Thread of Fate. We accompany Jun in his unwavering determination to love and gain the affection of Rino, no matter the circumstances, and those circumstances can be excruciating at times. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, phases my boy Jun as he charms Rino in all her various iterations: when she's a teacher and he's a high school student; a middle school student with unrequited feelings for another boy while Jun is a university student; a grade-school student while Jun is a university student; a widow still harboring deep feelings for her late husband; and many more versions of Rino, each cuter than the last. During all this, Jun meets a girl named Hanamori, who has experienced the exact same phenomenon. Unlike Jun, however, Hanamori has given up her pursuit of the impossible love quest. She happens to fall for Jun, but because of his love for Rino, she is met with heartbreak. Jun sympathizes with her heartbreak because one of Rino's iterations was also in love with someone else. I will mention two more Rino iterations, which I purposely avoided describing earlier.
Hasebe Rino, a university student and classmate of Kouno Jun, has memories of only the current day. To elaborate: after an accident, she was struck with a condition that makes her unable to remember anything after she has gone to sleep. Her actual memory ends at the age of 16, which is when the accident occurred. To maintain some semblance of normalcy in her life, she keeps notes of everything she experiences during the day. However, in truth, her life is in tatters, as her memory issues make daily life incredibly difficult. This iteration of Rino elevates the already impossible love story to an entirely new level, as Jun must restart his efforts to win her heart every single day.
He starts living with her family (her grandparents to be specific) and helping her every day. A very sweet aspect of this part of the story is that, although her memory may not persist, bit by bit, her feelings begin to linger. I'm not a romantic at heart, but I love the implication that love (and other emotions) can be stored elsewhere - perhaps in the heart (KUBOOOOOOOOOO). Eventually, Rino answers Jun's unwavering feelings of love. At this point, the only thing Jun can do is plead with her: to stay awake, to not forget his existence, his feelings, and the love she feels for him. This iteration ends beautifully, with her briefly dozing off for a moment, then waking up - and remembering all three of those things.
The last Rino I'll talk about is also the final one we see in the manga. One day on campus, while Jun is talking with Hanamori-san, a girl - more specifically, Hasebe-san asks if she can take a UMA club flyer stuck to Jun's back. It's her, in the flesh, yet, to Jun's surprise, he doesn't feel anything. Shortly after, we learn this girl's true identity: Hasebe Rina, the twin sister of Hasebe Rino. Although this was pretty obvious, it reiterates two key things. First, Kouno Jun's love for Hasebe Rino is on a completely unique and profound level - it isn't about outward appearance, personality, or any superficial traits. Second, Jun's determination is truly unwavering, as if he's an arrow in flight, incapable of being diverted from its target.
Jun and the Rino of this iteration share similar interests, which leads them to hit it off quite well. In one of the previous iterations, Jun had mentioned the fact that every time his feelings for Rino are reciprocated, she disappears - but that revelation happened near the very end of that plotline. This time, however, he reveals his love and the truth about her disappearance to Rino much earlier in their story. Rather than treating Jun like he’s insane, Rino surprises him by inviting him on a camping trip (and a hunt for Tsuchinoko - UMAs are one of their shared interests). During the trip, they grow closer, and Rino offers her conclusion to Jun's predicament: she suggests that he give up on pursuing mutual love in order to preserve their current relationship. Jun has pondered this possibility countless times before, yet his answer remains steadfast - he will live true to his desire for mutual love, no matter how impossible it seems. He continues to profess his love for Rino again and again, which only deepens the confusion in her mind, now filled with conflicting emotions. Finally, Jun urges Rino to leave him, insisting that the one thing he cannot deny is his unwavering love for her, despite the seeming impossibility of their being together.
Jun stays by himself in the mountains, but sometime later, Rino returns, worried about him. Unfortunately, she ends up lost and injured. Jun finds her, and the two encounter a bear. In a desperate bid to escape, they make a Hail Mary leap into a nearby lake. Both are later rescued and taken to a hospital by Jun's friend, Tanaka. At the hospital, it is revealed that the jump caused Jun to suffer retrograde amnesia. Despite this, his feelings for Rino remain intact. Rino's internal conflict finally reaches its resolution when she realizes that she, too, harbors feelings of love for Jun. Bracing herself for the inevitable disappearance that comes with mutual love, something completely unexpected happens - this time, it is Jun who disappears. Everyone, except Tanaka, forgets Jun's existence. Tanaka, the sole exception, takes Rino to where Jun is now. In a surprising twist, it is revealed that Jun has reappeared as a female. This revelation reignites Rino's conflicting emotions, but he ultimately decides to be true to his feelings, just as Jun has been all along. With this resolve, Rino commits to chasing after Jun, fully aware that Jun will eventually disappear when Rino's love finally bears fruit.
In retrospect, it's easy to say that this story was doomed from the start - either because it relied too heavily on a single concept or because it seemingly had nowhere to go. However, I truly believed that some kind of satisfying conclusion could have been achieved. After the announcement of the movie, followed by the release of the oneshot, I had convinced myself of this. With that out of the way, it’s time to talk about how my hopes ultimately led to disappointment.
'll try to keep my thoughts about the movie (and the oneshot that followed) brief, as I didn’t enjoy them and certainly won’t enjoy discussing them. In the movie, Rino is made the main character instead of Jun. Some iterations from the manga were omitted - such as the JC×JD and JS×JD romances - which could have caused issues, but I wasn’t too bothered by their absence. Being a live-action adaptation featuring Rino, whose emotions are more subdued compared to the manga’s Jun, the exaggerated charm and energy of the manga didn’t translate to the big screen. While these are minor complaints, I do have two significant issues, both of which partially apply to the oneshot as well. My first major complaint is the movie’s over-reliance on the iteration of Jun that loses his memories every day. While that version of Rino was certainly a standout in the manga, it was not the focus of the entire story. The core of the manga was always the simple yet poignant fact that every time Jun’s feelings were reciprocated, Rino would disappear. My second complaint, however, is absolutely outrageous. The story deviates entirely from the supernatural and unexplainable nature of the disappearances. Instead, it becomes a matter of Rino choosing to forget whoever she was in love with after a breakup, a falling out, or some other emotional event. The implication is that there was never just one "Jun" - instead, Rino was in love with different people at different periods in her life. This shift is hinted at twice during the movie: once by Tanaka (who is Rino’s friend instead of Jun’s in this version) and once by Hanamori-san’s sudden disappearance. My issue isn’t that this twist came out of nowhere; I think the movie did enough to establish it beforehand. However, it still felt entirely meaningless. This concept is vastly inferior to the manga’s simple yet effective portrayal of impossible love.
The oneshot follows the same general story as the manga for the most part, but, as mentioned in the movie section, it places too much emphasis on the iteration of Rino who forgets her memories each day. God makes an appearance and tells Jun that their love is not meant to be, yet despite this, Jun and the memory-affected Rino still end up together, growing old and eventually dying. Considering this was meant to be the grand finale to the manga after a 10-year wait, this 80-something-page oneshot - half of which was just regurgitated content - left me deeply disappointed. While it was sweet and cute, and technically provided a conclusion, none of that really mattered when the central plot point of Rino’s disappearances was discarded in favor of having the two characters end up together. I did want them to be together, but I wanted it to make sense within the context of the original story’s constraints, not by abandoning the very thing that made the story unique in the first place.
I guess I had to re-learn the age-old lesson that getting more of what I initially liked will most likely end up disappointing me. I still like the Fujimi Lovers manga, but I’ll have to be content with never getting a proper conclusion to the story. I had thought about typesetting the oneshot for a while, but laziness and the lingering disappointment ultimately overcame my desire to do so. In other news, I want to talk about Warframe. I've been putting it off for far too long, and I'll try to make an effort to finally put my thoughts about the game into words.